The Spanish Gesture: Drawings from Murillo to Goya in the Hamburger Kunsthalle by Mark A. Rogl??n (2014-08-01)

Despite their renown among scholars of classic Spanish drawing, the collection of Spanish drawings at the Hamburger Kunsthalle is barely known. Almost all of the works in this collection are from the Academy founded in Seville in 1660 under the aegis of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and Francisco de Herrera the Younger, and they bear priceless witness to that period's artistic teachings. The collection contains works not only by Murillo and Herrera the Younger, but also some of the very finest work by many of Spain's most outstanding seventeenth-century artists, including Alonso Cano, Antonio del Castillo, Francisco de Herrera the Elder, and Juan de Valdés Leal. A second essential group of works in the Hamburg Collection are the drawings Francisco de Goya created after original paintings by Diego Velázquez, now at the Museo Nacional del Prado, which Goya reproduced as prints both to polish his engraving skills and to launch a practice for which there was no prior tradition in Spain: the reproductive print used to spread knowledge of the treasures in the Royal Collection. With this catalogue raisonné drawn up by German and Spanish specialists, the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Meadows Museum in Dallas, Texas, present the entire collection for the very first time.