A courtroom acquits the antiquarian sentenced to jail for appropriating a seventeenth century carving of nuns from Granada | Culture | EUROtoday

This is a narrative with many sudden twists and turns. The first fold is the identify of the piece on the middle of the matter, a seventeenth century polychrome carving by the Granada artist José de Mora. Depending on the time and place the place it was, it has obtained completely different names. For a few years his place of residence was the convent of Our Lady of the Angels of Granada, Santa Rosa de Viterbo. In 2019, nonetheless, she traveled to New York as Saint Margaret of Cortona. And so all for eight years of a narrative that begins in 2018, with the closure of the convent and the disappearance of quite a few heritage items that had been there, a few of which couldn’t be bought. In 2024, the incident appears to conclude with the sentencing of an antiques vendor to 4 years in jail for misappropriation of the José de Mora carving. And now, in 2026, it concludes with the full acquittal of this vintage vendor, who appealed his conviction, in a brand new ruling by the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia that considers all the things that the nuns mentioned to justify the elimination of the carving from the convent as “doubtful”, “unusual” or “difficult to believe”.

At the start of 2018, Sister Josefa arrived on the Granada convent with a decree signed in Vatican City and a basic order: to relocate the 2 remaining Poor Clare nuns and arrange the switch of products to different convents. Any essential determination, mentioned the order signed from Rome, needed to be consulted. Judging by the assertion of occasions within the sentence, Sister Josefa allowed herself to be carried away by her personal judgment with out entrusting herself to anybody.

The closure of convents doesn’t go unnoticed within the area of vintage sellers. Some and others are in command of making it recognized. For this motive, in April, a few months after Sister Josefa’s arrival in Granada, the Zaragoza vintage vendor Santos Boy Jiménez Cortés traveled to the convent twice and acquired quite a lot of materials. Among different issues, the then Saint Rose of Viterbo, then Saint Margaret of Cortona, for which he paid 21,600 euros. He imagined worth however didn’t know precisely what he was shopping for, the ruling explains. He put it up on the market and managed to resell it for 90,000 euros to the Nicolás Cortés Art Gallery. Here they commissioned a report from an knowledgeable who had already named and authored the piece, which raised its worth to 350,000 euros, the worth for which the piece was put up on the market a 12 months or so later at an artwork honest in New York, the place it surprisingly traveled with the corresponding export permits granted by the Ministry of Culture, which then valued it at round 400,000 euros.

The heritage legislation prevents alienation, sale, and many others. all heritage property cataloged like this. It is true that it doesn’t assist that within the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage (IAPH), the piece is registered as Santa Rosa de Viterbo and that the photograph it reveals is completely different. It additionally would not assist that the IAPH’s reference to Saint Margaret of Cortona refers to a different convent apart from that of the Poor Clares in Granada.

In another of the sudden turns of this story, somebody found in a Madrid vintage store—and recognized it as from a Granada convent—a bench product of choir stalls. She reported him and began a police investigation that bothered the nuns to the purpose of asking Santos Boy to return all the things that they had bought him. The vintage vendor agreed and did it. Except that returning the stature of José de Mora was unattainable as a result of he was already in New York, with one other identify and in a circuit through which it was already tough to intervene.

In the tip, the thread of the choir bench ended within the disappearance of José de Mora’s work. And that’s when the nuns start to provide completely different variations, the sentence now states, which explains that the vintage vendor all the time maintained the identical: that he purchased and paid the nuns for that measurement and that he thought-about its acquisition authorized. The nuns, however, reported that that they had left it to Jiménez to make a finances for its restoration. This model had some drawbacks: a specialist defined within the trial that the work didn’t must be restored and, however, Santos Boy Jiménez has all the time maintained that he’s not a restorer and that everybody within the sector is aware of it, so he would by no means undertake that work. But it was the very best model for the nuns, who knew that this piece couldn’t be bought.

The clarification—varied explanations—from the nuns is the primary motivation for annulling Jiménez Cortés’ 4 years in jail. The attraction chamber doesn’t imagine the nuns’ model in any respect and calls into query lots of the truths accepted within the first sentence. She took the nuns as victims. The attraction affirms that they had been under no circumstances the victims of the crime; It additionally ensures that they weren’t in a position to show or doc that they delivered the work for restoration. The remaining courtroom additionally finds it unusual that they might merely hand over a carving of that worth to a stranger like Jiménez to them, an Aragonese antiques vendor whom that they had by no means seen. And the judges bear in mind, the precariousness of the non secular neighborhood was such that they didn’t even have cash to revive. In normal, the sentence now says, the antiquarian’s model is “much more credible” whereas Sister Ángela’s was an “erratic and contradictory” manifestation to which no “credit can be given… with significant twists.”

A brand new twist was the sudden look of a faux measurement. At some level – it has not been attainable to show when, the place, or how – the nuns present the researchers {a photograph} of a picture positioned on the identical pedestal of the chapel the place the actual one was earlier than. The judges clarify that “special artistic knowledge is not necessary given the stark difference between both images” to confirm that it’s a “crude copy”, as the primary judicial ruling acknowledged.. The nuns attributed this determine to a deception by the antiquarian, which the judges denied. He had paid for the carving when he took it and, after the nuns’ nerves and regardless of not with the ability to return it, he had reimbursed them for what they paid for it. “Why is Mr. Cortés going to return the money if he planned to deliver a fake carving to the convent?” the judges ask.

The sentence will be appealed in cassation within the coming days however the case has already been settled. Jiménez Cortés’ lawyer, Manuel Catalán Lázaro from Zaragoza, is satisfied that “no recourse is foreseeable and, if there were one, it is doomed to failure.” Santos Boy, for his half, has assured this newspaper that “they have done him a lot of damage, with many days without sleep.” Saint Margaret of Cortona returned from New York years in the past. Despite having left with the required permits, its final proprietor needed to return it, and it’s saved within the Museum of Fine Arts of Granada, ready for a call on its future. And in a remaining twist, the convent that housed Saint Margaret of Cortona, based in 1538, was bought in 2023 to a Buddhist order, the New Kadampa Tradition, which plans to have the amenities prepared for its inauguration in 2026.