Title

Dragon. Mural painting. Provenance: Monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza (Burgos). Spain

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Object history

This is one of the various fragments that formed part of the mural ensemble that adorned the treasure chapel of the Benedictine monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza (Burgos). In the first decade of the 20th century, after the collapse of the staircase between the lower and upper floors of the processional cloister, a group of mural paintings was discovered under a plaster on the walls, which from that moment on was considered one of the most interesting examples of late Romanesque painting in Spain (Chapée, 1912, pp. 380-381; Huidobro, 1912, p. 381). Paintings of great expressiveness that bring to the wall the preciousness of the bestiaries and illuminated manuscripts. In this case, they would be closely linked to the historical and legendary role of the monastery, the origins of the crown of Castile, and the legends surrounding Count Fernán González and his wife Doña Sancha.

At that time the monastery was in ruins: “...and lies destroyed and battered, its vaults sunk in dust, its church dismantled, its bell tower mute, most of its doors closed and impracticable...” (García Concellón, 1894, pp. 56-58).  Despite the deterioration of the monastic complex, the photographs of Photo-Club Burgos (Archivo Diputación Provincial de Burgos) show details of the paintings in situ, before, at the end of the 1920s, Alejandro Valcárcel Barbadillo, son of the monastery's owner, Carlota Barbadillo, sought to sell them. He first tried to get the attention of the Provincial Commission of Monuments of Burgos, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and the General Directorate of Fine Arts, so that the State would buy the mural ensemble that was still preserved in the palatine chapel of the monastery, located above the chapter house, on the second floor of the Treasury Tower. His letters were especially insistent in 1924: “As since last year the deterioration is increasing and threatening to be nothing left due to the continuous detachment of the lime where the graffiti are located, a resolution is urgent, reason for which a term is established and when this has ended without the State having given an affirmative answer of purchase, it will be understood that it renounces to them, abandoning the right of first refusal and leaving the said Illustrious Mrs. Carlota Barbadillo my represented within the legal procedures of having given knowledge in accordance with the law of January 1923, being able to dispose of them and sell them if any bidder or buyer has given an affirmative answer of purchase. Mrs. Carlota Barbadillo my represented within the legal procedures of having given knowledge in accordance with the law of January of 1923 being able to dispose of them and to alienate them if some bidder or buyer has or presents himself” (Instancia directed by Alejandro R. de Valcárcel y Barbadillo to the President of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, July 24, 1924). It seems that the slow processing of this matter in the Madrid offices led him to reject this option and he opted to sell the paintings to private individuals (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, p. 99).

The architect Josep Gudiol mediated in the operation of acquisition, taking off the paintings and transferring them to canvases, with the aim of selling them to North American collections, which is why those paintings that once adorned the palatine chapel of Arlanza ended up dispersed in different collections. The Cloisters, the medieval art section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has two examples: this Dragon and a Lion. Other fragments of the Arlanza mural ensemble are in the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University, Long-necked Stilt-walker, and seven fragments of the same provenance are currently in the collection of the MNAC, Barcelona -most of them acquired by Josep Gudiol in 1943 and donated by him to the MNAC in 1973-.

In this operation that led to the sale of the paintings, and the final export of an important part of the ensemble, the role played by the art historian Walter W. S. Cook was important. His archaeological expedition through Castilian lands in 1927 took him, among other places, to Arlanza, where he was able to contemplate the paintings in their original location; shortly after, the dismantling of the ensemble took place. In 1929 Cook announced to James J. Rorimer, curator of medieval art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who would later become director of the same museum, that the mural paintings had already been removed and would probably be destined for a Spanish museum. The Spanish press reported that some individuals had bought the Arlanza murals for 10,000 pesetas. The truth is that at that time the paintings were in the hands of the architect Josep Gudiol and the archaeologist Josep Colominas. According to I. Socias, in 1927 both had an antique store called La Sacristía, which was located at 17 Coribia Street in Barcelona. They were to have as capitalist partners the Catalan collectors Rómulo Bosch y Catarineu and Teresa Amatller y Cros, who would play an important role in the career of Josep Gudio i Ricart. Walter W. S. Cook, who had a relationship with the director of the Episcopal Museum of Vic, Josep Gudiol i Conill -uncle of Josep Gudiol i Ricart-, informed Gudiol and Colominas about the Arlanza paintings. The former made some plans and drawings of the mural ensemble of the monastery, which are preserved in the Frick Art Reference (New York). James J. Rorimer confirmed in 1928 that Josep Gudiol was working on the removal of the Arlanza paintings. He arrived in the first days of August 1930 in New York with the purpose of selling the Arlanza frescoes. In the U.S.A. his main supporters were Walter W. S. Cook and James J. Rorimer, who had had the opportunity to see the Arlanza paintings at Gudiol's house in Barcelona in 1929.

On October 10, 1930, the document of commitment was signed between the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Edward Robinson, and Josep Gudiol i Ricart for the sale of the Arlanza mural paintings. The museum reserved the first option to purchase the murals, for a period of two months, at a price of $50,000, which could be reduced to $45,000. This amount included the restoration and final installation of the frescoes. From the arrival of the paintings in New York, the Metropolitan Museum undertook to keep them in its deposits and during that period Gudiol could show them to other museums and collectors interested in them, but always with the approval of the New York institution. At the same time, Rorimer wrote a report in which he positively evaluated the acquisition of the paintings by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, since, although incomplete and faded, they constituted in his opinion a good investment for the museum. He appealed to the considerations of Professor Chandler R. Post, who, in his book on Spanish Painting, had highlighted the qualities of these paintings from the chapel of the Arlanza treasure. Joseph Breck, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, called the attention of John D. Rockefeller Jr, promoter and benefactor of The Cloisters section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, about the convenience of acquiring the Arlanza murals deposited in the institution, since the 45,000 dollars demanded for the works was a much lower price than the 120,000 that, for example, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston had paid for two scenes from the group of San Baudelio de Berlanga; being this group of Arlanza, in his opinion, as interesting as that one (Socias, 2020, pp. 203-222).

The magnate replied that George Blumenthal, president of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, was of the opinion that only those in the best state of preservation should be acquired, rejecting the rest, arguing, moreover, the space problem that the installation of the whole set would present. After a tough negotiation, in which the museum tried to lower the initial price, it finally agreed to acquire the two fragments: Dragon and Lion, from Arlanza, for $30,000, although Joseph Breck finally managed to lower it to $28,000. To circumvent the criticism in Spain, James J. Rorimer personally asked Chandler R. Post not to talk about it in Spain: “I have been thinking about the problem of the Arlanza frescoes. I am going to ask you, as a personal favor to me as well as out of regard for the Metropolitan Museum, not to speak in Spain or elsewhere about these frescoes. It is really a very serious matter, and we are desirous not to have it known that we have obtained some of these panels. Josep Gudiol, of whom you spoke, was not the owner of the frescoes, but merely employed to do certain work of transferal and to help us in dealings with certain of the owners”. (Socias, 2020, p. 214).

The rest of the paintings were still waiting for a better opportunity to be sold, as was the case of the one that was sold to the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University. It was in the context of the Spanish Civil War, when a report by Luis Monreal Tejada, Franco's curator of the Levante area, revealed some details: “These paintings were acquired by Gudiol (a red architect, now abroad) and Colominas (an official of the Archaeological Museum of Barcelona). According to what the latter told me, they paid two thousand pesetas for the acquisition (...) Part of the paintings (the most important ones) were sold in North America. The rest is currently stored in the Archaeological Museum of Barcelona and Mr. Colominas has them for sale, as he assures that they are currently his exclusive property...” (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, p. 106).

At that time Josep Gudiol was in exile, which is perhaps why the ownership of the paintings had already been divided between them. On November 29, 1943 Josep Colominas sold the Griffin to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, that same year Josep Gudiol sold to the same museum the rest of the fragments that the Catalan institution conserves. In 1952 Gudiol sold the paintings of the Sirens to the collector Antonio Gallardo Ballart, who donated them along with other works to the MNAC as payment for inheritance taxes (Socias, 2020, p. 215).

In this way this extraordinary set of murals was dispersed, despite the calls of attention about its deterioration, as well as the risk of sale and export that reached the Provincial Commission of Monuments of Burgos, the Royal Academies, or the General Directorate of Fine Arts in the 1920s. All this, in spite of the favorable report of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1924 so that they were acquired by the State in the amount of 10. 10,000 pesetas that the owner of the monastery was asking for them at that time: “...although at first sight they do not seem interesting because they do not include human figures, they are nevertheless very important because of the classical quality of their strokes and their coloring, and also because the representation of chimerical animals belongs to a sector of the art of painting that is not very frequent in Spain, although many cases are found in sculptural and corporeal form. In addition, these paintings, conveniently studied, can provide historical data of great value. In view of these considerations, it is the duty of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, with its sights set on the ideal of art and the prestige of culture, to advise the government of S. M. with the greatest respect, the acquisition of the paintings of San Pedro de Arlanza, taking them for this purpose in the amount of ten thousand pesetas, a value that coincides with the price established by their owner, Mrs. Carlota Barbadillo. This will avoid the plundering of our artistic treasure, since by reliable confidences it is known in this Royal Academy that the paintings of reference have already been requested by merchants eager for business and also by foreign personalities; a case of shameful plundering for the Homeland that maintained so much artistic prestige in the past centuries” Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, Session of November 10, 1924 (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, p. 101).

Description

Fresco painting transferred to canvas.

Locations

• post. 1200 - 1929

  monastery

  Monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza, Hortigüela (Spain)

• 1929 - 1931

  private collection

  Colominas Collection. Barcelona, Barcelona (Spain) *

• 1931 - present

  museum

  The Cloisters. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (United States)