Voces del Prado

The Villaescusa legacy

Felipe Garín Llombart, Museum Director, 1991-1993

Not long after being appointed director, I received a call from the President of the Trust and he told me there was an important inheritance from a person who had died and left their legacy to the Prado Museum. With the funds from that inheritance we were able to buy some important works, provided we had the unanimous support of the Trust. Among these works there was a splendid still life by Sánchez Cotán and with a few others that he had painted, very few because he had only painted six or eight, we set up a spectacular exhibition including the Still Life with Thistle, the painting we had just bought.
The Villaescusa legacy, the one I'm speaking of, allowed us to carry out the effort of purchasing works of art that in some way could complete, and I know it's presumptuous to use the verb 'to complete', but yes, in some way they could complete the collection of the Prado Museum, which has a splendid collection, in other words, there are Museums in Europe and in the Americas that want to be Museums, which have the means or they have patrons, and they say we don't have anything by such and such Flemish or French painter, and they go out and add to their collection in a systematic fashion. But the Prado does not work that way. It is a Museum that has incorporated collections, initially the royal collection, which has progressively been completed by the kings and queens according to their wishes and their taste.
Afterwards the collection was increased substantially, more in terms of volume than sheer quality, with the confiscation of the Museum of the Trinity, whose collection was added to that of the Museum, then came an important number of donations, plus the purchases that were possible thanks to the Villaescusa legacy and also other purchases. Based on the collection we had, it was a matter of exhibiting the works that people want to see, making it a consistent exhibition insofar as that is possible, allowing people to know what they are going to see beyond any possible totems within the collection.
In other words, the exhibition discourse should be reasonably logical.