Valentín Carderera


Valentín Carderera y Solano was a Spanish painter, erudite scholar and collector. He was named honorary court painter during the reign of Isabel II.

Biography

He attended the, where he studied philosophy then, thanks to the patronage of José de Palafox, studied drawing in Zaragoza with and painting in Madrid in the Royal Academy of Arts, where his teachers were Mariano Salvador Maella and José de Madrazo. In 1822, he won a grant to study in Rome, awarded by José António, Duke of Villahermosa. He remained in Italy until 1831, travelling widely and creating sketches and watercolours.
Back to Spain, in 1836, he received a commission to make an inventory of the nationalised works of art from suppressed monasteries in Castile. From 1838, he was a governing member of the board at the Museo Real de Pintura y Escultura. He was also a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he taught art history and, from 1843, he held a chair at the Real Academia de la Historia. In 1873, he helped establish the by donating paintings from his own collection.
His most familiar works are portraits of famous Spaniards throughout history; gathered together in a large anthology called Iconografía Española, which constitutes his magnum opus. In order to defray the costs of publication, he had to sell his collection of drawings and prints to the Biblioteca Nacional.
As a writer, he also contributed regular essays on cultural subjects to El Artista, Semanario Pintoresco Español, El Museo Universal and the French Gazette des Beaux-Arts. In 1866, he edited the first edition of the Discursos practicables del nobilísimo arte de la pintura, written in 1675 by Jusepe Martínez.
As a collector, he was particularly fond of the drawings and engravings of Francisco de Goya and owned a large collection of them. In 1835, he wrote the first substantial biography of Goya, which was published in the journal El Artista.

Writings