'Ecce homo' attributed to Caravaggio, in the Ansorena room in Madrid.
Courtesy of Professor Benito Navarrete.
The supposed
caravaggio
that appeared at an auction in Madrid last March and that was going to be sold for just over a thousand euros remains in the custody of the Pérez de Castro family, owners of the work, and Jorge Coll, its spokesman and antique dealer, in a facility near the Madrid's airport. Over there, as EL PAÍS has learned, experts from different parts of the world have been visiting the painting for weeks. It is a short visit, of no more than half an hour, which is intended to gather the first conclusions from which a preliminary report will come out in September. María Cristina Terzaghi, one of the world's greatest experts in the Baroque painter, has traveled there. From that visit and many others that he has made in recent months to various archives in Madrid,has produced the first published scientific report and in which it concludes that the piece was painted by Caravaggio.
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Terzaghi overturns in 35 pages a historical review of the journey that the painting made since it left Italy until it arrived in Spain in the middle of the seventeenth century and ended up in the hands of the heir family of the liberal politician, signatory of the Constitution of 1812 and collector of art, Evaristo Pérez de Castro.
The expert, however, leaves unresolved three fundamental points in the history of one of the most important discoveries in the history of art so far this century: it is not clear where the painting was bought before arriving in Spain;
The mystery of what happened to the cloth during the Napoleonic invasion is not solved either;
or where Caravaggio painted it.
Cristina Terzaghi, art historian, Caravaggio expert, last May in Madrid.
The first documents that appeared after the discovery of the painting in the Ansorena house in Madrid were the inventories of the Count of Castrillo, viceroy of Naples, and that of Juan de Lezcano, secretary of the court of Naples, whose collection passed to the viceroy.
Terzaghi recalls these two lists that place the date of the painting's arrival in Spain between 1657 and 1659. But he makes it clear that “there is a problem” in identifying where the Count of Castrillo could buy the eccehomo and the image of Salomé that today hangs in the Royal Palace, both by Caravaggio.
Looking back even further, Terzaghi hypothesizes that the count of Castrillo may have bought the eccehomo “in a Neapolitan market” and that it was that piece that Juan de Lezcano records in his inventory in 1631. “The description also fits perfectly with the Madrid canvas, ”says the expert who tries to shore up her thesis by resorting to the size of the work. "The rather small dimension of the Madrid painting, 111 centimeters high, is not incompatible with Lezcano's canvas, especially if the width of the frame that appears inscribed next to the painting must be added."
After arriving in Spain, the painting then went to the royal collections.
The testamentary of Carlos II (1661-1700) refers in entry number 7793 to: "Another painting, of an excehomo, a yard and a half high: with a black frame valued at sixty doubloons = exists."
The size and motif coincide with Ansorena's painting, although the author is not mentioned.
However, in the inventory of Carlos III (1716-1788), prepared by Francisco de Goya, Jacinto Gómez and Francisco Bayeu (his two brothers-in-law), the following reference appears in number 4598: “Vara y medio de alto y cinco cuartas scant in width.
An Ecceomo with two more figures in two thousand reais.
Carabajio's style ”.
The painting was in the Palacio de los Vargas or Palacio de la Casa del Campo, as it was called then, and, according to the inventory, it was in the bedroom of Carlos II.
Godoy's track
At this point, Terzaghi tries to continue the story through the collection of Manuel de Godoy.
That is, it states that Carlos IV could have delivered the painting to the Secretary of State as he did with other works in the Casa de Campo Palace, although there are no records in this regard.
Only doubt arises when reviewing the records of the Academy.
In 1823, when Pérez de Castro exchanged an
Alonso Cano
for
the caravaggio
, the origin did not appear, a year later, it is attributed to Godoy.
"In this building, built from 1559 by the royal architect Juan Bautista de Toledo, an Ecce Homo attributed in the context of Caravaggio was preserved", writes the historian.
Again, the measurements for this piece do not match.
Historical document of the exchange of the painting of Caravaggio by Alonso Cano.
It is unknown if the painting was seized by French troops to be integrated into the so-called Josefino Museum (by José Bonaparte), which was never inaugurated, and then went to the Royal Academy, where it appears for the first time in the 1821 inventory. Terzaghi recalls a report by Juan Pascual Colomer, the institution's librarian, who carried out the same year of the exchange in which he tried to locate several paintings that have reached the institution of the Buenavista Palace, belonging to the Duchess of Alba, and of the old Convent of the Rosary near the Church of San Francisco, transformed into a repository of works of the convents eliminated in the Napoleonic era. The canvases, recalls the expert, arrived without attribution, although they were accurately described.
Once in the hands of Pérez de Castro, Terzaghi reviews the will of the politician and his children, but is unable to tie any more clues. The painting disappears until the heirs try to sell it at the Ansorena auction.
Despite the lack of specificity of these data, Terzaghi maintains the conviction of the first day: he has no doubt, it is Caravaggio, and he says so over and over again in his study. A large part of her research and conclusions is based on stylistic aspects, although with caution because after seeing the painting twice, the expert remembers that a layer of thick varnish covers the canvas and "makes it difficult to read all the pictorial nuances". Terzaghi clearly sees the connection with the artist's Neapolitan works. The historian locates a possible execution date before 1608, the year in which the painter is in Malta: "Therefore, I think it is correct to date the painting before the artist leaves for the island." And he continues: “Only the restoration will allow us to know the painting, however, even softened by the paintings,the brushstroke does not seem as fast as that of the post-Sicilian Caravaggio, but quite similar to the lyricism of the first Neapolitan half ”. The expert, therefore, concludes that it is necessary for time to pass, to allow a verification to conclude if the Baroque master is the author of this enigmatic chapter in the history of art.