It has been 25 years since Francisco Álvarez-Cascos announced the current project, which at the time was estimated at 60 million euros, although it cost 172. And it has been almost 90 years since Azaña conceived the idea of ‘a museum of tapestries and carriages to show the public the collections accumulated by the monarchy. But after many doubts, endless delays and changes in the exhibition project – the 40,000 m2 of the new institution have been built and empty since 2015 – the Royal Collections Gallery has finally presented its treasures. The 650 chosen to tour the Austrian and Bourbon monarchies through an avalanche of paintings, tapestries, sculptures, furniture, crockery, armour, books and carriages.
“We have the vocation to be a key point of culture and tourism in Madrid, Spain and Europe. It has been a difficult and complex road to get here, but the Royal Collections Gallery will mean one more night for tourists to stay overnight, it will have a great economic impact”, stressed the president of National Heritage, Ana de la Cueva, when she presented the enormous building of Mansilla and Tuñón next to the Royal Palace. A peculiar Escorial of art where the rationalist and sober lines contrast with the baroque or rococo volutes and borders that decorate the rooms.
Caravaggio and his unappealing Salomé with the head of John the Baptist. Velázquez and the powerful white horse on two legs that he had painted in his studio for when the monarchs commissioned him for another equestrian portrait. The portraits of Charles IV and María Luisa of Parma and a phantasmagoric and fabulous Saint Isabel by Goya. Tiziano, Patinit, El Greco, Mengs, Pantoja de la Cruz… the list of painters is long, especially in the Bourbon room, which opens a new era after the Austrians with the monumental portraits of Felipe V and Isabel de Farnesio by Van Loo.
With the Austrians, it is the allegorical tapestries of their grandeur and their religiosity that prevail, from the Noah arcade to Atlas, Scipio and Hannibal or The magazine of the troops in Barcelona by Carlos V in 1535 by in his campaign in North Africa. Exactly two tapestries on the virtues of the monarchs open and close the 4,000 square meters of the two main floors: the visit starts with a Flemish tapestry from 1515, La Gràcia publishes the Honors, and the Allegory of Peace made by Guillermo Pérez Villalta for the 25 years of the Constitution of 1978. A journey that goes from the Catholic Kings to Alfonso XIII, although in reality the collections end when Elizabeth II goes into exile and the assets are nationalized.
Pieces such as the Mühlberg armor of Carlos V, the tapestry of the Bosco painting The Garden of Delights, the prodigious four Solomonic columns by Francisco de Herrera el Mozo and José Simón de Churriguera for the defunct church of the Royal Patronage of the Hospital Mare de Déu de Montserrat, the fabulous sculpture of Roldana, in which the demon at the feet of the angel looks like the advertisement of a current disco despite being from 1692, beautiful chinoiseries that show the taste for the oriental that appears in the middle from the 18th century…
The architect Emilio Tuñón – his partner Luis Moreno Mansilla, with whom he created the building, died in 2012 – assures that this “inhabited retaining wall” completes the cornice presided over by the Royal Palace and the Almudena and which is both the image and the origin of Madrid: there was, he recalled, the citadel that Mohamed I ordered to be built to defend Toledo, and the remains of which appeared – and are now exhibited – with the works .
