The Royal Board of Trustees of the Museo Nacional de Prado today approved the proposal to appoint Andrés Úbeda de los Cobos, currently Head of the Department of Italian and French Painting (up to 1700), as the new Deputy Director of Conservation and Research at the Prado, on the proposal of Miguel Falomir who occupied this position until his recent appointment as the overall director of the Museum.

The Deputy Director of Conservation and Research is responsible for the Museum’s curatorial departments, located in its Study Centre in the Casón del Buen Retiro, and also supervises the restoration of the collections programme.

The selection of Andrés Úbeda as new Deputy Director of Conservation and Research at the Museo del Prado, with which he has been associated for twenty years, is based on his experience and commitment to the Museum and its staff. His profound knowledge of the Buen Retiro palace, deriving from his role in the restoration of Luca Giordano’s ceiling in the Casón and above all from his experience as curator of the exhibition The Palace of the Planet King, makes him the ideal candidate for offering a decisive contribution to the new phase now starting at the Museum with the restoration and remodelling for museological use of the Hall of Realms, completing the Prado “campus”.

Andrés Úbeda

With a PhD in art history, prior to his appointment as Deputy Director of Conservation and Research, Andrés Úbeda was Head of the Department of Italian and French Painting (up to 1700) at the Museo del Prado, where he has worked since 1997. He was previously Titular Researcher in the Department of Art History on the Higher Council of Research.

Andrés Úbeda has curated exhibitions, both at the Museo del Prado and for other institutions, on subjects associated with the 17^th century. They include: The Palace of the Planet King (2005, Museo del Prado); Annibale Carracci. Venus, Adonis and Cupid, (Museo del Prado, 2005); Rome. Nature and the Ideal. Landscapes. 1600-1650 (Musée du Louvre and Museo del Prado, 2010); Luca Giordano (Casón del Buen Retiro, 2011), the subject of the catalogue raisonné by Dr Úbeda of the artist’s works in the Prado to be published in the coming months; and Georges de La Tour (Museo del Prado, 2016). His work on the 18^th century principally relates to its artistic literature (Pensamiento artístico en España en el siglo XVIII. De Antonio Palomino a Francisco de Goya, Madrid, 2001), and curated a number of exhibitions on this period, including Lorenzo Tiepolo (Museo del Prado, 1999) and Domenico Tiepolo (Fundación Juan March, Madrid, 2012 and the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, 2014).

A recurring theme over the course of Andrés Úbeda’s career as a curator at the Prado has been the former Buen Retiro palace and its collections. This was the subject of the above-mentioned monographic exhibition (The Palace of the Planet King), and the exhibition Luca Giordano held at the Casón del Buen Retiro, one of the surviving parts of the palace. Dr Úbeda also directed the restoration of the ceiling painted by Giordano in the Casón (The Apotheosis of the Spanish Monarchy). He is now on the committee to study the restoration and remodelling of the Hall of Realms, also part of the Buen Retiro palace, for which the extension project designed by Norman Foster has recently been selected.

Andrés Úbeda has considerable professional experience outside Spain, both during his previous period on the Higher Research Council and at the Prado. He has curated several international exhibitions, including Velázquez, Rubens, Lorrain. Malerei am Hof Philipps IV (2000, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany), and Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court (Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 2014). He has also been awarded various grants that have allowed him to work at institutions including the Louvre, the Academia de España in Rome, the Paul Getty Foundation (Los Angeles), the CASVA (Washington), and The Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, Mass.).