Spanish royal painting thought lost for 100 years resurfaces in Madrid

One hundred years after it was presumed lost in a fire, an early 19th-century painting depicting one of Spain’s least-popular monarchs has resurfaced in a Madrid museum, albeit in fragments.

Painted in 1827 by José Aparicio Inglada, El desembarco de Fernando VII en el Puerto de Santa María (The disembarkation of Ferdinand VII at Puerto de Santa María), measuring seven meters by four meters, was assumed to have been destroyed along with other artworks when a fire swept through the capital’s Palace of Justice in 1915. The work had been handed to the Spanish justice ministry by the Prado Museum in 1883.

The 28-square-meter work depicts the entire royal family and more than 80 other figures from the time

But researchers preparing an exhibition that opens at the Supreme Court on September 10 to mark the anniversary of the fire have unearthed the canvas – now cut into 21 sections – in the Cerralbo Museum in Madrid. Pilar Tébar, an art historian at the University of Alicante, recognized historical figures in several of the fragments from photographs of other portraits by Inglada.

The Spanish Culture Ministry says the painting had been bought by Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa, Marquis of Cerralbo from an art dealer in Madrid’s Rastro flea market. The 28-square-meter work depicts Ferdinand VII, along with the entire Spanish royal family and more than 80 other political and historical figures from the time. The Marquis of Cerralbo donated his art collection to the Spanish state in 1922.

Known as the “felon king,” Ferdinand VII (1784-1833) ruled twice: first in 1808, when he was overthrown by Napoleon, and again from 1813 to his death. Following the defeat of France, he reestablished an absolute monarchy and rejected the liberal constitution drawn up in 1812. After he died, Spain was plunged into a civil war.

The exhibition in the Supreme Court will include two fragments of the painting that have been restored by the Prado Museum: one depicting Ferdinand himself and another of his wife, Queen Maria Josepha Amalia of Saxony.

Nothing is known about how the painting was rescued from the blaze in the Palace of Justice, or how it ended up in the Rastro, but researchers believe that it was cut up to make portraits out of the many figures featured in it, which were presumably to have been sold to their families. They also venture that the Marquis of Cerralbo may have segmented it to remove Carlos María Isidro, an ultra-conservative pretender to the Spanish throne, from the scene – the Marquis supported the Carlist claim to the crown. The Carlists backed Don Carlos, Count of Molina (1788–1855), a separate line of the Bourbon dynasty. Carlism remained a force in Spanish politics up until the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975.