Madrid
Updated:28/05/2022 02:06 hrs
Save
At 270 years old, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando is committed to the renovation of its spaces and a new museography of its impressive collections –more than 1,400 paintings, 1,300 sculptures, 22,000 architectural drawings and plans, 40,000 prints and around 9,000 engraving plates–, which will be carried out progressively. The director of the institution, Thomas Markand the president and founder of the Callia Foundation, Carmen Reviriego, yesterday signed an agreement thanks to which the latter assumes the commitment to donate to the Academy, through the Latin American Patronage Awards, €500,000 until 2025, becoming its largest private donor. To an initial contribution of 70,000 euros a few years ago, 130,000 more are now added.
Since 2019, the Academy has been the venue for the annual awards ceremony.
A patronage that has allowed him to double the exhibition space dedicated to Goya, which now occupies the two main rooms on the first floor of the Academy museum. The first is articulated around the commissions received by Goya with official portraits such as those of Godoy, ‘Fernando VII on horseback’ and ‘La Tirana’. In addition, they hang his ‘Self-portrait at the easel’, which has a new frame; the ‘View of Calle de Alcalá’, by Antonio Joli, and a gallery of sculptural busts of characters portrayed by the artist. The second room brings together five splendid small-format panels, considered cabinet paintings (‘House of Fools’, ‘Bullfight’, ‘Inquisition Scene’, ‘Procession of Disciplinants’ and ‘The Burial of the Sardine’), portraits of his friends (Moratín, Juan de Villanueva and José Luis Munárriz), a bust self-portrait, as well as a copy of the portrait made by Vicente López, signed by Rosario Weiss. The room is completed with his mausoleum in Bordeaux, painted by Antonio de Brugada, and what, according to Federico de Madrazo, was the last palette of the painter from Fuendetodos. The world of Goya, in the house of Goya. The teacher was director of Painting and honorary director of the Academy.
This museographic renovation is included in the first phase of an ambitious restoration and conservation plan from the collections of the Academy. In 2019, ‘Susana y los viejo’, by Rubens, was restored thanks to the contribution of the Callia Foundation. Each year, the foundation will choose a work from its collections to go through the workshop. Reviriego has chosen ‘The risen Christ embracing the Cross’, by Guido Reni. The plates of Goya’s engravings are also being restored (he treasures all of them, except for four that are in the Louvre).
Alfredo Pérez de Armiñán, deputy director-treasurer of the Academy, highlights “the importance of patronage for the support and revitalization of cultural institutions in our country”, although he regrets that the aid from the private sector in Spain “unfortunately does not have the same treatment tax than in other countries. Carmen Reviriego, for her part, understands art as a social cause and not as something elitist. For her, “the most difficult thing is already done.” Evoking the title of his book ‘lucky to give’, tells successful entrepreneurs that “it pays to be a philanthropist. Even if it’s selfish, do it.
Victor Nieto Alcaide, Academic Delegate of the Academy Museum and architect of this new museography, stresses that they have wanted to give it a new discourse and a more clear itinerary: the visit starts with the art of the 16th century, it has its central core in the rooms of Goya and ends with the XIX. The lobby of the Guitarte room has also been remodeled, the lighting in the rooms will be renewed and there will be a new signage: a typeface has been chosen, the real Ibarra, created in the Academy itself.
See them
comments