Dr. Xavier Sierra i Valentí Three Beggars, Giacomo Ceruti, known as Il Pittocchetto, 1736. Thyssen-Bornesmiza Collection, (on long-term loan to the Museu Nacional). In this painting by Giacomo Ceruti we can see three old beggars dressed in rags. Ceruti, who was also known as “Il pittochetto” was a painter of the late Italian Baroque, active…
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The new academic year is just beginning and we are going back into the classrooms, with new creators in the museum’s eighth collaboration with the programme Creadors EN RESIDÈNCIA als instituts de Barcelona. Now it is time to look back at last year and the experience of Svantje Busshoff. This artist, who was present in…
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Daniel Vilarrúbias The chest was perhaps the container par excellence in Catalonia in the early modern period, since the type appears in the mid 15th century, coexisting with iron-bound or heavier-looking chests, and it disappears in the middle of the 18th century, when the wardrobe became widespread and the chest of drawers suddenly appeared, dressing…
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Pablo José Alcoverand Rosa Mayordomo Bread, a brief history From prehistory to the Middle Ages, bread played a decisive role in food. So far, the oldest bread remains have been found in an excavation in Israel. They are 22,500 years old, that is to say, from the Upper Paleolithic period. These prehistoric loaves would be rounded,…
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Ana Diéguez-Rodríguez Some years ago I had the opportunity to visit the art storerooms of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya on Montjuïc. I was accompanying the conservator of the museum’s Renaissance and Baroque Department, Joan Yeguas, and the group of students from the University of Lleida on the Master’s degree course in the cataloguing…
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Céline Mülich Visiting museums in Barcelona and writing about them is my daily business, an ordinary activity that lately has been converted into something really special. With the museums being closed for weeks, we had to get back to virtual experiences, such as consulting the web, online collections, podcasts, videos, social media or virtual visits…
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Pablo José Alcover Cateura and Antoni Riera Melis Introduction Cherries are depicted in two Gothic altarpieces in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. This entry in the museum’s blog will explain why they are there. First, a few notes about the word ‘cherry’. The English word, the Catalan cirera and the Castilian cereza all come…
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Irina Grevtsova Their doors closed due to the COVID-19 crisis, therefore museums and many cultural institutions have had to sharpen their wits in order to continue providing their visitors – now, virtual visitors – with high-quality initiatives. Without wishing to ever replace the direct experience of a visit – to incentivize it rather, in what…
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The inlay work of Gaspar Homar ESTER COBLES PÉREZ and SOL URBANO MORALES The late nineteenth century was a period of sharp socioeconomic contrasts, emerging due to the process of industrialization in cities. In Barcelona, this process, along with the return of wealthy capitalists because of the Cuban crisis, created an economic boom. The flow…
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Last year, the students in the second year of the Higher Diploma in Visual Arts and Design for Interior Design Project Management at the Escola Massana visited the museum. The results of this visit are six texts in which the students analyse and contextualize different items of furniture and the decorative arts in the Modern…
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