The walls of the Prado they are transformed into the disappeared church of Santiago de los Españoles de Roma to welcome the set of frescoes that Annibale Carracci devised for the holy place. The exhibition brings together for the first time since 1833 the frescoes scattered among various museums.
‘Annibal Carraci. The frescoes of the Herrera chapel’ lands in the Prado Museum from March 8 in an ambitious joint project between the Prado, the MNAC (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya) and the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica Palazzo Barberini in Rome, which has been in the making for several decades.
Reunion following two centuries
The exhibition is an excellent opportunity to discover the work of Carraci (Bologna, 1560 -Rome 1609), a “great artist”, largely “forgotten by the general public”according to Andrés Úbeda, deputy director of the Prado Museum and curator of the exhibition.
The exhibition is conductive thread of a fascinating story. The frescoes were commissioned from Carraci by the banker from Palencia Juan Enríquez de Herrera for the church of Santiago de los Españoles -located in Piazza Navona- in devotion to San Diego de Alcalá, to whom he had prayed for the healing of his sick son. he. Carraci devised them and began the work, but an illness and then his death caused the project to be finished by one of his disciples, Francesco Albani.
In 1833 the bad state of the holy place it made them decide to uproot the frescoes and send them to Spain. Seven are in the Prado, nine in the MNAC and three others -along with the painting on the altar- were moved to the Roman church of Santa María de Montserrat, where no matter how hard Úbeda has searched for them, they do not appear. “These frescoes have kept me up at night for a long time,” said Úbeda today, who personally went to look for the missing pieces in the Roman church without success.
The project has decades of research and the exhibition has suffered numerous delays, the latest due to the pandemic. The Madrid museum restored the frescoes in 2012 – a three-year process – with the idea of exhibiting them, since they have not been shown since the seventies. The pieces of the MNAC are instead in its permanent collection.
The exhibition, which can be seen until June 12, will then travel to Barcelona and Rome. “Seeing them together is very impressive.“, said the director of the MNAC, Josep Serra, who has announced future collaborations between the two institutions.
The Prado, a chapel
The frescoes, which were transferred to the wings, show images with the life of the saint, his miracles, the Virgin and other religious scenes. The museum accompanies its exhibition with a series of preparatory drawingswhich will be changed with different headquarters.
The museum has tried to evoke the way devotees encountered Carracci’s images. The tour begins with pictures of the outside of the church -including a painting by Gaspar Van Wittel- and continues with the images of the access arch.
In the next room the first frescoes that were seen upon entering the chapel are exhibited, at eye level, to continue with the intermediate paintings, which have been arranged in a kind of dome, to finish with the central lantern.
The works reveal “the superb quality” of Carracci’s last years, despite the fact that they were designed to be seen from several meters away. “He gave the best of his talent in these works”, in the words of Úbeda, who sees in this exhibition an excellent opportunity to discover the work of the Italian Baroque master.