Works within the assortment of the Museo del Prado that have been seized in the course of the Spanish civil warfare (1936-39) could possibly be returned to their rightful homeowners below a brand new on-line initiative launched by the famend Madrid museum. Earlier this week, Prado officers launched a listing of works which have been formally recognized as coming into the gathering in the course of the civil warfare or after the battle below the regime of the dictator Francisco Franco, who died in 1975. The museum have made 22 of the 62 works below investigation publicly accessible on their web site.
“The goal [of the new initiative] is to make clear any doubts which may exist concerning the background and context previous to [their] entry into the Prado collections and, if mandatory and in compliance with all authorized necessities, to return [the works] to their rightful homeowners,” officers say.
San Agustín meditando sobre el Misterio de la Trinidad Anónimo (Seventeenth century)
Courtesy of Museo del Prado
The works in query embrace the Seventeenth-century works Saint Augustine Meditating on the Trinity by an unnamed artist; Pedro Atanasio Bocanegra’s The Virgin with Saints; and Joaquín Sorolla’s Cabeza de mujer con mantilla blanca (round 1882).
The checklist could develop, nevertheless. Artuto Colorado, an professional on the Spanish civil warfare, has subsequently been enlisted to “increase the examine of those circumstances and analyse different doable seizures”, officers say.
Eugenio Lucas Velázquez’s Encadenada (1850)
Courtesy of Museo del Prado
The brand new Prado initiative follows one other Spanish civil warfare restitution case. Earlier this yr, two work seized within the warfare have been returned to Ramón de la Sota Chalbaud, the great-great-grandson of Ramón de la Sota y Llano, Marquis of Llano, after they have been noticed in a web-based catalogue of an exhibition in Madrid. The portraits, by Vicente López y Portaña and the Flemish painter Frans Pourbus the Youthful, have been seized 85 years in the past in response to The Occasions.
