The row between Spain’s National Heritage office and the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid over the fate of four important Old Master works is over. National Heritage officials have backed off a bid to transfer the paintings, including Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (1500-05) and Tintoretto’s Christ Washing the Feet of His Disciples (1548-49), to a €160m museum housing the Royal Collections due to open by 2017 in Madrid.
The Prado bristled after the National Heritage office sent a letter last year asking the museum to return the works, which had been in its collection since the 1940s and are among its most prized. “If he is waiting to have the paintings in his place, he has to wait until hell freezes over,” the chairman of the Prado’s board, José Pedro Pérez-Llorca, said in a statement in May, referring to officials at the Royal Collections.
In a recent interview with the Spanish newspaper El País, Alfredo Pérez de Armiñán, who was appointed head of the National Heritage office in October, says that the paintings will remain with the Prado. “All discussions on the matter are finished; there was never a formal request,” he said.
The new museum will not house a permanent collection. Instead, works will be drawn from 19 palaces that make up the Royal Collections for a series of temporary exhibitions. “The new museum will not be a replica of something that already exists,” Pérez de Armiñán tells us.
The four Old Master paintings were originally removed from the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War and given to the Prado by the government for safekeeping. Asked to comment on the recent development, a museum spokeswoman says: “As far as we are concerned, there is no conflict over this matter.”
