Santander,
Last April the Prado Museum and Fundación Telefónica started the project The art that connectsintended to bring a selection of the Madrid art gallery’s collections closer to different parts of Spain: in all the autonomous communities, relevant pieces from the center’s collections could be seen for about a month. The objective of this proposal is to promote social connections through culture and emphasize that the Prado collection is part of the memory and common heritage of all Spaniards, as was already emphasized in the celebration of its Bicentennial, when it was undertaken. the program On tour in Spain.
The last stop of The art that connects es Santander: until next December 8, its renovated Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Santander and Cantabria. MAS houses the portrait that El Greco dedicated to the Toledo jurist Jerónimo de Cevallos, who was born in Escalona, trained in Valladolid and Salamanca, was a councilor both in his hometown and in Toledo and wrote, among other books, treatises such as Speculum practium et varium quaestionum opinionum communium against commons either Royal art for the good government of kings and princes and their vassalswhere he deployed ideas that the Count-Duke of Olivares would later try to carry out in his reforms, along with economic policy projects carried out previously. Another of his texts has to do with his identification in this painting: a print dated 1613 and included in his Tractatus de cognitione per viam violentiae in causis ecclesiasticis gave the key.
El Greco portrayed him in that same year of 1613, when there were still almost thirty years before his death (in 1641) and we know that, likewise, Cevallos was a friend and protector of his son, Jorge Manuel, a painter and architect born in Toledo, in 1631. This work is considered one of the best portraits of the last period of the Cretan artist and José Álvarez Lopera, who was Head of Conservation of Spanish Painting at the Prado and embarked on the study and cataloging of the author’s production The burial of Count Orgazrelated it to the portrait of Fray Hortensio Félix de Paravicino that today belongs to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, in that, in his words, They share an artifice that is not found in other portraits, and that seems to have been exclusive to some of the final period: although facing the viewer, the effigy looks away, creating an almost imperceptible sensation, but at the same time full of effectiveness, of movement. instant. On the other hand, the synthetic technique of both, of extraordinary economy and lightness of materials.
It was registered in the Prado in 1834, coming from the royal collection, and before that it was in the hands of the Duke of Arco, in his Quinta de El Pardo. Its exhibition in Santander will be accompanied by talks and guided tours.
