The Prado has finally published the long-awaited report by the professor emeritus of the Complutense Arturo Colorado on the funds that the museum has as a result of seizures during the Civil War and the Franco regime. And the result brings the number of works to 70, eight more than those published in September -one of which has turned out not to have that origin- in a provisional report, among which are a Sorolla or a Snowy Landscape attributed to Brueghel the Younger . In addition, the origin of a dozen paintings is indicated.
In his research, Arturo Colorado points out that it is important, in order to contextualize these pieces, to clearly differentiate between the works sent for conservation to the warehouses of the Prado and Modern Art museums by the Republican Artistic Treasury Board during the war and those assigned on deposit at both museums by the Francoist Heritage Defense Service in the postwar period.
Thus, 32 pieces come from shipments during the war of the Artistic Treasure Seizure and Protection Board to the Prado Museum and the Museum of Modern Art (whose funds were attached to the Prado in 1971), and another 38 works come instead from deliveries in deposit of the National Artistic Heritage Defense Service during the Franco regime.
The ten pieces of which the study has been able to identify the provenance by name and surname or specific origin belong to the Marquis of Villalonga -a Head of a Woman with a White Mantilla, by Joaquín Sorolla-, to Pedro Rico, mayor of Madrid on two occasions ( 1931-1934 and 1936), of which two paintings attributed to Eugenio Lucas Villaamil, to Gonzalo Rodríguez -two paintings by Francisco and Rodrigo de Osona-, to the Lázaro Galdiano Collection -Seated Lady, by P. Lucas, and Portrait have been identified. of a lady, by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier-, a 16th-century Annunciation from the Parochial Church of Pareja, Guadalajara, or a Christ before Pilate by the master of Lupiana from the Church of Yebes, Guadalajara.
Two works have also been identified with Madrid addresses as the source of the works but without reference to the owner: The Flight into Egypt by Manuel de Castro, at calle Andrés Mellado, 51, and a Portrait of a Lady, by José Morillo y Ferradas, in Espalter, 2.
In turn, the Prado claims to be open to new investigations and to this figure of 70 pieces found, we could add 7 medals entered in 1936 from the Retiro Palace of Exhibitions and 89 drawings deposited in 1971 by the Ministry of Education and Science whose origin is in origin is unknown. These pieces are in the process of investigation by the Documentation and Archive area of the Museo del Prado, led by María Luisa Cuenca.
A selection of 11 of these works is on display in the Baja Norte Gallery of the Villanueva building until May 2.
