The Supreme Court ensures that the Romanesque work of Sijena return to Aragon | Culture | EUROtoday

The Supreme Court has simply put an finish to the litigation on the mural work of the Chapter Room of the Monastery of Villanueva de Sijena, in Huesca, which for many years have been exhibited within the National Museum of Art of Catalonia (MNAC). He has dismissed the sources of the Generalitat and the MNAC to the ruling of the Provincial Court of Huesca and offers the rationale to the Government of Aragon, so these romantic frescoes of the thirteenth century should return to their level of origin. He argues that the Catalan museum has not accredited any “document-control” that legitimizes that “possession” and that its guard is in “deposit” mode, since “it has not possessed the paintings as an owner, because the paintings were torn away.”

The nice change of this sentence with respect to the earlier ones – which the Generalitat and the MNAC all the time misplaced – is that it’s not appealed, so it concludes a protracted litigation initiated in 2014, greater than 10 years in the past. In the trial of first occasion, the Catalan authorities defended its proper to the wall work with a 1992 letter. Then, Joan Guitart, Autonomic Counselor of Culture, and the federal mom of the Order of San Juan de Jerusalem and prioress of the monastery of Valldoreix, Pilar San Joaquín Gracia, signed a doc based on which this order gave in custody to the Generalitat of Catalonia of Catalonia. Murals

The president of Aragon, Jorge Azcón, held on Wednesday the sentence and, by social community X, stated: “I feel immense satisfaction that will be culminated when we can contemplate the paintings in its original location.” From the Generalitat, its head of Culture, Sònia Hernández, has requested prudence and has positioned the emphasis on the “preservation of heritage”: “All reports of experts we have suggest that it is impossible to move and install these paintings irreparably.” The Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, stated that the Government will keep away from actions “that can harm the maintenance and integrity of the paintings.” The MNAC is a museum through which the Generalitat, the City Council of Barcelona and the State by the Ministry of Culture dwell collectively. The director of the MNAC, Pepe Serra, has defended that the museum has preserved in a “extraordinary and impeccable way during techniques” the work, to the very best technical stage and following worldwide requirements

Justice, in all of the steps by which this judicial battle has handed, has denied the ability of that contract. Now the Supreme Court additionally has the identical path and likewise confirms that the precedence of Valldoreix “did not have the representation of the monastery of Sijena” and that the prioress who signed the settlement wouldn’t be legitimized “to dispose of goods” of the monastery. The Romanesque frescoes had been transferred to Barcelona in 1936, through the Civil War, for his or her restoration after the monastery of Sijena suffered a fireplace.

In truth, the ruling guidelines out the existence of proof of the task of the work in favor of the Generalitat by the Sijena Congregation. The supreme refers to a pontifical decree that leaves within the fingers of the then prioress of the monastery of Sijena, Virginia Calatayud, the potential of exercising actions to get better the work, proper that he exercised later, provides the courtroom, by the Aragonese authorities. Calatayud was enabled simply earlier than trial.

The goal of the complete judicial route was that the frescoes cowl the partitions of the renovated chapter room of the Sijena monastery. The convent has starred in reform works to host each the Romanesque frescoes and the remainder of the monastery objects that consisted of the MNAC and the Lleida Museum and that, by one other entrance within the courts, had been pressured to be returned to Sijena. The request of the Government of Aragon was based mostly on its powers within the safety of historical-artistic heritage and “the transfer of actions” made by the non secular group of Sijena, as said within the sentence. The Generalitat of Catalonia, alternatively, along with defending the titles provided by custody, tried to defend that civil jurisdiction was not competent to determine on “confrontation” of powers between each administrations.

Since the primary ruling of 2016, the Generalitat has paralyzed how a lot the switch of the murals has been in a position to, attending to the “extreme fragility” of the frescoes and the tough technique of disassembly, transport and posterior meeting in Sijena. He supported these objections in the truth that, as well as, the sentences to this point had been recurrence, so there was the likelihood that these duties may need to be carried out twice (spherical journey) if lastly the Supreme didn’t give the rationale to the Huesca viewers. They are arguments which have endorsed worldwide specialists in restoration.

Now, it is going to be Huesca Court 2, the primary one who gave the Varapalo to the Generalitat, which must execute the identical sentence he issued in 2016, though there’s the query about which administration ought to be in control of the manipulation and switch of that delicate heritage. There are doubts in regards to the efficient risk of creating the judicial ruling come true with out jeopardizing that historic heritage of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, among the best civil portray samples of that point. “The operation is unfeasible from the technical point of view without the murals, and the problems can arise from minute one, when the fabrics and racks placed in the MNAC are touched,” warns Alberto Velasco, professor of laws and guardianship of the creative heritage of the University of Lleida, which warns that the prevailing microorganisms present Environment, exit and make the work come off. In his opinion, the litigation has solely settled “on the property” and that the execution of sentence “is a defeat for all” for the chance of dropping useful heritage.

The murals which can be presently exhibited within the MNAC, which present episodes of the Old Testament, should not all unique. From the present composition, just a bit greater than 50% of the drawings come from the monastery of Sijena, due to the injury they’d suffered by the passage of time and the aforementioned hearth of 1939, which brought about pictorial losses and alteration within the colours. The relaxation are inclinations of the frescoes made by the technicians of the Catalan Museum, who prostrated about materials and racks that, the technicians level out, would now differ from the types of the arches of the Sijena chapter room.

The expressor of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont has branded the judgment of the Supreme Court as “nonsense.” From the social community X, he factors out that “it is a sentence that cannot be executed without putting paintings at a very high destruction risk. All experts around the world warn it.”