The anonymous buyer, a baron with dual British and American nationality, will not take his house, for which he has paid between 35 and 40 million euros.
Jorge Coll, the gallery owner who has directed the attribution, restoration and sale process of the Ecce Homo by Caravaggio, which appeared by surprise at an auction house in Madrid in 2021, has announced in a press conference that the painting’s destiny is to remain on display in a public room, also when the transfer to the Prado Museum, announced yesterday, ends. Coll explained that the decision followed the will of both the selling family and the buyer, a baron with dual American and British nationality, who said he will not charge for that first loan that will extend until autumn 2024. The operation, according to knowledgeable sources of the operation, it has closed above 35 million euros and below 40.
Will El Prado be the more or less permanent residence of the Ecce Homo? There is no commitment for this and Coll, director of the Colnaghi Gallery in Madrid, said that the desire of all parties is to expose the painting to the public, not necessarily in a publicly owned space. However, in the fringes of his appearance before the media, the idea that the private buying and selling operation has been more or less supervised by the Ministry of Culture seems implicit. Coll has recalled several times that the State retains the rights of first refusal and withdrawal over the painting, so that it will be able to buy the Ecce Homo in the future and that seems to already have the layout of the table on track.
Is this an operation comparable to those of private companies that build a hospital for the State and then receive deferred compensation? A kind of leasing private public? “It has been an operation in which we have managed to satisfy all parties, which was complicated,” answered the gallerist. “Yes, it happened that way.” The largest known investment in art by the Government of Spain has been the payment of 24 million euros for The Countess of Chinchón by Goya, far below those among 35 and 40 million of the Ecce Homo. No Spanish cultural institution manages budgets so large as to undertake such an atypical expense.
Coll said he was not authorized to deny or confirm the figure or the identity of the buyer but he did affirm that the caravaggioif it had not been unexportable, it would have raised more than 100 million euros. What compensation will the buyer of the painting receive if he has agreed not to take it home and cannot lend it to the Louvre for a temporary exhibition? The capital gain from a more or less anticipated future sale? Will future transfers of the painting to the canvas or to the institution that exhibits it be profitable after its premiere on May 27? It is impossible to know today.
The painting, meanwhile, remains in a workshop in Coslada (Madrid) where it arrived after being restored in the Colnaghi Gallery: “The work was good. It is 400 years old and has its ups and downs, it was moved during the Napoleonic wars, it has gone through two campaigns of old restoration and a change of narrower frame. We have recovered the original measurements , but it has been a grateful restoration,” said Coll. His gallery has directed the restoration with technicians who came from Italy for the operation. Why didn’t the Prado workshop do the restoration? “It was one of the options that was open; it would have been a good decision but the other options were also good.” The work, in any case, was enough to reaffirm with certainty that the painting was a work by Caravaggio.
