Secret Museum: The Resurrected Jewels of the Bellas Artes Museum

Marisa D. adjusts her long braids and walks grumbling because she fell in love with the Theodora who welcomes her , and when she went to check the nomenclature she found a QR code. “I don’t like QR,” she grumbles, and her friend and a random lady who heard her complaint agree with vehemence and annoyance. Mauro H. bets that the portrait of this bejeweled lady is a Lima painting from the 18th century, judging by the Philippine fabric of her dress, and that its author is the same one from the Gastañeta Carrillo de Albornoz collection currently on display at the Lima Art Museum.

Gustavo B. films with his cell phone and argues with Laura F. that the painting in front of him is by Mildred Burton . “Not having the names at hand trains you in attributions, like we did at university,” recalls Pablo P., who does dare to do QR and examines each of the nearly 300 works by 250 artists from the 14th century to the present day, rescued from the storage of the National Museum of Fine Arts for Secret Museum. From the reserve to the gallery .

Everything is crammed from floor to ceiling , just as it was customary to exhibit in 19th century museums, when the MNBA was created. The idea was from director Andrés Duprat , with collective curatorship by the museum's research team that selected works that were rarely or never exhibited.

The space is sober, barely interrupted by two panels perpendicular to the wall, one diagonally and one L-shaped, which results in a direct and unmysterious route. The absence of nomenclatures provides the pleasure of discovering works for oneself , without the conditioning of the artist's prestige. The groupings are sufficiently clear and no indication is needed to know that we are in front of the landscape, costumbrismo, still life, abstraction, animals, urban landscape, and others. Instead of proposing "the vertigo of lists", as Umberto Eco liked, we prefer to suggest some resurrected gems:

The painting dates from 1886, the same year as the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition, meaning that Constant was an orientalist academic , who belonged to the conservative camp, while the troupe of Monet , Pissarro and others were the innovators rejected by the Academy. Benjamin Constant took part in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which lasted barely 10 months and in which Frederic Bazille, the most promising of all the Impressionists, died at the age of 28. There is Theodora, solemn as a tarot card, wearing her royal jewels, surely inspired by the Byzantine mosaic in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, with no memory of her past as an actress and prostitute.

Two of Zogbé’s paintings were shown at the 2024 Venice Biennale , which probably augurs a belated recognition for “the painter of flowers”, as this Lebanese woman born in 1890 was known during her lifetime. Researcher Andrea Geat points out: “At the age of 16, Bibí Zogbé left her hometown to seek a future in Argentina and settled in the province of San Juan, where she married Domingo Samaja, also a Lebanese immigrant whom she divorced in the 1930s. As for many foreign artists who settled in Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century, the question of identity and nationalism was to be a complex issue in the consideration of her works and their inclusion in art historiography”. It is hard to believe that flower painting has been undervalued for so long; young artists such as Cinthia Rched (from Chaco of Syrian-Lebanese origin) or Mariano Benavente today continue and strengthen this genre.

In a simple home, a little girl with her arms raised is balancing on one leg in her ballerina tights . With a tired expression, the mother stops the machine that is sewing a large green cloth. Beyond the cultural and social advancement that the scene suggests, attention must be drawn to the mother's gesture: resting her face on her fist is that of melancholy, one of the four temperaments codified by Hippocrates, along with choleric, sanguine and phlegmatic.

As early as 1514, the German Albrecht Dürer made an engraving (enigmatic from any angle due to the density of symbols) with the allegory of Melancholy, a winged woman in a long dress who rests her elbow on her knee and her hand on her cheek. Moreto da Brescia, Pieter Codde, Goya and Gauguin also painted melancholic figures (a rich man, a student, a gentleman and a Tahitian woman) and in 1934 Berni painted the same attitude as The Woman in the Red Sweater who owns the Malba .

Born in Barracas al Sud (now Avellaneda) in 1856, Mendilaharzu was educated in Paris, where he painted The Return Home , a tragic work of academic realism donated by his widow and regularly exhibited at the MNBA. He returned to the country, married, had a son, and began to have psychiatric problems. He was confined to a sanatorium, threw himself from a window, and died at the age of 38.

In the 16th century, a 60-year-old man was already considered elderly and almost a survivor; at that age and suffering from osteoarthritis, hernias and various illnesses, Francisco Pizarro , the conqueror of Peru, was assassinated in his own residence by his political adversaries with at least 20 sword wounds, according to the forensic analysis carried out on his bones in 2007. Mendilaharzu captures Pizarro's final moments with a certain emotional distance, except for one detail that sums up the tragedy: his right hand desperately scratching the bloody floor.

Although the QR says Pietà , an essential figure is missing, the Virgin , for it to be considered as such, so the iconography of this painting responds to a “Dead Christ held by two angels”, by an anonymous person from the Italian school of the mid-16th century.

In this case, the angels are clothed and wingless; the one on the right has abundant hair and bangs; the other, blonder and combed back. Each one holds Christ's wounded hands from the wrists; the face of heavenly sadness , the crown of thorns and the half-naked body coincide with the tradition of this theme. The work is attributed to Antonello da Saliba (although also to Liberale da Verona and Salvo D'Antonio) who was the brother-in-law of Antonello da Messina , curiously the author of another Christ supported by an angel, kept in the Prado, the most moving of all this iconographic tradition.

A fox lying down, painted by Rosa Bonheur , a protectionist, animal rights activist and openly lesbian in the 19th century, protected by the Empress Eugenie de Montijo, who had to request a “transvestite permit” from the French police to wear trousers. On the other hand, the Belgian Jef Leempoels painted Friendship in 1896: two gentlemen with helpless looks. The one in the red suit rests one hand on the other’s shoulder; the one in the dark jacket holds his companion’s left hand with both hands, although – let’s say – with notable anatomical imprecision. This amitié particulièr seems to enjoy a certain indulgence judging by the involuntary halos on their heads formed by the panelling of the box where they pose.