Pilar Blesa and Alícia Cornet
ORIGINS OF THE COLLECTION
The Iconographic Repertory of Spanish Art was created to provide a backup to the major international artistic events that took place in Barcelona at the beginning of the 20th century.
An Electrical Industries Exhibition was originally proposed in 1913 (which finally resulted in the International Exhibition of 1929) by business people in the sector. During the period leading up to this event, which was planned to take place in 1917, the Board of Directors of the Exhibition made a proposal to the Barcelona Museums Board for the organisation of an exhibition of Spanish art, subsequently called Art in Spain, which would display works representative of all periods and all artistic genres in Spain.1
In order to implement an exhibition of these characteristics, a selection of the country’s historical and artistic heritage was considered necessary. Therefore, the Board of Directors of the Electrical Exhibition proposed the prior creation of a complete Spanish heritage photographic collection.
Thus did the idea for creating an Iconographic Repertory of Spanish Art emerge. Professional photographers were hired and, under the leadership of the architect Jeroni Martorell and accompanied by specialised technicians, they travelled the length and breadth of Spain photographing and classifying works of art.
Despite the fact that the exhibition of 1917 did not take place as planned, work on the Iconographic Repertory continued until, by 1929, around 80,000 photographs had been collected, from among which the organising committee of the Art in Spain exhibition selected the artistic items to be included in the exhibition. The Repertory, which constituted an important documentary record of Spanish architecture, was also used for the construction of the miniature Spanish Village in Barcelona.
THE ORIGINS OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES OF THE AUTONOMOUS COMMUNITY OF VALÈNCIA
The Autonomous Community of Valencia is amply documented in the collection, which contains a large number of pictures taken by Catalan and local professional photographers as well as images taken from publications of the period.2
The authors of the photographs
Of the photographers who participated in the creation of the Iconographic Repertory. worthy of special mention is Adolf Mas, who was commissioned by the Museums Board to take photographs of monuments and works of art in Catalonia and Valencia. Between 1917 and 1919, Adolf Mas and his son Pelai visited each and every one of the villages and towns in the provinces of Valencia and Castelló, photographing everything from the most emblematic of monuments to the humblest of cottages. We know from the dates of the negatives of his photos that Mas was in the province of Valencia in 1917, visiting villages such as Ademús, Alpont, Benissanó, Domenyo, Llíria, Requena, Titagües, Vallanca and Xelva, amongst others. The report on the province of Castelló began the following year and Llucena, Lludient, Navaixes, Xèrica, Peníscola, Vilafermosa and Vila-Real were, among others, the towns and villages that Mas photographed in detail. What we do not know, however, is why Mas took no photographs in the province of Alacant.
The Iconographic Repertory also includes photos of Valencia taken by other authors such as Enric Cardona, Carles Sarthou i Carreres, José María Cabedo and Francisco Gómez Durán.
Deserving particular mention is Enric Cardona’s outstanding photographic report of the old Monastery of Sant Jeroni de Cotalba in Gandia, composed of images of the interior of the monastery and including the rooms of King Philip II and his daughter Isabel Clara Eugenia, the armoury, the Gothic church, the cloister, the monastery gardens, the old watchtower and the Gothic-style aqueduct. In the province of Castelló, Cardona took panoramic photos of Cervera del Maestrat and Forcall.
Carles Sarthou i Carreres’ (Vila-Real 1876; Xàtiva, 1971) most important contribution is his chronicle of the landscape and main monuments of the province of Valencia. Included in the Repertory are his photographs of the Carthusian Monastery of Serra de Portaceli, of the Josep Romeu monument in Sagunt (published in La illustració catalana in 19113) and photographs from inside the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia (now the Sant Pius V Museum), which he took in 1919. Carles Sarthou, who was Curator of the Municipal Museum and a member of the Monuments Commissions of both Castelló and Valencia, published several monographs on the Autonomous Community of Valencia.
José María Cabedo contributed to several publications such as La Hormiga de Oro, Nuevo Mundo, Arte y Letras, Semana Gráfica and La Illustració Catalana. His photographs of the Mercedarian Monastery of Santa Maria del Puig (Horta), which are included in the Iconographic Repertory, were published in La Illustració Catalana in 19154 .
The photographic report of the Regional Exhibition of València in 1909, by Francisco Gómez Durán, a native of Valencia, is also worthy of particular mention. Published in the magazine La Illustració Catalana5 that same year, these pictures show several of the buildings constructed to exhibit the latest advances in agriculture and industry (the Agriculture and the Fine Arts Pavilions) as well as the retrospective art exhibition that was held to mark the occasion. Also outstanding are his pictures of Sagunt Castle, published in La Esfera magazine in 19156. It should be mentioned that Francisco Gómez Durán was one of the first photographers in Valencia to use postcards to publicise his work.
Admittedly, some towns are represented more than others in the Iconographic Repertory, due to the project’s twofold aim of creating an inventory and simultaneously documenting the entire Spanish artistic heritage. In order to compensate for this defect, three years before the inauguration of the 1929 International Exhibition, photographic collections were acquired, such as the Mariano Moreno collection, as also series of postcards, of which those from the famous Barcelona printing house, Casa Thomas7, are worthy of particular mention. This explains the large number of postcards by Josep Thomas i Bigas complementing those of Valencia in the Repertory. Josep Thomas i Bigas employed a large team of photographers who travelled all over the country, and the collection includes his postcards of the avenues and main streets of the city of Valencia, as well as of important buildings such as the Cathedral and the Hemp Exchange.
Apart from the Casa Thomas postcards, the Iconographic Repertory contains a large collection of other postcards. Those of Hauser y Menet, published and distributed in the early decades of the 20th century, deserve particular mention, as also those by the Barcelona photographer Riosin and by Lacoste (the Laurent phototype). It should be remembered that the period from 1900 to 1918 was the heyday of the postcard; collectors from all over exchanged postcards and well-known painters of the period participated in the process of editing photos.
SIZE AND STRUCTURE OF THE COLLECTION
The Iconographic Repertory housed in the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC)8 consists of a total of 106,844 documents, of which 1,869 images correspond to the section on VALENCIA. The collection is structured in terms of three documentary series.
Images classified by ethnological criteria
Views, landscapes and works of art organised alphabetically by area: Ademús, Ador, Albaida, Alberic, Albufera, Alfauir, Alginet, Alpont, Andilla, Aiora, Benirredrà, Benissanó, Burjassot, Calabarra, Carcaixent, Carlet, Castellfabib, Cofrents, Cullera, Domenyo, Gandia, Gilet, Llíria, Antella, Oliva, Pobla de Sant Miquel, Requena, Rojals, Sagunt, Serra de Portaceli, Simat de Valldigna, Titagües, Torrent de l’Horta, Tous, Toixa, Utiel, Xàtiva, Xelva, Xera, Xiva de Bunyol and Xulella i La Iesa.
Traditional architecture classified in terms of cottages, cottage layouts, country houses, farmhouses, irrigation ditches and rice fields.
Regional dress classified in terms of rice harvesters, orange pickers, farm workers, farm workers on holiday, tenant farmers, market gardeners (Miss Valencia 1935), Valencian traditional dress (portraits, details of traditional decorative trimmings, hairstyles) and the typical gropes .
Folklore classified in terms of dances, fallas , festivals, flowers, processions, firecrackers, the tribunal de les aigües , rural life, the seafaring life and the Valencian way of life.
Images from the Art in Spain exhibition, documenting the works that participated in the Barcelona International Exhibition of 1929.
Images classified by styles under the VALENCIA section (both capital and province) and documenting different artistic styles: Paleo-Christian, Islamic, Romanic, Gothic, 15th century, 16th century, Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-Classical and Neo-Classical/Romantic art. Leaving aside the series of works that participated in the Art in Spain exhibition, the classification criteria used to organise the Repertory are designed to make access to the collection possible from two different, but complementary, points of view. For general information on a specific place or monument, the series of images classified as views, landscapes and works of art can be referred to; for specific stylistic or artistic aspects, the series of pictures grouped by artistic style should be consulted.
AN EXAMPLE OF THE ORGANISATION OF THE ICONOGRAPHIC REPERTORY
To illustrate the organisation of the Iconographic Repertory we have chosen Valencia Cathedral. General views of the Cathedral itself, the main façade, the dome, the Micalet bell tower, the Palace Door (also called the Byzantine Door), the Apostles’ Door, the choir, the high altar and the Altarpiece of Saint Luke can be located in the series Views, landscapes and works of art.
On the other hand, the different architectonic, artistic or decorative elements making up the Cathedral are classified by Style, in accordance with the following criteria:
Romanic. Portal. The Palace Door or the Alms Door.
Gothic. Religious architecture and monumental sculpture. Sculpture collections. General view, dome, Apostles’ Door, plans, details of the vaults and the door of the chapter room.
Gothic. Portal. Apostles’ Door and door of the chapter house.
Gothic. Sculpture. Altarpiece. Chapel of the Holy Chalice, reliefs of the altar of the old retrochoir.
Gothic. Oil on panel. Valencian School. Altarpiece of Saint Luke and various altarpiece panels.
Gothic. Metalwork. Church grille. Chapel grille at the entrance to the chapter house.
15th and 16th centuries. Monumental sculpture. Door and portal. Door of the chapter house.
15th and 16th centuries. Oil on panel. Altarpieces: The Muses of Saint Gregory, Saint Barbara and Saint Louis, Saint Catherine and Saint Apollonia. Panels by Rodrigo de Osona: Panel of Saint Paul, Panel of Saint Paul in the Streets of Athens, Panel of Saint Thomas.
Renaissance. Funerary sculpture. Tomb. The tomb of Archbishop Ayala.
Renaissance. Religious furnishings. Church choir. Detail of the retrochoir.
Baroque. Monumental sculpture. Portal. Cathedral façade, leafs of the main door, detail of Saint Francis.
Moreover, in the Art in Spain series we can find images of the Cathedral which featured in the Art in Spain exhibition, grouped under liturgical objects, a group which includes relics, small chests, portapaus , silver images of the Mother of God with the Child and the Holy Father; silk objects embroidered with gold, including images of chasubles, liturgical vestments and frontals; and panels by Ribera, Juan de Joanes, Pedro Nicolau, Fernando de Llanos and Rodrigo Osona.
The classification of the Repertory is typical of pre-computer days when documents had to be grouped together physically in order to allow rapid access to information, and so it was necessary not just to describe each document but also to define all the information recovery indexes.
This system caused information to be duplicated, since many of the documents grouped together by more general criteria could also be found in more specialised sections. Moreover, it also caused information to be lost; this was the case of items entered under different labels (depending on the source from which the information was obtained) and without a previous standardisation which would ensure that all items could be recovered in a single consultation.
ARCHIVAL PROCESSING OF THE COLLECTION
The archival processing of the Iconographic Repertory is one of the tasks that the MNAC is performing with all its archival collections. The work carried out on the Iconographic Repertory is integrated in the MNAC dobument management system, which determines the methodology to be applied to these tasks and improves the system for providing information.9
A preliminary step involved conservation and evaluation of the Repertory. This allowed an assessment of the scope of the collection and the definition of a computerised methodology to operate on the basis of phases. A database was then programmed to catalogue the Repertory on different levels so as to catalogue the entire collection.
In the first phase, all the items in the collection were computerised. Thus, we already have the original data in the computer, which has classified and structured them in terms of subjects and epigraphs. This procedure allows general access to the collection, even if the definitive computerised inventory is not yet available.
The second phase, still not completed, envisages a computerisation of the catalogue and a review of the original data. Although it is already possible to access catalogued documents, the fact that there are a large number of images in the Repertory means this phase will only be finalised in the medium term.
Computerisation of the catalogue
During the process of cataloguing and documenting the photographic images, particular care has been taken to maintain the structure and conserve the information about the original document and a system for updating them in a complementary manner has been applied. The computerised register that has been designed consists of two descriptions: documentary description and iconographic description.
Documentary description
This is a description of all the original information available about the document, as follows: author’s name, the original archive, document date, document type (photograph, graphic image, postcard or original plan), negative number (for photographs) or publication name (for graphic images), origin, data on preservation, treatment and historical references. The database also incorporates a digitalised image and a series of functions linking the information in the iconographic archive to the Museum’s information system (Figures 1 and 2).
Iconographic description
This description is divided into two sections: an original description section and a documentation section. The original description has been computerised in accordance with the structure of the fields and the data as originally documented (Figure 3). The documentation section is a complementary computerised file, which allows the iconography to be documented with data that has been updated and checked by the Museum’s curators (Figure 4). This process of describing, preserving and updating the data adds value to the collection, by preserving the historical references and enriching it with updated knowledge. The documentation section is complemented by the possibility of adding standardised descriptors to link this collection to the MNAC information system.
Access to the Iconographic Repertory
Presently the contents of the Iconographic Repertory can be accessed via the document management application, by different levels and routes. The Repertory database currently manages computerised records as follows: 1,053 terms, 14,687 epigraphs and 3,098 catalogued documents (of the total of 106,844 in the collection). The iconographic archive can be consulted directly by requesting information on subjects or epigraphs. The search results will indicate where the required information can be found, and in this case the documents themselves will have to be consulted manually. If the search refers to documents that have already been catalogued, a digitalised copy of the document and a printed copy of the descriptive files can be obtained directly via the computer.
CONCLUSIONS
The archival processing being carried out on the Repertory respects both the structure and the original descriptions of the collection and uses computer systems to facilitate access to this information. In addition, errors can be corrected by means of complementary descriptions and by entering standardised descriptors.
The importance of the iconographic archive has evolved over time. Its initial development – to catalogue and make the Spanish artistic heritage accessible to art historians – was an achievement in itself, given the communications difficulties in those days. By now it is an organised and fully documented archive, an important record of our heritage as it was before the 1930s.
Notes
1. Barcelona, Archives of the Museum Board of Barcelona, Theme: Board Delegation of the Iconographic Repertory of the Exhibition of Barcelona, Section: Monumental Spain, 1915, Box 48.
2. Newspapers and magazines:
ABC, Archivo de arte valenciano, Arquitectura y construcción, Blanco y negro, Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones, Boletín de la Exposición Regional de Valencia de 1909, La España regional, La Illustració catalana, Játiva turista, La Esfera, La Hormiga de Oro, La ilustración española y americana, Mundo gráfico i Nuevo Mundo.
Books: Hielscher, K. La España Incognita, Madrid, 1921; Leroy, M. (dir.), Materiales y documentos de arte español, Barcelona, 1900; Puig i Cadafal, J. et al, L’arquitectura romànica a Catalunya, Barcelona, Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1909.
3. La Illustració catalana, 17 December 1911, Year IX, No. 445.
4. La Illustració catalana, 4 July 1915, Year XIII, No. 630.
5. La Illustració catalana, 6 June 1909, Year VII, No. 314; La Illustració catalana, 24 October 1909, Year VII, No. 333.
6. La Esfera, 1915 Year II, No. 89.
7. Barcelona, City Historical Archives, International Exhibition of Barcelona. Art in Spain. Budget [1925-1929], documentation Lluís Plandiura, Box 5, Package 16.
8. Cornet, A; Blesa, P., “El Repertori Iconogràfic del MNAC: evolució i tractaments arxivístics” in Butlletí del Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2001, 5:161-168.
9. Blesa, P., “La gestió documental integrada en el sistema d’informació museística: l’experiència del MNAC” in Butlletí del Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2000, 4:133-144; Blesa, P., “La metodologia arxivística com a base d’un sistema integrat de documentació: l’experiència del Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya” in Lligall. Revista catalana d’arxivística, Barcelona, 2000, 16:259-288.
