ANDRES UBEDA DE LOS COBOS

La exposición cuenta con un conjunto de setenta y cinco piezas, entre dibujos, planos arquitectónicos, acuarelas, óleos y estampas, con los que se pretende ilustrar la pintura del artista en el Casón, su historia, significado, iconografía, así como su técnica de ejecución y sus sucesivas restauraciones. Además, a través de este conjunto -considerado por sus contemporáneos la obra más perfecta de las realizadas por Giordano en España-, el Museo quiere abordar también el estudio de toda la producción mural española del artista: la escalera y las bóvedas de la Basílica de El Escorial (1692 # 1694), el despacho y dormitorio (este último destruido) del monarca en el Palacio de Aranjuez; el Casón del Buen Retiro (c. 1697); la sacristía de la catedral de Toledo (1698); la Real Capilla del Alcázar (destruido) y San Antonio de los Portugueses (1699). La presentación de esta muestra en el Casón, en la que se incluyen 56 pinturas del artista napolitano, constituye el último capítulo de una larga investigación comenzada en 2001, momento en que se inició la restauración de la bóveda de Giordano. Dicha investigación ha estado dirigida por Andrés Úbeda de los Cobos, Jefe de Área de Conservación de Pintura Italiana y Francesa hasta 1700 del Museo y ha sido orientada hacia dos aspectos fundamentalmente: por una parte, la historia de la bóveda y su significado. Por otra, el uso del fresco por parte de Giordano, sus variantes y heterodoxias, que permiten proponerlo como un pintor empeñado permanentemente en la experimentación de nuevos soportes materiales y en la aplicación de novedosas soluciones obligadas por el carácter específico de la arquitectura española.

Over barely a century, Georges de La Tour (1593-1652) has gone from being virtually unknown to being acknowledged as one of the most popular figures in the history of French painting. Both the exhibition and the catalogue offer an overview of the painter''s style, the subtle development of his technique, and the different treatments afforded to the personages that interested him.In this catalogue, renowned specialists in baroque painting update our knowledge of the painter, with texts from Jean-Pierre Cuzin, Guillaume Kazerouni, Dimitri Salmon and Andres Ubeda de los Cobos, Chief Curator of Italian and French Painting (up to 1700) at the Museo del Prado and co-curator of the exhibition.

In spite of the huge number of paintings by this artist in the Prado, Luca Giordano (Naples, 1634-1705) is seldom studied and is therefore little known to the public, who often do not see beyond the cliché of his prodigious speed of execution. The present volume sets out to remedy this lack of knowledge. It begins with three introductory essays that set the Prado paintings in the context of Giordano's life, survey the painter's critical fortunes from his own time to the present day, and provide information on his Spanish period, which lasted from 1692 to 1702. These initial texts also look into specific issues, among them Giordano's relationship with his dealers, and more controversial aspects such as the commercial strategies he used to disseminate his work. The second part of the book - the catalogue raisonné proper - consists of entries for each of the paintings studied, including information on their provenance, condition, restoration history, related literature, iconography, visual sources and critical fortunes. It features a total of 99 paintings executed on different supports and in various media which span all the stages of his production except the period following his return to Naples in 1702. This catalogue is the result of many years of thorough research conducted by its author, Andrés Úbeda de los Cobos, Deputy Director for Conservation and Research at the Museo del Prado. He is a specialist on Luca Giordano and has published various articles and books on the artist's oeuvre, such as a study on the fresco of the Apotheosis of the Spanish Monarchy in the Casón del Buen Retiro in 2008 - a project which, in a sense, has been brought to a successful completion by this book.

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