The Prado Museum showcased its latest restoration this week, with Hypomenes and Atalanta, painted in 1619 by Guido Reni, slated for a special presentation in the Central Gallery. As described by the deputy director, Andrés Ubeda, it stands among the institution’s most important acquisitions.
The restoration, praised by Ubeda, aims to let visitors fully appreciate the composition crafted by the Italian master, along with the contributions of Almudena Sanchez and her team.
According to remarks from the presidency, Iberdrola Foundation, and their collaborators, the works have undergone careful conservation annually. They emphasize a luminous, expressive power that diverges from the darker, caravaggiesque impression the pieces acquired over time.
The painting will remain at the Prado through the current season and, in early November, will participate in the Guido Reni exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. In 2023 it will return to the Prado for a major retrospective dedicated to the artist.
Guido Reni’s work is viewed as enriching an extraordinary personality, one that creates unforgettable physical patterns and attitudes, noted the deputy director.
The main goals of the restoration, as explained by David García, head of Italian and French painting, included removing oxidized varnishes that imparted a yellowish tint and replacing aged and altered color fields with chromatic reintegration where needed.
During the final phase, restorers carefully reintegrated all color deficiencies caused by previous retouching, matching tones and textures to restore depth and balance.
As García described, the restoration preserves the sense of depth and maintains a clear separation between the earthly realm and the celestial, underscoring the work as one of the most significant pieces in terms of beauty and character portrayal.
The seized artifacts
Prado Museum director Miguel Falomir stated that the institution is committed to transparency regarding artifacts seized during the Civil War. The museum will act with decency and full openness, ensuring no illegal items are kept in its collection.
Falomir emphasized the obligation to document all items and to avoid owning anything not legally registered in the collection. He suggested that the institution would escalate investigations as needed.
He anticipated a comprehensive list of illegally seized artifacts might be compiled by the end of 2022 or early 2023 and presented to their original owners as appropriate.
As of September 20, the Prado had documented 25 artifacts, likely seized by the Art Treasure Confiscation and Conservation Board during the Civil War, though later research by Arturo Colorado Castellary, a heritage and Civil War expert, has added to that count. Falomir would not specify exact numbers beyond the confirmation of ongoing work.
Falomir also confirmed that certain paintings in the museum’s possession include works tied to the confiscations of assets from the Civil War era. The Madrid mayor’s assets, confiscated in the 1930s, were noted as a potential third item for review, though no new claims had been received yet.
At present, the first 25 artifacts documented include 22 items clearly listed in the museum’s public records. In three cases where information does not appear online, the paintings are in fragile condition, cataloged in the museum’s collection system but lacking a digital file on the access portal.
From these studies, 17 paintings were transferred to the Prado by the National Commissioner for Artistic Heritage between 1940 and 1942; five were transferred to the Museum of Modern Art in 1942, one to MoMA in 1943 but retained by the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum and eventually integrated into the Prado during a 2016 reordering of the collections. The archive also notes a fruit plate and a clock among artifacts linked to the National Commissioner for Artistic Heritage.
Arturo Colorado, who chaired the international conference Museum War and Post-War held at the Prado in 2019, leads a coordinated team of researchers examining the institution’s archives and records in depth, working with the Library, Documentation and Archive Area to shed light on this precise subject.
In an interim report cited by Europa Press, the Prado currently preserves 62 works connected to the National Commissioner for Artistic Heritage, established in 1939, alongside historical preservation boards dating back to 1936.
Thus, in addition to the 25 documented pieces, there are 11 paintings stored between 1936 and 1939 and 26 paintings that were deposited at undetermined dates by the Art Treasure Seizure Board, often in poor condition, with some lacking a public file while still cataloged in the museum’s system, awaiting further access and clarification.