THE COLLECTION IN A BITE

One weekend a month, Amics visit the Museum’s galleries to taste the works in the collection, guided by our collaborators.

Led by Santi Mercader, PhD in Art History.

This 2 September marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Francesc Cambó i Batlle, one of the most influential political and cultural figures of the 20th century in Catalonia and Spain. This businessman and lawyer was one of the founders and most prominent leaders of the Lliga Regionalista, the main Catalan conservative party of the early 20th century, and went on to serve as a minister in two Spanish governments of national coalition.

As a patron of culture, Cambó created the Fundació Bernat Metge to promote the translation of major Greek and Latin texts into Catalan, and in less than a decade assembled an extraordinary collection of paintings intended to fill the gaps in the Museo del Prado, an institution he greatly admired, and to provide the city of Barcelona with a strong selection of masterpieces from the Renaissance and Baroque, a period scarcely represented in the city’s municipal art collections. This gave rise to the Llegat Cambó, the collection of 50 paintings that the family of this great patron donated to the Museum after his death.

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of Francesc Cambó, we will explore the major works in his legacy and explain in detail how they became part of it.

Image: Ramon Casas. Portrait of Francesc Cambó, 1906. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.