Heard on The StreetApril 22, 2014

New Acquisitions at the Museo del Prado

Since April 12 the Prado Museum exhibits in its galleries eight new works that have become part of its collections as 2013 acquisitions by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. These new arrivals consist of paintings from different periods and schools, including: Oración en el Huerto (Agony in the Garden) by Lombard painter Giulio Cesare Procaccini, and another Agony in the Garden by Luis de Morales, a composition that includes one of the most elaborate and carefully created sceneries ever created by this artist. The Aparición de Cristo Crucificado a Santa Teresa de Jesús (Apparition of the Crucified Christ to St. Teresa of Jesus) and Aparición de Cristo Resucitado a Santa Teresa de Jesús (Apparition of the Risen Christ to St. Teresa of Jesus), and Matrimonio Místico de Santa Teresa (Mystic Marriage of St. Teresa) by Alonso Cano, belong to a period of his artistic production that had not been represented in the museum—since all his works in this institution were, until now, created after 1638, the year in which Cano left Seville to settle in Madrid. The group of works is completed with the anonymous Flemish painting Saint Jerome Praying, probably related to the so-called Master of the Half Figures in Antwerp; Cristo Ejemplo de Mártires (Christ example of Martyrs), connected to a series of paintings centered on the martyrdom theme that painter Juan de las Roelas created in his studio for the Convento de la Merced in Seville; Dios Padre Retratando a la Inmaculada (God the Father Portraying the Immaculate) by José García Hidalgo, a work that expands in the Museo del Prado's collection the casuistry associated with this iconography of the Virgin that is so attached to Spanish art; and Las Lágrimas de San Pedro (Tears of St. Peter), a work of high aesthetic quality that corresponds to an interesting naturalistic painter, yet to be identified, and enriches the debate on the development of naturalism in Spanish painting during the Seventeenth Century.
New Acquisitions at the Museo del Prado | artnexus