Letter from Madrid
After eleven years of complaints, appeal and back and forth between various judicial bodies, the Spanish Supreme Court finally decided, on May 28, in the case of the paintings of the Roman monastery of Santa Maria de Sijena, who has opposed the regions of Aragon and Catalonia since 2015. Unsurprisingly, but not without controversy, she confirmed, in the last instance, the conviction of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia (MNAC), in Barcelona, to restore within twenty days the murals of the monastery of the town of Villanueva de Sijena, in the Aragonese province of Huesca. Dated from 1196 to 1208, they were torn off in 1936, to protect them from the Spanish War, before being bought by the MNAC from nuns who were not the owners.
For managers of the Catalan museum, who has exhibited them since 1961 and has called on many experts in recent years to arm the arguments against the transfer of paintings, this decision endangers extremely fragile works. For the Aragonese government, which has invested nearly 1.2 million euros in restoration work on the monastery, including the installation of a sophisticated air conditioning system in order to welcome them, it is time that returns to its place of origin “The Sistine Chapel of Romanesque Art”. “The monastery is able to store these works in perfect security and, in a very short time, to expose them”assured the president of the autonomous region, Jorge Azcon (Popular Party, PP, right).
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Source: Lemonde