The Prado and a New Royal Museum Duel Over Paintings
MADRID — A royal battle is simmering here.
On one side is the Prado, a renowned repository of art and a showcase of Spanish culture that draws huge numbers of tourists. On the other is a brash newcomer, emerging onto the scene in layers of gray granite from a hillside near the baroque royal palace of Spanish kings.
In advance of its opening, the upstart, the Museum of Royal Collections, is insisting that the Prado surrender four paintings, including its top two attractions — “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch and a sumptuous 15th-century depiction of the descent of Christ from the cross by Rogier van der Weyden.
The Prado’s response to the demand, by the president of the country’s public heritage agency, was unequivocal.
“If he is waiting to have the paintings in his place, he has to wait until hell freezes over,” the chairman of the Prado’s board, José Pedro Pérez-Llorca, said in a public declaration last week.
The disputed paintings were removed from the royal San Lorenzo de El Escorial monastery and placed for safekeeping with the Prado by the government authorities during the Spanish Civil War, almost 80 years ago. But now the Patrimonio Nacional, the heritage agency that administers all royal holdings, from palaces to antique yachts to artworks it has lent over the years, wants them back for display at its new museum.
Museums throughout Spain are watching the tug of war with great interest, fearful that pieces among their holdings that have a royal provenance could be pulled next. The heritage agency, led by José Rodríguez-Spiteri, its president, has about 1,000 works at other museums and has already recalled several. The agency’s president has signaled his interest in calling back works by El Greco, Velázquez and Goya that had been out on loan.
“I’m sure it’s a very good project, but to create this new museum, is it necessary to dismantle another one that is the most important in Spain?” said Pepe Serra, the director of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, which earlier this year willingly gave up a religious painting by Anton Raphael Mengs that was on loan from the Patrimonio so it could be used in the new museum.
This is not the first time that museums here have fought over ownership of art. In one high-profile case, the Prado in 2010 unsuccessfully sought to reclaim Picasso’s “Guernica” from the nearby Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.
The heritage agency’s request for the paintings is a financial calculation. Cultural institutions in Spain have endured deep cuts in state subsidies, and the Patrimonio Nacional was no exception. After spending 158 million euros about $178 million — in public money on the new museum, which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2016, the Patrimonio Nacional is hoping to entice more visitors by sprinkling some star attractions among the 150,000 works in the royal collection.
“It’s an extremely exhausting type of work, because you are always under pressure to offer interesting, dramatic pieces of art so that your citizens are interested,” said Mr. Rodríguez-Spiteri, who provoked the dispute after concluding that the new museum could not draw enough visitors with only royal objects.
“You cannot put a row of the most fantastic tapestries or a row of carriages or a row of armor, and settle with that,” he said.
There is no doubt that the works belong to the royal collection of the Patrimonio Nacional; the Prado even lists them as being on temporary loan. The van der Weyden painting was acquired by Maria of Hungary, who left it to her nephew King Philip II. In 1574, it was given to the Escorial monastery, where it remained for 362 years until it was moved to the Prado in 1936.
Museums throughout Spain are watching the tug of war with great interest, fearful that pieces among their holdings that have a royal provenance could be pulled next. The heritage agency, led by José Rodríguez-Spiteri, its president, has about 1,000 works at other museums and has already recalled several. The agency’s president has signaled his interest in calling back works by El Greco, Velázquez and Goya that had been out on loan.
“I’m sure it’s a very good project, but to create this new museum, is it necessary to dismantle another one that is the most important in Spain?” said Pepe Serra, the director of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, which earlier this year willingly gave up a religious painting by Anton Raphael Mengs that was on loan from the Patrimonio so it could be used in the new museum.
This is not the first time that museums here have fought over ownership of art. In one high-profile case, the Prado in 2010 unsuccessfully sought to reclaim Picasso’s “Guernica” from the nearby Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.
The heritage agency’s request for the paintings is a financial calculation. Cultural institutions in Spain have endured deep cuts in state subsidies, and the Patrimonio Nacional was no exception. After spending 158 million euros about $178 million — in public money on the new museum, which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2016, the Patrimonio Nacional is hoping to entice more visitors by sprinkling some star attractions among the 150,000 works in the royal collection.
“It’s an extremely exhausting type of work, because you are always under pressure to offer interesting, dramatic pieces of art so that your citizens are interested,” said Mr. Rodríguez-Spiteri, who provoked the dispute after concluding that the new museum could not draw enough visitors with only royal objects.
“You cannot put a row of the most fantastic tapestries or a row of carriages or a row of armor, and settle with that,” he said.
There is no doubt that the works belong to the royal collection of the Patrimonio Nacional; the Prado even lists them as being on temporary loan. The van der Weyden painting was acquired by Maria of Hungary, who left it to her nephew King Philip II. In 1574, it was given to the Escorial monastery, where it remained for 362 years until it was moved to the Prado in 1936.
When the Prado mounted an exhibition last fall devoted to the Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the Patrimonio Nacional declined to loan seven works, claiming concerns about travel risks.
And the director of the new royal collection museum, José Luís Díez, once a Prado curator, was criticized by his former colleagues there when a Patrimonio Nacional web page included the four disputed paintings on a list of its top masterworks.
The two institutions seemed to reach a public rapprochement with the Prado’s van der Weyden show, which included the artist’s “Calvary,” newly restored in a five-year joint project with the agency, which owns it. A high-ranking Patrimonio official attended the exhibition’s opening in late March.
On a tour of the site, the museum’s director, Mr. Luís Díez, showed off a vast gallery that he said had originally been intended for a royal carriage exhibition. The plan was scrapped, he said, because the show would not “reflect the high quality of the royal collection, nor the importance of the museum.”
Soon after the preview, Mr. Rodríguez-Spiteri declared in the nation’s leading newspaper, El País, that the four disputed paintings were essential “to the future” of the new museum.
The latest skirmish occurred when the Prado sought to extend the popular van der Weyden exhibition a month beyond its scheduled closing, on June 28. But its request to prolong the loan of the newly restored “Calvary” painting was refused.
In recent days, a series of government meetings took place to try to work out a solution, perhaps by clarifying the legal status of works on loan to the Prado or making another swap. Alternatives have been floated, such as rotating the four works between the two museums.
Mr. Pérez-Llorca said the Prado would not compromise. Among his concerns is that acquiescence will open a Pandora’s box of claims.
“It is not private property; they belong to the public,” he said. “To deprive the museum because of a whim would begin the dismantling of the Prado.”
To view the originl article by Doreen Carvajal in the Art and Design section on the New York Times, please click here.