They conducted a deep and rigorous study, which lasted six months, culminating in an attribute report, consulted, contrasted and ratified, with the best expert in the world in his painting: Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the great-granddaughter of the painter.
The masterful drawing has been done on laid paper. This drawing, along with two othersthat are preserved in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts os San Fernando, (place wich he was honorary director since 1762), from a beautiful series in wich the life of the saint is represented.
Two papers were given under the title Recognized by their color. Modern Age pigments and dyes’ response in multi-band analysis: a visual tool for art historians and conservators and Light through color: Behavior of some historical pigments in canvases using transmitted light techniques in the visible and infrared ranges of the spectrum (TL and IRT).
During the second day of the seminar the team of the CAEM (Center d’Art d’Època Moderna) of the University of Lleida, in particular Miquel Herrero (researcher of the Department of Art History and Social History of the University of Lleida and CAEM) , Marta Raïch (image technician) Andrea La Bella (researcher) and Anna Pedret (researcher) together with the collaboration of Dr. Paola Artoni, head of the LANIAC Center (Laboratory of Analisi Diagnostic non Invasive per l’Arte antica, Moderna e Contemporanea) from the Università degli studi di Verona (Italy) have presented two investigations focused on the use of multiband techniques for the study of pigments and works of art, presenting all the positive aspects and the limits of these techniques applied to the pictorial heritage.
In addition, the researcher Miquel Herrero has collaborated in a Workshop entitled “L’Archeometria per il colore nel restauro pittorico” at the Istituto di Restauro Marche (IRM) Montecassiano (Italy).
In the presentations a more theoretical first part has been exposed, explaining the results obtained with patterns made in the CAEM laboratory, compared later with the results obtained in pieces studied in the same center.
Our specialists have been able to exchange opinions on the behavior of pigments in the various regions of the spectrum.
The Arte de Época Moderna centre and the Lázaro Galdiano Museum have signed a collaboration agreement, in order to join efforts to unravel all the secrets of part of the Madrid collection.
At the moment, it is working on three beautiful pieces, among which one of the undisputed jewels of the Museum: its beautiful adolescent Salvador, whose last attribution would place it as a work by the brush of Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, who was a disciple of Leonardo da Vinci himself.
The scientific-technical and historical-artistic research is being carried out side by side with the members of the museum, and its purpose is a mutual enrichment, whose sole aim is to get to know better part of one of the best collections of private origin in Spain.
Ediciones Trea has just published the book Portraits of the Palace of Soñanes in Vallacarriedo. Works by Domingo de Carrión, collaborator of Diego Velázquez, a splendid work by Aurelio Á. Barrón García and Miguel Ángel Aramburu-Zabala Higuera.
In this work, the authors dusted off the name of Domingo de Carrión, a great baroque painter unjustly largely unknown, who was, apparently, one of Velázquez’s assistants in the execution of some of the equestrian portraits of the Salón de Reinos of the Palacio del Buen Retiro in Madrid.
Through a set of works that adorned the Cantabrian palace of Soñanes de Villacarriedo, the authors of this magnificent work present a great portraitist, who learned from Spain’s most exquisite brush, but who then evolved towards a plastic world of its own.
Undoubtedly, this work has done justice to an artist sadly forgotten, but we have no doubt, this investigation might be the onset for new works that gradually give Domingo de Carrión the recognition historiography owes him.
Carmen Garrido will hold the position of Scientific Director of Painting Studies, and will work closely with the Director of CAEM and the rest of the researchers in attributive tasks.
Dr. Garrido is one of the world’s leading specialists in El Greco, Velázquez and Goya, and knows well the spectacular Spanish Painting of the Golden Age.
Her presence strengthens the seriousness and the increasingly recognized scientific rigor of the analytical method put into practice at the CAEM, a method which this exceptional world expert in painting fully supports.
The presence at the CAEM of Dr. Garrido is a privilege that will greatly help her researchers to take their professional, analytical, perceptive and attributive skills in the field of unpublished works of art to the next level.
The CAEM consolidates its presence, as well, as the most rigorous and complete analytical and attributive center of works of art in Spain.
Carmen Garrido is a doctor in History of Art from the Autonomous University of Madrid. Curator of the entity Cuerpo Facultativo de Museos. Her specialty is the study (always first-hand) of the creative, technical, material, formal and stylistic painting process of the great masters. She has examined works from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the University of Louvain, the Institute of Conservation and Restoration in Madrid, and especially the pictorial collections of the Prado Museum.