Collection 'Los Madrazo'

The Community of Madrid acquired in 2006 a collection formed by 84 works in which three generations of painters of the Madrazo family are gathered, representatives of all the pictorial tendencies of the Spanish nineteenth century: the Neoclassicism of the Patriarch, José de Madrazo Agudo, Romanticism of his son Federico de Madrazo Kuntz, the paintings commissioned by Luis de Madrazo Kuntz, or the impressionism of Raimundo and Ricardo de Madrazo Garreta.

This collection acquired thanks to a donation in payment of taxes by the direct descendants of the painters: María Teresa de Madrazo and Madrazo, (only daughter of the painter Luis de Madrazo Kuntz) and her husband, Mario de Daza y Campos. Both kept in their home in Madrid a set of homogeneous paintings, unique and especially attractive.

There is a valuable testimony that shows us how the works were after the dismantling of the house. The photographer Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, winner of the National Photography Prize, made a unique report for a series called "La seda rota", which recreates the atmosphere of a populated space with the memory of its inhabitants and from which 8 photographs have they represent a valuable documentary testimony of the collection. 

The Madrazo were exceptional witnesses of the nineteenth-century Spanish world, and through their exceptional portraits we recognize the royal family, the aristocrats, capitalists and other socially prominent personalities of the time. They also portrayed his private life: family portraits with the cosmopolitan Madrazo women or the portraits of friendly writers and artists.

Recognized and admired, they came to hold highly relevant public positions: directors of the Prado Museum, painters from the Royal Chamber and directors of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and, therefore, they were related to the main European academic establishments, and they acted as cicerones of the foreign artists who visited Madrid. Also noteworthy is their work in the Monuments Commission, work that allowed them to travel the Spanish geography worrying about architectural recovery and restoration.

The Community of Madrid has encouraged the Collection, which was presented to the Madrid public in 2007 at the Royal Monastery of the Comendadoras de Santiago el Mayor in Madrid, to travel and be exhibited admired in various places: at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, with the collaboration of SEACEX, in the Old Hospital of Santa María la Rica in Alcalá de Henares, in the National Museums of two Polish cities, Poznan and Gdansk, in the Palace of the Counts of Sástago in Zaragoza, in the Mira de Pozuelo de Alarcón, in the Fundación Daurel in Barcelona and in the exhibition hall of the Fundación CajaCanarias in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.