Marią Fortuny: a new section with engravings never before exhibited
Foto: Marią Fortuny: Anacoreta. C.1869
©MNAC, Museu Nacional dArt de Catalunya. Fotografia Calveras/Mčrida/Sagristą
The Museum has renovated the room devoted to graphic work and, as from today, is exhibiting some 50 prints that illustrate Marią Fortuny's extraordinary skill as an engraver. These prints are part of the collection of the Cabinet of Drawings and Engravings of the MNAC and some of them had never before been exhibited.
In the new room devoted to Fortuny the engraver every subject is represented, such as his Orientalism, his 'dress coat painting' and his portraits, which the artist worked at from the 1860s, when he reached his creative maturity and made a great name for himself internationally.
The selection of works gives a new all-round view, at the same time as it lets us discover his working procedure through the different artist's proofs. Works like Casbah Guard in Tetouan (1861), Fortune Teller (1867), The Anchorite (1869) or The Botanist (1868-1869) reveal the way Fortuny explored chiaroscuro and the experiments with subjects and resources he later applied to painting. Also on show is the last print Fortuny made, a portrait of Velįzquez dating from 1873.
The series helps to emphasise Marią Fortuny's central role as a key figure in the history of European engraving, alongside Ribera and Goya.
Digitalisation of the complete works of Fortuny in the Cabinet of Drawings and Engravings of the MNAC
The Cabinet of Drawings and Engravings keeps more than 2,000 drawings and prints by Marią Fortuny, the largest museum collection of work on paper by this artist and hence a heritage of great value to researchers and to the general public. Now, thanks to funding from Fundación Telefónica, the Museum has undertaken the digitalisation of all the works, a process that has been a breakthrough for the study and diffusion of the work of the most international Catalan artist of the 19th century. Part of this collection can already be consulted on the MNAC Online Collections portal, where the entire 2,458 works will be published in the near future.
