Kings Felipe and Letizia will be portrayed by Annie Leibovitz

The headquarters of the Bank of Spain, located in Madrid's Plaza de Cibeles, houses a part of the State's gold reserves, but also guards one of the most important art collections in the country.

The royal paintings from the old Bank of San Carlos are probably the most valuable part of the collection, since they include the portraits of Charles III, Charles IV and María Luisa de Parma made in the workshop of Mariano Salvador Maella;

those of Carlos III, the Marquis of Tolosa and the Count of Altamira, which are part of the pictorial group commissioned from Francisco de Goya;

those of Amadeo de Savoy and Alfonso XII, made by Carlos Luis de Ribera;

that of Alfonso XIII, by José Villegas y Cordero;

and those of Kings Juan Carlos I and Sofía, made by Carmen Laffón between 1987 and 1988. As EL PAÍS has been able to confirm, the collection will soon incorporate the portraits of Kings Felipe and Letizia, entrusted to the famous American photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Sources close to the institution have told this newspaper that Annie Leibovitz (Waterbury, Connecticut, 74 years old), considered the most important and best-paid living photographer in the world, will land in Madrid in the coming days to take the portraits of the Kings who will later They will become part of the collection of the Bank of Spain.

It is not the first time that the artist, a regular contributor to Vogue

and

Vanity Fair

magazines

and known mainly for her celebrity portraits, has immortalized a monarch.

In 2007, Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom asked him to take official photographs of her state visit to the United States, coinciding with the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.

That photo session was recorded by the BBC for the documentary

A

Year With the

Queen

.

Leibovitz became the first American to have an official portrait of the Queen of England.

“It was okay for me to be reverent.

The British are conflicted about what they think of the monarch.

If a British portrait painter is reverent, he is perceived as a courtier.

I could do something traditional,” the photographer reflected in her book

De ella At Work,

published in 2008. In 2016 she photographed the sovereign again, this time at Windsor Castle.

On that occasion she caught her with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh;

with her daughter, Princess Anne;

with some of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren;

and even with her corgis.

More information

The power of Queen Letizia as a literary prescriber, myth or reality?

Eight years after that royal commission, Leibovitz returns to the palace.

This time it will be to the Royal Palace, in Madrid, to meet Felipe VI, “nephew” of the Queen of England (the King called the British monarch “Aunt Lilibet” due to their close relationship), and his wife, Queen Letizia, who will serve as models for the photographer who in the last half century has immortalized music and film stars such as John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio , Tom Cruise and Demi Moore.

The Kings, who for the occasion will be dressed to the nines with all their decorations, know very well the work of Leibovitz, who in 2013 was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities for being “one of the driving forces of world photojournalism and one of the most respected photographers in Europe and America.”

In November of that year, Felipe VI and Queen Letizia presented the artist with the Joan Miró statuette - the symbol of these awards - and the accrediting diploma in the traditional ceremony held at the Campoamor Theater in Oviedo.

Felipe de Borbón presents Annie Leibovitz with the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, on October 25, 2013 in Oviedo.DyD Fotografos/Geisler-Fotopress (picture alliance / Geisler-Fotop / Cordon Press)

Queen Letizia is not only a great admirer of Leibovitz's work, but also of the work of the writer and essayist Susan Sontag, the American photographer's romantic partner for more than 15 years.

Leibovitz accompanied the intellectual until the last moments of her life and witnessed the cancer that caused her death in December 2004. In 2022, during an event on the occasion of World Cancer Research Day held in New York, the Queen cited to Sontag, asking not to use war terms when talking about this disease.

We must “avoid romanticization, the use of metaphors and warlike language to talk about cancer.

“I think we are beginning to overcome, little by little, what she [Sontag] denounced,” explained Doña Letizia, recalling

The Illness and its Metaphors

of It, an essay that Sontag wrote in 1978 while she was being treated for breast cancer.

In 2003, the Prince of Asturias Foundation awarded the American writer with the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters.

A year later, the author died from myelodysplastic syndrome.

Curiously, Felipe and Letizia chose that Prince of Asturias ceremony, held on October 23, to appear in public for the first time.

Then, the King was the heir to the throne and the Queen presented the La 1 news program on TVE.

Just a week later, the Royal Family officially announced their engagement.

The portraits that Leibovitz will make of the Kings arrive on specific dates for Felipe VI and Queen Letizia.

Next May, the Kings will celebrate 20 years of marriage (they were married on May 22, 2004) and in June, the King will celebrate 10 years on the throne (he was proclaimed on June 19, 2014).

Queen Elizabeth II and her corgis, pictured by Annie Leibovitz at Windsor Castle in 2016 on the occasion of the British monarch's 90th birthday.Annie Leibovitz (PA Wire/Press Association Images / Cordon Press)

The American photographer, third daughter of the Jewish couple composed of Armed Forces Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Leibovitz and dance instructor Marilyn Heit Leibovitz, is famous for capturing great public figures in intimate and unusual moments.

She got John Lennon to appear naked with Yoko Ono hours before he was murdered;

she convinced Demi Moore to pose naked and seven months pregnant for the cover of

Vanity Fair;

she put Whoopi Goldberg in a bathtub full of milk, revealing only her face and her limbs;

and she captured Russian politician Mikhail Gorbachev sitting inside a car with the remains of the Berlin Wall.

Leibovitz is probably preparing a more formal and regal pose for the Kings of Spain.

The only thing that is certain is that the new royal portraits will have the quality and high dose of modernity that characterize all of her work.

That is her hallmark.

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