Culture buys a ‘Pieta’ by Goya painted in his youth for 1.5 million

2023-12-12 15:10:06

The Ministry of Culture has acquired for 1.5 million euros an early ‘Piedad’ by Francisco de Goya, unpublished until 2011, which was declared unexportable in 2014 and did not find a buyer at an auction in Madrid last year, when it went up for sale. in Alabarte for 3 million euros.

The painting, which measures 83.5 x 58 centimeters and preserves its original canvas, stretcher and frames, will become part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Romanticism. The genius of Fuendetodos painted it when he was between 26 and 28 years old, shortly after returning from Italy, so “it is a relevant testimony about the sources of inspiration that the Aragonese collected from his trip,” according to Culture.

In Italy Goya was able to see ‘La Pieta’ by Michelangelo and other models by Carracci, Maratti and Giaquinto, which influenced the work he carried out upon his return to Zaragoza in 1771 in the Basilica del Pilar and in the Cartuja Aula Dei, where appreciates a style comparable to that of ‘La Piedad’ acquired by the Ministry.

Arturo Ansón Navarro, doctor in Art History and author of monographs on Goya, announced the work in 2011 in ‘Ars Magazine’ and a year later the painting passed through the Prado for study. X-rays revealed that, as in other compositions from this period, Goya had reused an earlier canvas. Under the painting there was a full-length male figure, with a beard and covered with a cloak, reminiscent of Saint Joachim, and a little angel.

The canvas was exhibited at the Goya Museum in 2015, in the exhibition ‘Goya and Zaragoza (1746-1775). Their Aragonese roots’, curated by Manuela Mena, then responsible for the Aragonese master at the Prado. In the catalog it was said that it was a work of “inestimable quality, in which the masterful interpretation of light on the different surfaces of the composition stands out, allowing this painting to be attributed to Goya without a doubt.”

Culture points out in a note that the canvas has been the subject of different requests for its export in the last decade, but these “were denied as it is a work of great rarity, representative of the early period of its author’s production and because it constitutes one of the few examples of his religious work, thus helping to define the figure of the artist in his context.

‘La Piedad’ reinforces the presence in the Museum of Romanticism of “perhaps the most glorious and original romantic”, as Goya was defined by art historian Manuel Bartolomé Cossío (1857-1935). Until now, the institution only had one work by the artist of ‘The Executions’ or ‘The Family of Charles IV’.

‘San Gregorio Magno, Papa’ has belonged to the museum since its foundation and proves the importance of the Aragonese production in the romantic period. This monumental work currently presides over the museum’s Oratory, a space typical of wealthy homes intended for private devotion and where intimate religious acts were held, such as weddings, baptisms or wakes.

Precisely due to the theme and size of ‘La Piedad’, Ansón Navarro pointed out that Goya would have painted it “at the request of some ecclesiastic or client of the Zaragoza bourgeoisie” for his private devotion and added that this “work of great formal and chromatic beauty “He was always in Zaragoza.” It is known that in the mid-19th century it belonged to a canon of the Cabildo and after his death, it passed to a family from Zaragoza, who kept it until 2008, when it became part of the collections of the Bernat gallery in Barcelona, ​​its owner until now.