Congress has just formalized the contract with the painter Hernán Cortes Moreno, to whom 76,450 euros will be paid, for the portrait of the PP deputy Ana Pastor with which her time as President of the Lower House, which she held, will be remembered. between 2016 and 2019. The forecast is that the painting, the second of a woman in the Gallery of Presidents, will be hung next February, according to what parliamentary sources have told Europa Press.
Specifically, the contract has been closed for an amount of 69,500 euros which, with taxes, will remain at the aforementioned 76,450 euros, and has an execution period of three months. As stated in the documents approved at the time by the Congress Board, the table will be paid from the Chamber’s remainder fund, which at the end of the 2021 financial year had an amount of 108.24 million euros.
The Chamber maintains that the 76,450 euros that the work will cost are in line with the market price of portraits of artists of similar dimensions and what has been paid in the last 15 years for those made of previous presidents.
The portraits of Bono (the most expensive in recent years, at 82,000 euros and painted by the Madrid-born Bernardo Pérez Torrens) and that of the late Manuel Marín (the second cheapest, a photograph by Cristina García Rodero for 24,780 euros) were budgeted on same day by the Congress Board and its price generated controversy since Spain was immersed in the midst of an economic crisis. The topic even gave rise to a parliamentary debate.
It was in the Culture Commission of Congress where the then group of the Plural Left (IU-ICV-CHA) agreed on a non-legal proposal with the PSOE to urge the Government to implement “other methods of preparation” of the official portraits that resulted. “less burdensome for the State” and was committed, specifically, to expanding the use of photographs. The initiative was rejected by the PP, which then had an absolute majority.
This is the fourth work by Hernán Cortes to be hung in Congress and the second to be part of the so-called Gallery of Presidents, where the portraits of all the people who have exercised this responsibility from the Cortes of Cádiz are located. And the first woman to head the institution, the also ‘popular’ Luisa Fernanda Rudi, also entrusted Cortés with the task of immortalizing her as president. Furthermore, the Cadiz painter is the author of the polyptych that commemorates the seven ‘fathers’ of the Constitution in the Constitutional Chamber of Congress and also of the portrait of Felipe VI that presides over the Hall of Ministers, where the Table holds its meetings. of the camera.
During the presentation of that work in May 2019, Hernán Cortes joked that Congress has already become his “second home” due to the number of his works that the institution treasures.
The cheapest portrait of the presidents of those posted in recent years is of the socialist Patxi López, who presided over the Chamber for the five months that lasted the failed legislature that followed the general elections of December 2015. Its author is the illustrator and musician Elisa Pérez Ruiz and cost 10,300 euros, VAT included, 5,000 euros less than initially budgeted.
