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THE CONSECRATION OF A MASTERPIECE: THE REPRODUCTION OF THE PORTICO OF GLORY IN THE CAST COURTS OF THE VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM (pages 16-19) The scarce echo that the Portico of Glory had until its “discovery” in the mid-19th century is particularly striking; this is explained, among other factors, because until recently it was a space with a special consideration within the cathedral, which was only opened, exceptionally, for certain uses and solemnities. The origin, development and execution of the project of making a reproduction of the Portico of Glory have a curious history, which, from England, takes place between the decade of the 1830s and 1870s and which had a fundamental importance for the consecration of the Portico, “one of the great glories of Christian art”. The installation of the replica in the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria & Albert Museum, was the culmination of this process. Shortly after its creation in 1857, the South Kensington Museum undertook international missions to select the most outstanding pieces of world heritage. For this, John Charles Robinson toured Spain on several campaigns, with the dual mission of acquiring original pieces for the Museum's collections and proposing those casts of particularly important works of art. Robinson visited Compostela in 1865 and was dazzled by the Portico of Glory, which he praised in his writings, stating that “as a work of art, its title is well deserved. I have no hesitation in affirming that I consider it incomparably the most important sculptural and ornamental monument of its time”; at the same time he insists, on several occasions, on the convenience of making a life-size copy of it, destined for the rooms dedicated to presenting
the best of universal art through reproductions. As those in London were also convinced, the formalities were relatively swift for the time and, barely a year after his visit, in April 1866, the Chapter agreed to the request for permission to carry out the casting of the Portico, imposing a series of conditions to guarantee the conservation of the work and the supervision of the work, which would be directed by the prestigious specialist of Italian origin, Doménico Brucciani, who had extensive experience in carrying out this type of work for the most important British museums. The casting was carried out, with great diligence, between August and October 1866; in the midst of an unusual expectation in the city, not without some controversy and division between those who saw in its realization recognition of the artistic values of the work and those who saw dark motives in the British interest in the monument. The chronicles of the time bear witness to all this, as does the act by which the Chapter and the Museum exchanged gifts to commemorate the completion of the project; thus, in the Victoria & Albert is preserved, among other materials, the silver showcase, with the image of Santiago Caballero, which the Chapter gave to Brucciani in recognition of his dedication; and, in turn, in the Cathedral Museum's collection is the electrotype of a Parisian Tazza given by the English delegation. Satisfaction, then, on both sides and no mention of possible damage to the work; on the contrary, the report undertaken for the Chapter by the painter Juan José Cancela from
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Santiago de Compostela is clear in this respect and points out the virtues of the work carried out. It was not until several decades later that the first criticisms of the possible deterioration of the Portico caused by the casting were made, although always in the realm of hypotheses and without evident proof, either in terms of the polychromy or the structure. In the course of the recent restoration of the Portico, a complete study of the polychromy was carried out which identified the different layers applied throughout its history and which also served to confirm that the careful casting carried out by the team contracted by the South Kensington Museum had caused little damage to the work. Cancela was right, therefore, when he certified, at its conclusion, that everything was in order and that the works had not damaged the work, the main condition required, in 1866, by the Cathedral Chapter, to authorise them. The casting of the Portico was, from the beginning, highly regarded at the South Kensington Museum, although the lack of adequate space meant that, in the early days, only a few fragments were exhibited. Finally, in October 1873, the Architectural Courts were inaugurated in London, with the complete reproduction of the Portico of Glory as one of its main protagonists, as reflected in the literature of the time. Thus, six centuries after its creation by the genius Master Mateo, the Portico became part of the Temple of Art and, with it, of the select group of masterpieces of the history of universal art. ᴥ
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