From Lugano with Love

April 14, 2023 by Jessica In Madrid, Spain Leave a comment

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

More familiarly known as “the Thyssen,” the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is part of the Golden Triangle of Art, which also includes the Museo Reina Sofía and the Museo del Prado.

*The Rainbow, Autumn, Catskill* by Worthington Whittredge

*Expulsion – Moon and Firelight* by Thomas Cole

The collection began in the 1920s privately, gathered by Heinrich, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon, a German-Hungarian entrepreneur and art collector. During the Great Depression, he acquired many paintings from American millionaires trying to make ends meet due to inheritance taxes and the ongoing recession. In this way, he purchased Ghirlandaio’s Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, which was once in the Morgan Library, and Carpaccio’s Knight, which once belonged to Otto Kahn, a German-born American investment banker.

*Orion in Winter* by Charles Ephraim Burchfield

*July Drought Sun* by Charles Ephraim Burchfield

*The Fort and Ten Pound Island, Gloucester, Massachusetts* by Fitz Henry Lane

*Falls of Saint Anthony, Upper Mississippi* by Henry Lewis

*Portrait of Millicent Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland* by John Singer Sargent

*A Girl in Japanese Gown – The Kimono* by William Merritt Chase

*Sunday After Sermon, 1969* by Romare Bearden

Heinrich’s son, Baron Hans Heinrich, continued to expand the collection in the following decades. Initially housed in the family home in Lugano, Switzerland, in a building modeled after the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. After failing to acquire a permit to extend this twenty-room building from the Lugano City Council in 1988, the Baron began to seek a new place to house his collection. As he had married Carmen “Tita” Cervera, a Spanish socialite and art collector, three years prior, he was easily persuaded to relocate the collection to Spain, into an available building near the Prado – the Palacio de Villahermosa.

*Girl with Red Hat* by Raphael Soyer / *The Girl at the Window* by Eastman Johnson

*Wet Day, Columbus Avenue, Boston* by Childe Hassam

*The Abundance of Summer* by Paul Lacroix

*Bunny in the corner* by Roberto Bernardi

*Cataln Peasant with a Guitar* by Joan Miró

The Palacio de Villahermosa was built in the 18th century as the home of the Dukes of Villahermosa, and was remodeled in 1805 in the Neoclassical style by Antonio López Aguado. In the 1970s the building served as the site of the López Quesada Bank until it went bankrupt in 1980, when it became the property of the Spanish State. In 1984, it became an extension of the Museo del Prado and housed temporary exhibitions. It was after this that it became the home of the Thyssen-Bornemisza.

*The Machine Drill* by František Kupka / *The Staircase* by Fernand Léger

The museum first opened in 1992, showcasing 715 pieces. The following year, the Spanish Government purchased 775 works, and Cervera loaned 429 pieces from her own collection to the museum in 1999. The last time the loan was renewed was in 2021, for a period of 15 years.

*Gaston Bonnefoy* by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

*The Woods at Marly* by Camille Pissarro

*Horsewoman, Full-Face (L’Amazone)* by Édouard Manet

*Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon – Effect of Rain* by Camille Pissarro

*The Park of the Lions at Port-Marly* by Camille Corot

*Portrait of a Lady as a Vestal Virgin* by Angelica Kauffmann

*Interior of the Temple of Diana at Nimes* by Hubert Robert

*Portrait of David Lyon* by Thomas Lawrence

*The Dutch Fleet in the Goeree Roads* by Willem van de Velde II

*Winter Landscape* by Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael

*Portrait of a Man Aged Fifty-Eight* by Cornelis Ketel / *Portrait of a Woman Aged Fifty-Six* by Cornelis Ketel

*Self-Portrait Wearing a Hat and Two Chains* by Rembrandt

*Interior with a Woman Seated by a Hearth* by Jacobus Vrel

*View of the Binnenhof, The Hague* by Gerrit Adraensz Berckheyde

*The West Façade of the Church of Saint Mary in Utrecht* by Pieter Jansz Saenredam

*Interior of a Gothic Church* by Peeter Neeffs

*Interior of a Gothic Church* by Emanuel de Witte

*The Grand Canal with San Simeone Piccolo and Santa Lucia* by Francesco Guardi

*Capriccio with a River and Bridge* by Bernardo Bellotto

*Young Knight in a Landscape* by Vittore Carpaccio

The museum’s collection spans a total of eight centuries of European painting. Painting from the trecento and quattrocento find representation in Duccio, Paolo Uccello, and Bernardo Daddi, and early Flemish art in Jan Van Eyck and Hans Memling. Its Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo collections include Titian, Veronese, Bronzino, Dürer, El Greco, Chardin, and Caravaggio, and its American collection holds work by Copley and John Singer Sargent. Works from the 19th and 20th centuries include pieces by Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Kandinsky, and Lichtenstein, and some pieces from the collection are housed in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona.

*The Massacre of the Innocents* by Lucas van Valckenborch I

*Portrait of Anne of Hungary and Bohemia* by Hans Maler

*The Annunciation to Saint Anne* by Bernhard Strigel

*Portrait of a Man* (Georg Thurzo?) by Master of the Monogram TK

*The Visitation* by Jakob and/or Hans Strüb

I was lucky enough to catch Mestiza Memories when I visited, which was an exhibition showing work by the Afro-Andalusian artist Carla Hayes Mayoral. She uses raffia in her work, a material characteristic of African culture, and mixes visual references from the West in order to examine Spain and Europe’s colonial past.