Alejandro Mon
1850. Oil on canvas.Not on display
Alejandro Mon y Menéndez, politician and diplomat, was born in 1801 in Oviedo, where he studied law at the university. Under the protection of the Count of Toreno and his brother-in-law, the Marquis of Pidal, he entered politics after the death of Ferdinand VII, and was appointed Minister of Finance in 1837, 1846 and 1848. He is fairly regarded as one of the great 19th century finance experts and he is remembered, above all, for his fundamental reforms of the tax systems. The document and the book with which he is portrayed address some of these reforms. He was a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and he was awarded, among others, the Cross of Pius IX, the Cross of Leopold of Austria, Charles III and the Legion of Honour, which appear in the portrait.
The artist left the portrait unfinished on the death of Don Vicente –to whom the head and neck are undoubtedly attributed –and his son Bernardo painted it almost entirely. This accounts for both the attribution to the old master, maintained by family tradition, and the fact that most of the portrait depicts Bernardo´s style. It is, in any case, a portrait of excellent quality. One of its indisputable successes lies in the fact that it can be considered the first in a series of an iconographic prototype of official portraits of ministers and public officials. This would continue throughout the rest of the 19th century and the first third of the present one.
Díez García, José Luis, Vicente López (1772-1850) II. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Fundación de Apoyo a la Historia del Arte Hispánico, 1999, p.158
