Spanish Bombs

One story I've always kicked around but never put to pen and paper concerns a beloved piece of art that turns out to be a fake—and the political and professional cataclysms that cascade from the revelation. As it happens, truth may be stranger than fiction. Questions have been raised about Goya's El Coloso:

Doubts were first cast on El Coloso's authenticity — and that of another celebrated Goya work, La Lechera de Burdeos (The milkmaid of Bordeaux) — by the British Goya specialist Juliet Wilson-Barreau, a member of the scientific committee that organised the Prado's new exhibition.

"The works lack energy and a good display within the framework of the painting, faults that are completely abnormal in the trajectory of Goya," Ms Wilson-Barreau wrote in Spain's art review El Periodico del Arte in April 2001. Giving El Coloso the definitive thumbs down, she added: "Almost all the specialists are in agreement that it is not by Goya." Ms Wilson-Barreau's doubts were shared by Manuela Mena, the Prado's senior Goya expert and curator of the show which opens tomorrow.

However, they were furiously dismissed at the time by the Prado's then director, Fernando Checa, who insisted both works were authentic. A year later, Nigel Glendinning, professor of art history at London University, wrote an academic study robustly defending the painting's authenticity. Almost nothing further was heard about the disputed El Coloso until this week, when it emerged that the canvas was excluded from the forthcoming celebration of Goya's war paintings.

Why would the Prado not clean the painting and come clean on its provenance? Politics, it would seem, are stranger than truth, science, or fiction.

Former director Checa came to his office when his predecessor announced the discovery of a significant new Goya—only to be discredited by the Prado's own archives, which listed the work as a major painting by a minor artist.

Checa himself left the museum after former Spanish defense minister Eduardo Serra staged a coup in 2001, quite literally taking the director's office for himself. Serra supplanted Checa from his position as chair of the Patronato (the Prado's board), a position to which Serra was appointed in 1999 by José María Aznar.

Having successfully obtained the reigns at the Prado, he had trouble handing them over at first. Serra was unable to persuade Miguel Zuguza to take the position as director at the end of 2001; various accounts have it that Serra then offered the position to Jesús Urrea, only to rescind it when Zugaza announced publicly that he would be taking the job, thereby putting Urrea's nomination (if not his very brief career as director) to rest.

With the election of Zapatero and the Socialist Party in 2004, the conservatives were out and with them, Serra. Rodrigo Uría replaced him on the Patronato. When Uría died three years later, Plácido Arango, by accounts a much more powerful figure, was appointed.

From 2001 to the opening of "Goya in Times of War" today, there has been plenty of opportunity to publish the findings. As director Zugaza told the Independent, "Our knowledge of Goya's work has advanced greatly in recent years, and doubts over the attribution of El Coloso are widely accepted by the museum's scientific team." But the political will to own up to an embarrassment? Apparently lacking. The concern was originally published in 2001, when then-director Checa squashed it. It would seem reasonable to count Checa among the "specialists" in a position to speak about the provenance of a Goya, so I'm inclined to view Wilson-Barreau's statement with some suspicion—although given his tenuous hold over his administration, Checa was in no place to incur any negative press.

Why haven't those findings been made public—or even investigated—since? As London University professor Nigel Glendinning (and Coloso defender) asks, "If the museum doesn't like it, they should tell us why." But what they really don't like is public embarrassment: It seems that the Prado is more interested in the reputation of the Prado than the reputation of El Coloso. If political currents have not afforded an ideal opportunity to discuss this work's provenance by now, when will they?

Speaking of Goya and the war between the Spanish and the French, the government of France proposes to pay citizens to take an interest in French art. Advantage: Spain.