Next February, New York auction house Sotheby's plans to add more million-dollar records with the sale of a large portrait of Queen Isabel de Borbón signed by Diego Velázquez. The estimated price is 35 million dollars (almost 32 million euros) during the so-called Old Masters Week, in which a painting by Botticelli, for example, reached 40 million euros on other occasions. This canvas combines a number of characteristics that make it a rarity on the art market and therefore justify this stratospheric figure for mere mortals. For a painting by the Spaniard, it's a tough sell (it's Velázquez's most important work to come on the market in half a century, after his portrait of Juan de Pareja). Perhaps more difficult is that it is a royal painting. In addition, this piece left Spain under unknown circumstances during the War of Independence and embarked on a journey since the 19th century that took it from Madrid to Paris in the south of Great Britain and via Naples to the New York headquarters of Sotheby's.
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One of the first references to the portrait of Queen Isabel comes from one of the rooms where it hung in the Casón del Buen Retiro, one of the buildings that were part of the palace complex where Felipe IV resided, at the initiative of the Count Duke of Olivares. It is not known exactly when he arrived at this place. In addition to this magnificent painting, explains Javier Portús, head of the conservation of Spanish painting up to 1800 at the Prado Museum, there was “a very significant body of work in terms of number and quality.” Some were created for this space, others came through flooding. “Due to its typology, this painting dates from before the palace was completed and therefore probably comes from another location,” says the expert about the work, which dates to the beginning of 1630. What seems clear, as Portús explains: is that it is a royal commission, since at that time the monarchy was the main and most important customer of Velázquez's workshop.
It hung in the Casón del Buen Retiro until the beginning of the War of Independence (1808-1814). The time at which the painting of Queen Elizabeth left this palace en route to France is unknown. There are several theories, says Portús, but none are confirmed since there are no documents to prove this, as is the case with many works from this palace complex that now hang in the Prado Museum. In the middle of the war between the French and Spanish, “there are many paintings that change their location and also their owner,” admits the expert.
The Portrait of Isabel de Borbón by Diego de Velázquez to be auctioned at Sotheby's, New York in February 2024. HENRY NICHOLLS (AFP)
The looting took place in various ways. On the one hand, José Bonaparte selected 50 works for the Bonaparte Museum that were returned to Spain as a result of the Treaty of Vienna. Then there is the so-called “Luggage of King Joseph.” “On their departure from Spain, these paintings were intercepted by the Duke of Wellington,” remembers Portús, “and when he wanted to return them, Ferdinand VII decided that the British general should keep them.” Fernán Núñez, Spanish representative in England, was commissioned to answer on behalf of the King: “I submit to you the official answer which I received from the Court, from which I conclude that His Majesty, moved by your sensitivity, does not wish to deprive you of what came into your possession through equally honorable channels.” More than 80 of these works have been on display for years at the Wellington Museum at Apsley House in London. But the portrait of Queen Elizabeth was not there.
There is another possibility that the generals and other soldiers in Napoleon's army were doing their own business. Or perhaps behind the publication of this Velázquez painting was the hand of one of those dealers who, as Portús remembers, wandered Spain in search of bargains. “Numerous works emerged from this hodgepodge,” says the Prado expert, citing as an example “The Arnolfini Wedding” by Jan van Eyck, a painting that was in the Royal Palace in 1814 and is now on display in the National Gallery of London.
Second stop: Paris
The painting was next seen in King Louis Philip I's Spanish Gallery at the Louvre Museum in Paris. On January 7, 1838, when this room was inaugurated, Parisians were able to see more than 400 paintings by Spanish artists, the collection that the monarch had built. Among the works was Velázquez's portrait of Queen Isabel, which will be auctioned in February. Just a decade later, in 1848, the Second Republic was founded in France and the pieces made their way to Great Britain. It will be there in 1853 when “one of the most important auctions of the century” takes place, as Portús puts it. This sale saw the painting come into private ownership for the first time. British banker and collector Henry Huth purchased property 249, which was in his family until 1950, when his heirs sold it.
Details of the painting of Isabel de Borbón by Velázquez.Alamy
In 1978 it changed hands again. It is not clear what happened between the year 50, when Huth's family sold it, to its current owners, the Wildensteins, the dynasty of Jewish traders who began their activities in art in the 19th century. This clan of dealers, known for its troubles with the law – it was embroiled in a fraud and tax evasion case for 15 years and was also identified as a collaborator with a Nazi collector who sold works of art stolen from Jews – has had problems encompassing its collection three paintings by Velázquez. The one that Sotheby's is auctioning in February, the portrait of Ferdinando Brandani, also known as “The Pope's Barber”, acquired by the Spanish state in 2003 for 23 million euros, and the portrait of a girl (La contadina) by the Caylus Gallery was sold to an American collector.
At the time, the Wildensteins lent the work to a monographic exhibition on Velázquez held at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples in 2005, for which Benito de Navarrete was involved in creating the catalog cards. The professor of art history at the Complutense University shows this newspaper the page of the publication in which his colleague Alfonso Pérez Sánchez explains that the portrait of Isabel de Borbón is “the first autograph version”, that is, the original work of the Spanish artist, not one of the later ones known specimens. The painter portrayed the Spanish monarch in full body, about twenty years old and dressed in an elegant black dress. The artist's reviews, he explains, at Sotheby's were due to his “simultaneous desire” to update the image of the monarchs and “to demonstrate a new method of painting,” influenced by his personal encounter with another of the great masters of the time. Peter Paul Rubens, writes Christopher Apostle, international head of Old Master Paintings at Sotheby's.
The catalog of the exhibition dedicated to Velázquez in 2005 at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, where he exhibited the royal portrait. Photo: Benito Navarrete.
Stop the auction
Next February neither the Prado Museum nor the Ministry of Culture will attempt to claim it. Sources from both institutions confirm to this newspaper that the regulations prohibiting the looting of art as spoils of war were developed in the 20th century. And this case is earlier. EL PAÍS consulted with three lawyers about the options the Spanish state would have to stop the auction or initiate legal proceedings to obtain the painting's return to Spain. In all three cases, the answer is the same: “It is very complicated.” There is no UNESCO treaty applicable and the laws that, for example, heirs of Jewish families plundered by the Nazis have recourse to, could not be applied in this case.
“Not even the case of Goya's painting of the Marchioness of Santa Cruz can be cited as a precedent,” recalls Rafael Mateu of the Ramón y Cajal law firm, referring to the work that left Spain illegally in the early 1980s. “The state was able to stop the auction in London due to the fraudulent nature of the sale abroad.” Nobody knows how Queen Isabel got out of the Casón del Buen Retiro, but since then it has been exhibited and sold at public auctions up to three times. As the three lawyers recall, there was enough time to claim an unhidden work.
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