Museo Cerralbo

Museo Cerralbo
Madrid, España

The Museo Cerralbo is special in that it is one of the few examples in Madrid of a 19th century mansion which preserves its original décor. It was the residence of the 17th Marquis of Cerralbo, don Enrique de Aguilera (1845-1922), and his family, comprised of his wife, doña Inocencia Serrano y Cerver (1816-1896), widow of don Antonio del Valle, who brought two children to the marriage, don Antonio del Valle y Serrano (1846-1900), 1st Marquis of Villa-Huerta, and doña Amelia (1850- 1927), Marquise of Villa-Huerta upon the death of her brother. As a House-museum it is a must-see for learning about the lifestyle of the aristocracy in Madrid in the late 19th century and the early 20th century. Moreover, as a collector’s Museum it reflects the artistic tastes of its time, a collection that was considered, at that time, to be one of the most important private collections in the country and, without a doubt, the most complete of its time. About the Marquis Don Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa, 17th Marquis of Cerralbo, was born in Madrid on 8 July 1845. From his teens he showed a leaning towards the Fine Arts with a gift for drawing, poetry and painting. His enthusiastic and altruistic spirit led him to found the Young Catholics and to join the Carlist party at age twenty four. Three years later he was elected as a member of parliament for the province of Ledesma in Salamanca. He studied Philosophy, Arts and Law at the Universidad Central of Madrid. On 25 August 1871 he married doña Inocencia Serrano y Cerver. In 1885 he was appointed Senator of the Kingdom in his own right. From April 1890 he would be don Charles of Bourbon’s representative in Spain. In honour of his dedication and services rendered, he was awarded the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1895 and, in 1896, he was awarded the Collar of the Order of the Holy Ghost. Don Enrique combined his dedication to politics with his devotion to literature, art and his passion for collecting; a restlessness that would lead him to go on many trips throughout Europe with his family. Together they visited museums and monuments and acquired many of the artworks, antiques and decorative objects which are housed in this house-museum today. In addition, he devoted himself to historical investigations. In 1900 he published the study Doña María Henríquez de Toledo, mujer del Gran Duque de Alba, and years later, in 1908, his acceptance speech to the Royal Academy of History: El Arzobispo Don Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada y el Monasterio de Santa María de Huerta. It was at this time that his interest in several archaeological and palaeontological sites in the Castilian plateau began. He returned briefly to politics in 1912, acting this time as the representative of don Jaime of Bourbon, a position he would hold until 1919 when the party split up after the First World War. At sixty-four years of age, having definitively abandoned Carlist lines, he devoted himself completely to Archaeology. Around 1903 he met Juan Cabré, a young artist and archaeologist, with whom he would collaborate and maintain a close friendship. From his mansion at Santa María de Huerta in Soria he directed and financed over a hundred digs around the river Jalón. The results of the first excavations are published in his work Páginas de la Historia Patria por mis excavaciones arqueológicas, a five-volume study for which he received the Martorell International Award in 1912. Bearing in mind that the law of the time permitted those who had carried out archaeological digs to keep of some of the objects found on them, don Enrique accumulated thousands of pieces in his mansions in Madrid and Soria which, in the end, went to the Museo Arqueológico Nacional and the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales of Madrid. In 1912 he went to the International Congress on Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology in Geneva as a representative of the Real Academia de la Historia, where he presented his studies on Torralba and Iberian burial grounds. From then on he collaborated with the most prestigious European scientific and cultural institutions, such as the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine in Paris, the Academia Pontificia Romana dei Nuovi Lincei and Imperial Insititute in Berlin. He kept in contact with H. Breuil, H. Obermaier, L. Siret, E. Tormo, J. Amador de los Ríos, A. Schulten and É. Cartailhac, among many others, on a scientific basis. His passion for collecting began at an early age with the world of Numismatics; years later, his marriage to doña Inocencia, the inheritance from his grandfather and his investments, although cautious, in the stock market and the railway allowed him to amass a varied and important artistic heritage. A tireless curios and collectables hunter in auctions and antique shops, mainly in France and Italy, he bought twenty-one paintings from the Michiele from Venice antique shop in 1883, works by Ruschi, Tintoretto and Palma el Joven among them. In Paris, he often went to auctions in the Hotel Drouot and acquired drawings, prints, marble busts, European and Oriental porcelain, clocks, rare books and manuscripts, as well as coins from the Belgian colonel P. Maillet’s collection. In the Hotel des Ventes in Rue Rossini he obtained several Oriental musical instruments which came from Adolphe Sax’s museum of instruments; Adolphe Sax being the inventor of the saxophone. Due to large collections going on sale in Spain, such as the Marquis of Salamanca’s, he had the opportunity to obtain pictorial works which, in turn, had come from José Madrazo’s collection and before that, from the houses belonging to the Marquis of Leganés and the Marquis of Altamira. Cerralbo also went to the large national and international exhibitions held in Paris and other European cities in search of decorative elements for his mansion. A wide range of decorative objects which drew inspiration from former times, such as dinner and tea services, glassware, sculptures, porcelain, lamps, mirrors, clocks, furniture, rugs, tapestries and painted papers, were shown and commercialised in these exhibitions. In the end, he was able to amass an important and varied collection, considered one of the most complete in Spain at the time. The Marquis’s zeal for collecting was not an isolated occurrence, but a hobby that became popular in principal European cities during the mid-nineteenth century, especially among the wealthy bourgeoisies. Curieux and connoisseur were the terms of the period used to define the profile of professional collectors; wealthy gentlemen with enough free time to travel, take part in auctions and visit antique shops in search of art works, objets of art, antiques and curios. To the initial interest in owning such items was later added that of research; collectors became, by dint of looking, buying and studying, true specialists who needed to share their findings in scholarly publications. Cerralbo’s concern that a collection brought together with such passion, dedication and effort could be scattered led him to create a Museum. Thanks to his initiative, the Spanish national heritage includes the testimony of a period, a lifestyle and artistic preferences that would have otherwise been lost. Don Enrique expressed his desires in a will written in 1922: “Throughout my life I have spent much time collecting works of art, archaeological pieces and curios. Having been able to bring together important and valuable collections, and given that I don’t have obligatory heirs, I have decided to keep these collections in such a way that they shall always remain together and be there to be studied by science and art enthusiasts”.

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Museo CerralboC. de Ventura Rodríguez, 17
Moncloa - Aravaca
28008 Madrid
España
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Horario de apertura
lunesCerrado
martes9:30–15:00
miércoles9:30–15:00
jueves9:30–15:00, 17:00–20:00
viernes9:30–15:00
sábado9:30–15:00
domingo10:00–15:00
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