Confiscated artifacts. A work in progress
Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid 3/31/2023 - 5/2/2023
Last September the Museo Nacional del Prado published a provisional report by Ana Martín Bravo, Head of the Documentation Service and Archive, and María Luisa Cuenca García, Head of the Library, Documentation and Archive Department at the Museo del Prado. It included a total of 64 works in the Museum’s collection that derive from requisitions, and announced the launch of a research project which would provide definitive data about the origins of those works.
The conclusions of the study commissioned from academic and emeritus professor Arturo Colorado Castellary, an expert in cultural heritage and the Spanish Civil War, with the participation of Alberto García Alberti and Ignacio González Panicello, now raises to 70 the number of works in the Prado’s holdings that derive from requisitions. In addition, and following internal research, the list of works has been expanded to include 7 medals and 89 drawings of unknown provenance.
In his report Professor Colorado emphasises that in order to contextualise these arrivals of works in historical terms, it is important to differentiate clearly between those sent to be safeguarded in the storerooms of the Prado and the Museo de Arte Moderno by the Republican Committee for the Artistic Heritage during the war, and those sent on deposit to the two museums by the Francoist Service for the Defence of the National Artistic Heritage in the post-war period.
Twenty-three of the works are in a state of preservation that makes their identification impossible. With regard to the remaining works, whenever possible the documentation has been located which provides the basis for tracing their history, from the moment of their requisition to their arrival at the Museo del Prado.
