From Écija to Manhattan: the detective seek for two Gothic work that Spanish vintage sellers fought over 100 years in the past | Culture | EUROtoday

“They aroused the covetousness of antique dealers across the country when they were put up for sale in the early 20th century.” The Sevillian artwork historian and researcher Gerardo García León thus recounts the worth of two oil work on panel from the start of the sixteenth century, nice exponents of Andalusian late Gothic that signify Saint Jerome and Saint Michael, which have been thought of misplaced after they left the church of Santa Bárbara de Écija, within the coronary heart of the Sevillian countryside, in 1919, when the parish priest put them up on the market to pay for the restore of the temple tower. which had been struck by lightning years earlier than and whose bills its battered economic system may not cowl. Dealers from all around the nation, even from the remainder of Europe, traveled to Écija to see these two panels, which grew to become objects of need “in one of the most critical and lacerating moments of the process of plunder and dispersion suffered by Spanish heritage at the beginning of the 20th century,” insists the artwork historian who, after intense and meticulous analysis work, which reaches a detective degree, has positioned these two panels on the Hispanic Society in New York, the place they’ve simply been restored.

The examine that concludes with this outcome, revealed within the scientific journal UcoArte and signed by García León along with Fernando Gutiérrez Baños (University of Valladolid), it exhibits the testimonies of the artwork sellers who corresponded with the parish priest of Écija, as soon as the information of the sale of the items had already unfold like wildfire and was creating expectations within the nationwide artwork market. “In the correspondence that we have found, it is evident that the astute antique dealers traveled to Écija, some with money in hand, to see the works in person, or received photographs of them.” At first, they estimated the financial worth of every panel between 1,500 and a pair of,000 pesetas (later they’d improve their presents till reaching 5,000 pesetas) though, to promote them, they suggested ready till the tip of the then-called European warfare (the First World War), “so that the international art market could be reactivated,” explains García León, additionally a local of the Sevillian municipality of Écija.

Scholars preserve that, lastly, it was an Italian seller, Leone Levi, who acquired the panels for five,600 pesetas after writing the next letter to the ecclesiastical authorities (particularly, to the brother of the Sevillian prelate in order that he may intercede): “I am something like flies, that is, annoying, but I trust that you, Don Eugenio, will take care of me.” workplace and he’ll forgive me for the nagging that I’m at all times giving him. I’m extraordinarily eager about figuring out for those who, Don Eugenio, are glad with my supply that I’ve made to you personally for the Écija work which, as , are 100 {dollars} greater than the supply that has had the parish priest. […] I strongly ask you to reply me if attainable, tomorrow in Madrid, Hotel Rhin, as a result of earlier than going to Barcelona, ​​for those who agree, I’ll take the direct prepare to Seville.” A letter that perfectly summarizes the enormous expectation and the fierce bidding that the release of these pieces on the national art market had created.

“During this process, the priest’s concern and concern for getting a good price for the sale of the pieces were constant, as well as his fear of wasting them due to lack of knowledge,” the author of the investigations tells EL PAÍS.

From this moment on, the trace of the Gothic panels from the church of Santa Bárbara de Écija fades into the impenetrable fog of the art market until, less than two years later, the authors of the study confirm that they are sold in New York by the firm Ehrich Galleries. “All we find out about them between 1919 and 1921 is that, sooner or later throughout that temporary time period, they have been photographed by the agency of Mariano Moreno in Madrid, within the assortment, which means enterprise, of Ricardo and Apolinar Sánchez, one of the crucial lively vintage sellers within the metropolis within the first half of the twentieth century. Their enterprise, on Santa Catalina Street, very near the Cortes, nourished an important museums in our nation, in addition to Spanish collectors or collectors residing in Spain,” the historians report of their examine.

In these years, images was a basic device for the commercialization of artworks, particularly in the event that they needed to succeed in a distant market such because the worldwide one, and, on this context, Mariano Moreno’s was the reference agency within the Madrid space. “Fortunately, its photographic archive, which once served to disperse Spanish artistic heritage, has become, since its acquisition by the state in 1955 and especially after its management by the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Spain, a key tool for the study of this phenomenon.”

And there the monitor of the coveted Gothic panels is misplaced till they’ve been positioned by these two researchers in New York, after discovering that Leone Levi was in his time the primary seller who equipped artworks to the magnates and museums of the flourishing Manhattan. This is how they attain one of many best-known figures in Spanish artwork amassing of these years: Archer M. Huntington. “He bought them in 1921, possibly in August, for his great personal project: the Hispanic Society of America in New York. That same year, they entered his funds and are currently preserved there with the inventory number A16,” the examine clarifies.

It is the glad ending of the restoration of the identification of two items of extraordinarily excessive worth for the historical past of Spanish creative heritage, “which had been deprived of their identity when they entered the art market” and of which Gerardo García León started to develop into conscious of when he discovered some previous images within the parish registry of his hometown. “They stayed in my memory and I began to connect the dots the day I found Leone Levi’s letter in the archive of the Archbishopric of Seville,” he factors out.

The restitution of the identification of the panels, which has additionally been attainable due to the constructive reception of the examine by the Hispanic Society of New York, by shut collaboration with the conservator of the New York entity Patrick Lenaghan, “provides an extraordinary opportunity to reflect on the uniqueness and quality of the painting produced in Andalusia halfway between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance with works of the highest level, such as these that perhaps are not yet sufficiently known by the general public,” concludes García León.