Has a Barcelona gallerist discovered a previously unknown painting by Francisco de Goya? A full technical investigation of the work has yet to be completed but everyone involved, including Spain’s culture ministry and Madrid’s Museo del Prado, is operating under the assumption that the answer is “yes”. The Prado is due to include the painting in a planned 2028 exhibition commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Spanish master’s death.
When the gallerist and antiquarian Artur Ramon bought El milagro de la aparición del eucaristo al San Pascual Bailón (The miracle of the appearance of the Eucharist to Saint Paschal Baylón) at a Madrid auction in 2018, the painting was attributed to Francisco Bayeu, Goya’s brother-in-law and mentor. It depicts the saint, a shepherd-turned-Franciscan friar who died in 1592 and was canonised roughly a century later, during one of his ecstatic visions.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Ramon transferred the painting from the gallery to his home, and there, during the long months of lockdown, he began to question the attribution. “I started to see some stylistic traits, some ways of resolving the anatomy, especially in the hands. With just some touches of light and colour, the artist managed to articulate something as complex as a hand in motion,” he says. “It seemed too good to be Bayeu’s.”
Prado evaluation
After consulting with specialists (whom he would not name, following their request to remain anonymous) who confirmed his intuition, Ramon put the painting to what he considered the ultimate test: he submitted an exportation application to Spain’s ministry of culture in order to show the work at the Tefaf art fair in Maastricht.
As part of the ministry’s approval process, the Prado evaluates pieces submitted for an export licence. “I knew that if Prado thought it was a Goya, they wouldn’t let me take it out of the country,” Ramon says.
Sure enough, his application was rejected. In a statement sent to The Art Newspaper, the ministry explains that the licence was denied “given that, in the absence of a more in-depth study and verification from various specialists, everything seems to indicate that this is an unknown work of Francisco de Goya from around 1780.”
The Prado press office confirmed that San Pascual Bailón will be included in the 2028 exhibition. Curated by Gudrun Maurer, the show will focus on Goya's varied treatment of religious themes, from devotional works to anticlerical critiques.
The work’s inclusion in the exhibition will allow a proper investigation to take place, says José Manuel Matilla, the museum’s head of conservation for drawings and prints. “The preparation for the exhibition creates the moment to study the work and then confirm or correct the attribution—and that is true not just for this painting and this exhibition but for all of them,” Matilla says. “But our starting point is, yes, that this is a Goya.”
Changing style
Xavier Bray, the director of the Wallace Collection in London and a specialist in Goya’s religious works, tells The Art Newspaper that establishing the artist’s authorship can be especially complicated because his style changed profoundly over the course of his life. “It’s a bit of a minefield, particularly his religious work of the early period,” Bray says. But the work is definitely of interest, he adds.
“It’s a picture that you want to know more about. It’s not obviously not by Goya, but it’s not obviously by Goya. It’s very fascinatingly on the fence.”
Before the process commences that will confirm to which side of the fence the painting falls, the work will be shown at the Artur Ramon Gallery in October as part of an exhibition to celebrate the gallery’s 100th anniversary.
For Ramon (who is the fourth of five antiquarian Artur Ramons; his great-grandfather founded the business and his son currently works in it), being able to include a Goya in the Prado show brings tremendous satisfaction. “I like to say that the Prado is my gymnasium, and I’ve spent quite a lot of time looking at Goyas. But when I bought it, it never occurred to me that it might be his,” Ramon says. “This kind of thing happens once in a lifetime of an antiquarian, if he’s lucky.”