Prado withdraws Bosch loans
February 15 2016
Picture: Museo Prado
The art trade is often criticised for being sensitive about attributions. It doesn't matter who painted a painting, say the academics - the object itself is what matters. But museums can be just as touchy about these things too. The Hermitage Museum museum would only lend its 'Madonna Litta' to the National Gallery's 2012 Leonardo exhibition if it could guarantee that the picture would be labelled as 'Leonardo'. The Hermitage also insisted on writing the catalogue entry themselves.
The National Gallery, believing (I thought justly) that the 'Madonna Litta' was probably not by Leonardo, got around the issue by declaring that the exhibition contained nine paintings 'described by their institutions as by Leonardo'. The catalogue entry for the Madonna Litta read like a piece of Soviet art historical nationalism, but the exhibition's curator, Luke Syson, made it pretty clear elsewhere in the catalogue that many scholars doubted the attribution. It was a good museum fudge, and allowed a proper discussion about the picture's strengths and weaknesses in the context of other works by Leonardo and his followers.
But now the Prado has demonstrated an extreme case of museum sensitivity by withdrawing, just days before the opening, two pictures requested by the Noordbrabants Museum for their new Hieronymous Bosch exhibition. The two pictures are The Cure of Folly, and The Temptation of St Anthony (above), both of which the Prado say are by Bosch, but which the new Bosch Research Project have said are by later followers. The Prado is unhappy about the downgrade. Martin Bailey has the story in The Art Newspaper, and reports:
The Cure of Folly had been promised by the Prado and is in the catalogue, but it was finally withdrawn a matter of days before the opening because the Madrid museum was unhappy about its deattribution and a television film about the Dutch research. Curators at the Prado are convinced it was painted by Bosch between 1500 and 1510, whereas the Netherlands-based Bosch Research and Conservation Project concluded that it was from the workshop or a follower, dating it to 1510-20. A Prado spokeswoman says that The Cure of Folly represents “a very important” part of its permanent collection and a loan to the Noordbrabants exhibition would not be justified.
The Prado also cancelled the loan of The Temptation of St Anthony, regarded as autograph by the Madrid museum and dated to around 1490. The Dutch researchers believe it is by a later follower and done in 1530-40. The Dutch team also rejected the Bosch attribution of The Seven Deadly Sins, saying it is by the workshop or a follower (1510-20). It was not requested for the show.
The Prado's behaviour strikes me as small-minded, rude, unfair, juvenile and contrary to all the usual standards of art historical and curatorial debate. To decline a loan because you're sensitive about an attribution is one thing, but to withdraw an agreed loan at the last minute, after the show has been designed, and the catalogue has gone to press, demonstrates breathtaking institutional arrogance.
The Bosch project may well have got itself into the sort of art historical contortions we might see in a Bosch painting. I can't find their reasoning on their website. Maybe the Prado is right, and the pictures are by Bosch. The St Anthony doesn't immediately look (from the website images) like a much later 1530s/40s pastiche, as the Bosch project suggests. But the best way for the Prado to demonstrate that their pictures are 'right' is to send them to the Bosch exhibition, where people can compare them with other works. Let the pictures speak for themselves.
For some time now, the world of intra-museum loans for exhibitions has become a bureacratic and curatorial nightmare. Pictures are no longer just loaned for an interesting exhibition, but are used as leverage to extract things in return. Ever more laborious conservation and transport restrictions are added, usually by conservation departments whose sole raison d'etre seems to be to say 'no' to loan requests (or require couriers to travel with items, in business class of course). And as we have seen above, loans can now come with attributional strings attached, restricting debate and scholarship. The end result is that even a small Old Master display in a medium-sized museum can now cost between £300,000 and £400,000 - a ridiculous sum. In the meantime, costs are cut elsewhere, most shamefully in curatorial salaries.
The last decade has seen a massive inflation in the cost (both financial and in terms of quid pro quos) of moving museum pictures about. It is entirely unnecessary, and something needs to be done about it. The simplest thing to do would be for the world's leading museum directors to get together and say they won't indulge in this behaviour any more. Of course, it won't happen.
Update - a reader tweets:
So last minute was the withdrawal that there's still a number tag on the wall where St Anthony would have hung.
Update II - but the Prado now says it withdrew the loans in November.
