He Behold the man attributed to Caravaggio that appeared at an auction in Madrid in March 2021 has been sold by its owners, the family of liberal politician Evaristo Pérez de Castro, to a person who has asked to remain anonymous. The new owner, through the mediation of Jorge Coll, spokesperson for the family and person in charge of the Colnaghi house (ancient art gallery), “will give this masterpiece on a temporary loan – nine months – to the National Prado Museum, where it will remain. exhibited in a special individual installation from May 28 to October 2024, the month in which it will be hung in the context of the permanent exhibition,” as the art gallery reported this Monday in a statement.
The sale, for which the amount paid by the new owner is unknown, has had the approval of the Community of Madrid, an essential requirement since the fabric, which had a starting price of 1,500 euros, is protected as an Asset of Cultural Interest by the regional Government since 2021. That same year, the Ministry of Culture declared it unexportable. The painting, due to this protection, cannot leave the country and, for this reason, Coll and the new owner of the work, residing in Spain, have reached an agreement with the Prado Museum to leave the Behold the man in the art gallery.
With this loan, the Prado ensures that it will house the painting without having to pay a euro, Museum sources reaffirm. Negotiations between Colnaghi and the art gallery began at the end of December 2023 and were closed in January 2024, according to the same sources. The temporary loan contract has been established at nine months with the possibility of extending this period. “There is no statute of limitations date,” they point out from the Prado. Usually, the reason why this formula is chosen is to guarantee that the deposited pieces are exhibited in the rooms.
During the negotiation, as EL PAÍS has been able to confirm, the owner made sure that from May 28 to October (there is no agreed day) the painting would be exhibited in its own room. He Behold the man It can be visited in a space adjacent to the room dedicated to the Caravaggists. In that exclusive place, “context about the history of the painting since its arrival in Madrid, in accordance with its notoriety and its adventures” will also be displayed, they limit themselves to saying for the moment from the Prado.
The objective is that, once this first deadline that ends in October has been met, the piece will be integrated into the museum’s discourse and hang in the space dedicated to the painter and his contemporaries, although at this point in the agreement it is not yet defined for how long. He will stay in the Prado. At the end of August, David conquering Goliath, by Caravaggio, one of the paintings by the Italian artist that this museum has, was removed from the room for a restoration that had been planned for years. The canvas was hung again at the end of 2023, just when the Prado and Coll were negotiating the temporary transfer of the Behold the man. Already at that time, both Miguel Falomir, director of the institution, and David García Cueto, head of the Department of Italian and French Painting until 1800, awarded the canvas to the Baroque painter. The future will tell if the new piece will be exhibited next to this painting, according to the Prado’s intention.
“We reported that he was in Madrid and now we show it, the circle is closed,” Prado sources explain. “We are very happy to be the stage where this work is shown. We have to rejoice for this and for the fact that this important piece remains in Spain,” Falomir assured. “The piece condenses the best of the master’s style in his last years of existence,” García Cueto remarked.
The Ministry of Culture also congratulates itself on the new episode in the history of the Behold the man: “It is great news that it is exposed and the public can see it.” The role of the portfolio led by Ernest Urtasun has been, they say, peripheral. The Qualification Board declared the painting unexportable in 2021 to prevent it from leaving Spain. Once the purchase of the piece was closed, the Pérez de Castro y Coll family notified the Community of Madrid and Culture to exercise their right of first refusal on the proposed price, as established in the case of Assets of Interest. Cultural. Neither of the two institutions exercised it.
The journey of the painting
The painting, initially attributed to the Ribera circle by experts at the Ansorena auction house, where the Pérez de Castros came to sell several family works, has been kept in warehouses in Coslada, near the Madrid airport, where he remains, as confirmed by EL PAÍS. In these two years, experts from all over the world have passed through this ship to observe the work and try to attribute its authorship to Caravaggio. Maria Cristina Terzaghi, one of the world’s leading specialists in the painter, was one of the first to assure in a scientific report that she had no doubt that it was the hand of the Italian artist.
Since July 2022, in these warehouses near the airport, a team of restorers led by the Italian expert Andrea Cipriani has been fixing the damage to the piece. Under his command have been specialists such as Claudio Falcucci and Carlo Giantomassi, another relevant restorer who participated in the work on Michelangelo’s frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Jorge Coll ruled out the Prado restoration workshop for this task, considering that it was an interested party in the sale of the painting.
Both the reports of the specialists who have passed through these facilities and the restoration process will soon be published in the book Caravaggio. El Ecce Homo sleepless. The study is signed by Terzaghi, Keith Christiansen (curator of the Metropolitan Museum of New York), Gianni Papi (art historian) and Giuseppe Porzio (art historian at the University of Art), the world’s leading experts on Caravaggio. This same year the documentary will also be released The sleeper by Álvaro Longoria (Morena Films) that tells the adventures of Behold the man. It is likely that all this documentation will be exhibited from May to October along with the canvas in that exclusive room reserved for one of the greatest discoveries in the recent history of art.