Álvaro Vega I Córdoba, (EFE) research process that has led to the attribution of authorship of these works.
«Most of the drawings that come to the Museum are anonymous, except those by well-known artists, such as Antonio del Castillo (Córdoba, 1616-1668) or Juan Miguel Verdiguier Triq (La Ciotat, Toulon, ¿1706?-Córdoba, 1796). », has pointed out in an interview with EFE José María Palencia, technical adviser to the Cordoba art gallery, of which he was director between 2013 and 2021, and responsible for cataloging the fourteen drawings.
The works are shown in an “exhibition dedicated to Madrid drawings from the Baroque era with which the Museum intends to show part of its collections that it does not normally expose to the public and disseminate information regarding the research work of its collections,” he explains. to EFE its director, José María Domenech.
Palencia specifies that the research work carried out in recent years has allowed the fourteen drawings to be attributed to different Madrid authors, such as Francisco Rizi de Guevera (Madrid, 1614-San Lorenzo del Escorial, 1685), Ángelo Nardi (Vaglia di Mugello, Casa Razzo, 1584-Madrid, 1665) or Luca Giordano (Naples, 1632-1705), who is a Neapolitan artist who arrived in Spain at the end of the 17th century and was working for the king in the royal palaces, in El Escorial and the Palacio Royal of Madrid.
Drawings of the House of Fernán Núñez
Likewise, works have been assigned “to circles of certain artists, whose authorship is not known with certainty, of which the eight preparatory drawings for the battles or notable events for the House of Fernán Núñez stand out, which were commissioned by the Seventh Duke of Fernán Núñez in Madrid to two painters from Madrid, José Jiménez Donoso (Consuegra, Toledo, 1632-Madrid, 1690) and Matías de Torres (Aguilar de Campoo, Palencia, 1635-Madrid, 1711)».
These drawings, affirms José María Palencia, “served for the House of Fernán Núñez to show its lineages and its ancient ancestry, its nobility, from which two series of paintings were made, one of which is preserved in the current Palace of Fernán Núñez although diminished».
The specialist explains that the process of attributing the authorship of a work “is a work of time, in which first the drawing watermark and the paper watermark are studied to see if it could be a period mark, and then different comparative studies are made with other existing drawings in other museums».
“Spanish drawings are distributed among the National Library, the Prado Museum and the Valencia Museum and also in different foreign museums such as the National Gallery in London or the Metropolitan Museum in New York,” he explains.
Outlining details to conclusion
From there, he emphasizes, “with all the knowledge that is known about an artist, details and ways of drawing are outlined until the conclusion is reached that it could be from a specific artist, a conclusion that can sometimes be that it is wrong but that, undoubtedly, we are closer if we approach a certain artist than if we keep a drawing anonymous».
In any case, in his opinion, an attribution “brings greater knowledge to certain artists and preparatory work to certain paintings.”
Along these lines, he points out that “there is a drawing of a little angel that appears in different paintings by the same author, Bartolomé Pérez de la Dehesa (Madrid, around 1634-1698), and it was anonymous, but we have been able to locate the same little angel in two paintings, with which the authorship is correct and we also understand a little better the creative process of a work”.
Also, he expands, “there is another drawing by Alonso del Arco (Madrid, around 1635-1704), which was anonymous and dated 1789 and precisely coincides with an intervention he made in a hermitage in Segovia, on whose ceilings the same motif appears. of a little angel, with what we know was a model that the artist embodied in different compositions, paintings and also wall paintings ».
Investigation time and serendipitous findings
Assessing the time that an attribution takes is “very difficult”, comments José María Palencia, “because it is a research work that takes a long time and, sometimes, is even fortuitous because reviewing books, catalogs that come from other museums, one finds note that there are other drawings here that remained anonymous».
Most of the drawings arrive at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Córdoba in two moments, recalls his technical adviser, in 1877 due to the purchase of the José Saló y Junquet collection, on the death of this Catalan painter living in Córdoba, who was director of the Museum and collector of drawings, and in 1917, which is supposed to have been an acquisition from the count of Torres Cabrera, Ricardo Martell Fernández de Córdoba, although there is no documentary evidence.
The work of cataloging the drawings was started by Fuensanta García de la Torre, director of the Museum between 1981 and 2012, and continued by Palencia, who hopes that 80 or 90 percent of its collections will have “better knowledge in the coming years.” EFE
