Carmen Naranjo
Madrid, June 17 (EFE).- Five centuries of art history in Spain through what its kings collected can be seen starting next month at the Royal Collections Gallery, the first museum of this size to open in Europe in decades: “it is a great moment,” says the president of National Heritage, Ana de la Cueva.
Twenty-five years have been necessary for this project, which originated in 1998 when the Government Commission for Cultural Affairs decided to create a new museum to house the royal collections. Now, the 40,000 square meters of surface area of this building, located next to the Royal Palace and the Almudena Cathedral in Madrid, are about to open their doors to display their treasures.
A “magnificent building that has received more than ten architecture awards and that combines marvelously with the royal collections,” explains the president of Patrimonio Nacional, the public body responsible for state-owned assets that come from the Spanish Crown and which manages 170,000 works of art.
Some 650 of these works can be seen in the gallery, which will be officially inaugurated by the king and queen on July 25, and of which a third will rotate and be renewed periodically.
“It is an excellent opportunity to show what the collecting of the kings of Spain is” with a tour that allows you to see what each monarch collected, how tastes and themes changed, which “gives a very complete and global idea of what was the evolution in Spanish art”.
The gallery’s exhibition rooms are three large spaces measuring 100 meters long by 16 meters wide (with which each one has a surface area of 1,600 square meters) and with variable heights (from 8 meters to 5), which house two collections permanent, in the Habsburg Hall and in the Bourbon Hall, and a third for temporary exhibitions.
With the chronological exception of the treasure of Guarrazar, a crown and a cross from the 7th century that welcome the visitor, the temporary tour begins with the Catholic kings and their works of art, such as the Polyptych of Isabella the Catholic, (15th century, Juan de flandes9, a group of small oil paintings that have had an extraordinary restoration, explains the president of Heritage, who also highlights the Mühlberg armor of Carlos V.
On this floor you can also see the famous tapestry “Hercules holds the celestial sphere”, the enigmatic painting by Velázques “White horse”, in which there is no rider; a first edition of Don Quixote, the painting of “Salomé” by Caravaggio or the black carriage, which belonged to Queen Mariana of Austria.
Faced with the sobriety of the Habsburg room, the splendor of the court, luxury and exquisiteness reaches that of the Bourbons that begins with Felipe V, who upon his arrival in Spain found a set of palaces that he adopted to French taste. and began the construction of the Royal Palace of Madrid to replace the old Alcazar destroyed by fire.
A room that treasures, among many other objects, the golden sedan chair of Queen Bárbara de Braganza, which she used to move within the limits of the royal sites, the blue cape of Carlos III, several tapestries and paintings by Goya, but also tableware, fans, furniture or the Royal Crown coach, a luxurious carriage made at the end of the reign of Fernando VII, restored after the attack on the kings Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia on their wedding day.
Many of the pieces that the gallery houses, a total of 450, have been restored: the idea is that the gallery “is an opportunity to improve” all the heritage and that it serves not only to gather and display the royal collections but also “to count the Royal Sites”, said Ana de la Cueva.
Around a thousand people will be the capacity of this new museum that offers the visitor a descending route through its interior ramps.
Because the building, by the architects Emilio Tuñón and Luis M. Mansilla, and which involved some very important structural works, descends a height of 32 meters from its access through the Plaza de la Armería to its lower part, where there is another entrance and where the façade appears and surprises “with all its volumetry”, as explained to EFE by the director of Real Estate and Natural Environment, Luis Pérez de Prada.
After finishing the works in 2015, the building was unoccupied for several years. “We did not know how the architecture of the building was going to marry with the interior element that museography represents and the works it houses. And the result is magnificent, both the architectural and the museographic aspects that, in a splendid way, enhance one another”, Pérez de Prada indicated.
During the works, the oldest section of the Arab founding wall of the city of Madrid (9th century) was also discovered, some archaeological remains that have been incorporated into the Gallery route.
The Royal Collections Gallery will host the first meeting of the College of Commissioners of the Spanish Presidency of the EU: “We are absolutely thrilled because it is a way of showing Europe and the world the opening of this great museum and having the opportunity to show the gallery”, stressed De la Cueva. EFE