The balance paid for the purchase of La Virgen de la Granada, by Fra Angélico, acquired in 2016 for the year is not included in the balance of both years. Prado National Museum, and whose total cost has been divided into four annuities, between 2016 and 2019.
The investment made this year has allowed the purchase, among other works, of four canvases by Dosso Dossi, Alonso Cano and Miguel Cabrera; two carvings of Pedro de Mena and the Roldana; a collection of posters by Ernesto Giménez "Gecé"; and the Marquesado de Aguilar de Campoo archive.
The acquisition of greater value has been the painting Aeneas and the harpies, by the Italian artist Dosso Dossi, bought for 950,000 euros, which goes to the Prado collections and incorporates a key author in the development of painting in northern Italy from the first half of the 16th century.
This frieze with stories of the Aeneid was at the top of the Camerino d'Alabastro, a space that united the palace and the castle of the East in Ferrara and that exhibited one of the most important pictorial decorations of the Renaissance, with six large paintings mythological theme, two of which, from Titian, are preserved in the Prado (Offering to Venus and Bacchanal de los Andrios). The painting is one of the four existing fragments, one in the National Gallery of Art in Washington and two more in private collections.
This is also the first work that reaches the Prado de Dosso Dossi, a painter barely represented in the Spanish collections, of whom only one painting is preserved in the National Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
In addition to Dosso Dossi, the Prado National Museum received another important work this year, the penitent Magdalena in the desert, by Alonso Cano, of a theme and format that is rare in the production of the Granada-born painter and that enriches the artist's collection in the art gallery .
Sizes of La Roldana and Pedro de Mena, for Valladolid
Culture has also acquired two important sizes for National Sculpture Museum from Valladolid. The purchase of Virgin with Jesus and Saint John the Baptist children, the work of Luisa Roldán, improves the scarce presence in the Spanish public collections of this artist, known as the Roldana, chamber sculptor of the kings Carlos II and Felipe V. The success of His works in clay and polychrome made most of it ended up in the hands of individuals and in collections abroad.
The second work for the Valladolid museum is an Immaculate Virgin of Pedro de Mena, which allows to recover an unusual episode in the history of Spanish sculpture. Of unknown whereabouts until its recent acquisition, this work was a commission made in the last third of the seventeenth century by the Bishop of Cordoba, Alonso de Salizanes, to the Granada sculptor, in a contest called between the two best Andalusian sculptors of the moment: Pedro de Mena and Pedro Roldán. Although Roldán executed an outstanding sculpture of the Immaculate, which today is preserved in the church of the Barefoot Trinitarians of Córdoba, the image of Mena was chosen for the Bishop's Oratory and at his death he ended up in a convent of the Franciscan order, from where He left in 1949 at private hands.
Eight centuries of history of the Lara, to the Historical Archive of the Nobility
The Ministry has also acquired the file of the Marquisate of Aguilar de Campoo, which reconstructs the history of one of the main Castilian lineages – Los Lara and Manrique de Lara – from the 11th to the 19th centuries, which had a special role in the Court during the second half of the XV and the first half of the XVI. Among the 195 files and 19 books of this set, which will be preserved in the Historical Archive of the Nobility (Toledo), 400 medieval diplomas are included, including the privilege filmed by Alfonso VIII to the monastery of San Miguel de la Escalada, dated at Burgos in 1193.
Acquisitions for Queen Sofia and the Museum of America
With destination to the Reina Sofía National Museum, Culture has bought in 2019 a set of literary posters made by Ernesto Giménez Caballero, known as Gecé, between 1925 and 1927.
Framed in visual poetry, these works contain different books and significant characters from the cultural field of the time, among which are Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca or Benjamín Jarnés.
The Museum of America It also incorporates two paintings of scenes from the life of the Virgin painted by Miguel Cabrera in 1751, and which complete a set of 15 canvases, of which the museum has 11 after this purchase.
Ministry of Culture and Sports
