Álvaro Vega I Córdoba, (EFE).- An investigation by the art historian José María Palencia has attributed the origin of sixty drawings and two Four of them entered the Museo de Bellas Artes de Córdoba by acquisition in 1917 and until now they had not been able to be assigned to any owner prior to their arrival at the art gallery.
Palencia, technical adviser to the Córdoba Fine Arts, has reached this conclusion through the analysis of the relationship of Enrique Romero de Torres, curator, first, and director, later, of the art gallery, with Ricardo Martel, of whom he was artistic adviser, like other people, although “especially the Count of Torres Cabrera.”
In an interview with EFE, José María Palencia explained that the documentation that exists both in the Diputación de Córdoba, the original owner of the building where the art gallery is located, and in the museum itself do not determine the origin of the acquisition of these pieces. .
On the other hand, the sixty drawings, he specified, “come at a time when the documentation did say that two other paintings entered that we know were in the count’s collection, because they came from the Convent of the Martyrs, where he was patron” .
Identified the origin of the two paintings
They are ‘Martyrdom of San Pedro de Verona’ and ‘Saint Thomas Aquinas’, by Juan de Peñalosa (Baena -Córdoba-, 1579-Astorga -León-, 1633), “paintings that were in the presbytery of the former convent already demolished by the Martyrs” and that Ricardo Martel was able to remove after the confiscation of the building in 1836 and before its demolition in 1854 due to the expansion of the Paseo de la Ribera from the Molino de Martos to the Campo Madre de Dios.
In the research work, Palencia explains that the Hermitage of the Santos Mártires de la Ribera is “the main contribution” of Martel and Fernández de Córdoba to the “historical heritage” of the city was the construction, “in partnership with the City Council on land owned by him that had belonged to the disappeared convent of the Santos Mártires del Río” of the Hermitage of the Santos Mártires.
The Count of Torres Cabrera was able to save the paintings that he later sold to the Cordoba Museum of Fine Arts because “his family owned the patronage rights over the main chapel of said convent, a circumstance for which he was allowed, before the demolition , take home the great paintings that were still in it”, explains José María Palencia in his studio.
Letters with Enrique Romero de Torres
In addition, he has specified, there are “a series of letters between the count and Enrique, which remain in the Romero de Torres collection”, acquired by the Andalusian Government in 1988 from María Romero de Torres Pellicer, youngest daughter of the painter Julio Romero de Torres , Enrique’s brother, who “show how he was advising.”
And, in addition, “he received as compensation in a few years prior to the death of the count in 1917”, three archaeological pieces “that were in the patio of the Romero de Torres family and over those whose provenance was suspected, but we were not certain or documentation of how they came to the Romero de Torres collection”.
They do record, through correspondence between 1896 and 1915, appraisals by Enrique Romero de Torres of pieces for Ricardo Martel, for which reason, Palencia argues in his work, “the purchases must have been carried out with the utmost discretion on the part of the seller , since as we have previously expressed, in none of the preserved documents did his name appear, perhaps because it was not involved in possible declarations before the treasury or heirs, as a consequence of the execution of the alleged will”.
In any case, “for me there is no doubt, although we are always in the field of hypothesis, but since all this amount of works enters at the same time and they enter a few days before the death of the count of Torres Cabrera, there is no doubt that they all came from the same place”, emphasized the author of the work.
An acquisition for 3,000 pesetas
Despite the fact that “nowhere is it said that they were bought from the count, but we do know that these two large paintings were in the Convent of the Martyrs and he had them because he was the patron of the chapel and when the Confiscation of he authorizes him to take those paintings home with him.”
Until now, according to the study, “the existing data in the museum’s historical archive” specified that the purchase proposal for the sixty drawings was made in July 1917 and that 3,000 pesetas were paid. “There is no doubt that these drawings must have been well known to Enrique, after having entered the Torres-Cabrera palace in Córdoba on numerous occasions and his house on Madrid’s Paseo de Recoletos; and having appraised, at least, part of his collections, ”Palencia reasons.
Of the drawings acquired in 1917, “up to now at least forty-five have been clearly identified,” writes Palencia, which are grouped into various sources and among which are works by Bartolomé Murillo, Antonio del Castillo, Francisco Herrera the young man, Cornelio Shut III, Lucas Valdés, Juan Miguel Verdiguier and Alonso Cano, among others.
The Count of Torres Cabrera assembled in his Cordovan palace, sold in 1940 to the Cruz Conde family after having been the headquarters of the Maristas College for a few years, a collection of works of art of which “nothing has ever been written or published.” of a scientific nature”, according to Palencia, so the reality of its content is not exactly known. EFE