Culture minister defers export of a rare painting by Alonso Sanchez Coello
059/07
Culture Minister, David Lammy, has placed a temporary export bar on a painting by Alonso Sanchez Coello: Portrait of Don Diego, son of King Philip II of Spain. The bar will provide a last chance to raise the money to keep this extraordinary sixteenth-century painting in the United Kingdom.
The Minister’s ruling follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, administered by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. The Committee recommended that the export decision be deferred on the grounds that the painting is of outstanding aesthetic importance and that it is of outstanding significance for the study of Spanish court child portraiture, pre-Velasquez.
This rare painting shows Don Diego, son of Philip ll of Spain, aged two. He is dressed formally and depicted with an expression of grave seriousness. His masculinity is portrayed by the spear which he holds in his right hand and the hobby-horse which he carries in his left. Fears for his health, in a family that was so unlucky in the survival rate of its children, can be detected in the numerous religious and protective amulets which he wears. The details of these and the embroidery on his dress, together with the open door onto the balcony, evince awareness of the Flemish training of Coello. The painting has grandeur of composition that befits the regal status of the subject, but Coello’s importance as a court painter is the relative informality, within a formal surround, of his portraits of the children of Philip II. It would appear that he was the originator of this type of portrait which became a significant part of the output of the later master, Velasquez.
The decision on the export licence application for the painting will be deferred for a period ending on 20 July 2007 inclusive. This period may be extended until 20 November 2007 inclusive if a serious intention to raise funds with a view to making an offer to purchase the painting at the recommended price of £2,000,000.00 excluding VAT is expressed.
Anyone interested in making an offer to purchase the painting should contact the owner’s agent through:
The Secretary
The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest
Museums, Libraries and Archives Council,
Victoria House,
Southampton Row
London WC1B 4EA
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Notes to editors
1. Media enquiries on the operation of and casework arising from the work of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) should be directed to MLA Media Relations Manager, Anne Marie Todaro, on 020 7273 1472, email: annemarie.todaro@mla.gov.uk
2. The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest is an independent body, administered by MLA, which advises the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on whether a cultural object, intended for export, is of national importance under specified criteria. Where the Committee finds that an object meets one or more of the criteria, it will normally recommend that the decision on the export licence application should be deferred for a specified period. An offer may then be made from within the United Kingdom at or above the fair market price.
3. Pictures of these items are available. Please email: annemarie.todaro@mla.gov.uk (MLA no longer subscribes to the Pixmedia website).
4. The portrait is oil on canvas and measures 108 x 88.2 cm. It is signed and dated on the doorpost, lower left: ‘Alfonsius Sancius. F/ 1577.’ and inscribed above: ‘D. Diego de Austria, Infante’. It is in good condition for a painting of its age.
5. Alonso Sánchez Coello was born at Benifairó del Valls, Valencia in 1531/2. Early in the 1540s he went to Portugal to join his grandfather, who worked for the Portuguese monarchs for more than thirty years and who was granted Portuguese titles of nobility. Sánchez Coello probably began his artistic training there, although there is no documentary evidence to prove it. In 1550 King John III [1502-1557] sent him to Flanders to study with Anthonis Mor [Antonio Moro, 1516/20-1576?]. On his return to Lisbon c.1552 he entered the service of members of the Royal family until 1555 when he went to work for the widowed Infanta Juana, Regent of Spain, in Valladolid. She recommended him to Philip II in 1559. Anthonis Mor left Spain for the last time in 1560 and Sánchez Coello was appointed Pintor de Cámera. When the court finally settled in Madrid in 1561 he moved to the Casa del Tesoro, which became the home and studio of royal painters until the 18th century. Sánchez Coello died in Madrid in 1588.
6. Sánchez Coello was not exclusively a portrait painter and a number of religious paintings survive. However it is as a portraitist that he is and was best known. His style is a synthesis of the objectivity of the Flemish tradition, which he had learnt from Mor and the sensuality of Venetian painting, exemplified by Titian.
7. Despite being court painter to Philip II only one other painting of the King can definitely be attributed to Sánchez Coello, the half-length in armour with a field-marshal’s baton painted c.1570/71, which together with its pair, a half-length of Philip’s fourth wife, Anne of Austria, is now in the collection at Pollok House, Glasgow. The dearth of surviving portraits by Coello is in large part due to the fires which destroyed many of his portraits in the Galeria de Retratos of the Hapsburg family in the palace of El Pardo [1604] and in the old Alcázar de Madrid in 1734.
8. Philip II [1527-1598] struggled to secure his succession. His first wife María of Portugal died in childbirth of her one son, Don Carlos [1545-1568], Mary Tudor suffered a phantom pregnancy but had no children, Elisabeth of Valois had two miscarriages, then bore two daughters, the Infantas Isabel Clara Eugenia [1566-1633] and Catalina Micaela [1567-1597] and died in childbirth in 1568, Anne of Austria was fertile, but all of her seven children died at birth or infancy apart from Felipe, who became King of Spain in 1598 and lived until 1621. Don Diego was her fourth child, born in 1575; he died aged seven in 1582.
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