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Culture granted in 2018 more permission than ever to get works of art from Spain, Eighteen million and two ‘fra angelic’: what a bargain?
over the past 2019, the Ministry of Culture invested about three million euros (exactly, 2.951.667) for the acquisition of works of art for the public collections of the State, as reported by the institution in the press release. The figure represents an increase of 41.8 per cent compared to the previous year (2.081.954 euros).
‘Virgin with Jesus and Saint John the Baptist’, of The Roller.
The frieze with stories of the Aeneid, entitled Aeneas and the harpies, the Italian renaissance artist Dosso Dossi, was the acquisition more expensive, with a price of 950.000 euros. The work is the first of this painter of the first half of the SIXTEENTH century, which goes to swell the collection of the Prado Museum together with pieces as a Penitent Magdalene, of Alonso Cano (200,000 euros). In the balance, 2018 and 2019 do not include the amount paid for the purchase of The Virgin of Granada, of Fra Angelico, acquired in 2016 to the House of Alba to the Prado, and whose total cost of -18 million euros, spread between the Prado, the Foundation of friends of the museum and the Ministry of Culture, which has paid for a third-six million– have been distributed in four annuities, of 2016 to 2019.
The National Sculpture Museum of Valladolid has also seen it grow its collection with the sizes as the Virgin with Jesus and saint John the Baptist children, the work of Luisa Roldán, known as The Arm, which it purchased for € 280,000. The success that the works in terra cotta and polychrome of this sculptor baroque – the first Spanish registered– had in his time made the most of its parts are dispersed among collections of individuals here and abroad. For the same museum vallisoletano has been purchased, Immaculate Virgin, by Pedro de Mena (111.2000 euros), a piece that passed to private hands in 1949, and which was until recently unknown whereabouts. The sculpture was a commission created in the last third of the SEVENTEENTH century by the bishop of Cordoba.
‘Immaculate Virgin’, by Pedro de Mena.
Culture has acquired in addition to assets such as the archive of the Marquis of Aguilar de Campoo, 195 files, and 19 books that are kept in the Historical archives of the Nobility of Toledo, and that include 400 diplomas medieval, among them the privilege to shot of Alfonso VIII to the monastery of San Miguel of Climbing, dated at Burgos in 1193 (850.000 euros). For the National Museum of Contemporary Art Reina Sofia have purchased a group of posters literary made by Ernesto Giménez Caballero, known as Gecé, between 1925 and 1927 (270,000 euros). The American Museum also features two paintings of scenes from the life of the Virgin painted by Miguel Cabrera in 1751 (€280,000).
