Exhibitions

One of the main actions in the 2024 campaign of the Iberdrola-Museum Conservation and Restoration Programme was the treatment of a masterpiece of the Spanish Renaissance: The Annunciation (c.1485–1490) by Pedro Berruguete, one of the most important painters from that period, who came from a noble family originally from the county of Las Encartaciones (Bizkaia).

The programme promotes the development of an annual action plan whose prime goal is to ensure the material integrity of the artworks so they are properly conserved and displayed. It also aims to publicly disseminate the results of this task, which is so essential in the museum.

Berruguete’s Annunciation—which has been lent for five years in commodatum from the Arburua collection—has hardly been seen in public and is now being displayed in the recently restored Bilbao museum so the public can become familiar with it and the work can be studied. With this goal in mind, the programme has launched a complex heritage recovery operation which has assembled a group of experts thanks to the support of the Fundación Iberdrola España.

Pilar Silva Maroto, Head of the Department of Conservation at the Museo Nacional del Prado until 2017 and a historian specialising in Spanish-Flemish painting and the early Renaissance, has studied the work from the historical and stylistic vantage point within the context of other paintings by this artist which contain the same iconography. The outcome of this fascinating analysis has been published in the Museum Notebook 5.

Moreover, Elisa Mora Sánchez, the restorer at the Museo del Prado until 2021, was in charge of the material aspects of the painting. She applied the treatment to the painted elements of the work, while Mayte Camino Martín, the frame restorer at the Prado, took charge of the treatment of the gilded backgrounds.

The project was coordinated by José Luis Merino Gorospe, Ancient Art Conservator at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum.

The provenance of Berruguete’s Annunciation is unknown, and it is documented via a single photograph dated 1916. Therefore, we can deduce that it has been restored throughout its history before it became part of the current collection, probably in the 1950s.

Based on its style, which became Berruguete’s hallmark upon his return from his sojourn in Italy and is similar to other panels he painted, this Annunciation was part of an altarpiece depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary that was made in around 1485–1490, perhaps for a church in Palencia.

Following the traditional iconography, the scene is set inside a palace whose depth is empirically constructed through the architecture’s vanishing lines and especially the floor tiles, which occupy the lower half of the scene. The upper part features a rich golden tapestry hanging from the wall in the background, highlighting the solemnity of the moment.

The Virgin Mary, wearing a red robe and blue cloak, pauses from reading the holy texts to receive the message from Saint Gabriel. Suspended in the air, the archangel is carrying a sceptre in his left hand with a ribbon greeting Mary and announcing that she is going to become the mother of Jesus. The dove of the Holy Spirit is hovering over the scene.

The light in the composition primarily comes from the right side and causes the shadows cast by the wooden lectern, the vase of flowers and the angel suspended in the air. On the left, the arch leads to a portico with columns, through which the landscape can be glimpsed.

The sobriety of the narrative, a common feature of Italian art, is offset in this work by the plentiful use of gold—the tapestry hanging in the background, the halo, the cushion on which the Virgin Mary is kneeling and the angel’s cape—a common feature of Castilian painting. Because of the intricate decoration of the fabric, the cape is reminiscent of some paintings by the Flemish artist Van Eyck, whom Berruguete may have studied during his time in Urbino. On the left, the portico column evokes Italianate architecture, while the bench on the right shows Castilian Gothic tracery. All these features make this Annunciation a fine example of the art of Berruguete, a painter who managed to create a style of his own with his direct knowledge of the main schools of his period.

Pedro Berruguete (Paredes de Nava, Palencia, c.1450–Madrid?, 1503) was born into a noble family originally from Las Encartaciones (Bizkaia). His grandfather left there and arrived in Paredes de Nava in around 1430, accompanying Rodrigo Manrique, who had recently been named Count of Paredes. His earliest education was in Castille with a Spanish-Flemish painter.

His family relations clearly enhanced his ability to further his studies in Italy (c.1472–1473) with the Manrique and Mendoza families, given that the bishop of Palencia at that time was Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the nephew of Cardinal Mendoza, who had already been in Italy accompanying his father, the Count of Tendilla. However, we cannot discount possible mediation by his uncle, Pedro González Berruguete, an important member of the Dominican order.

Upon his arrival in Italy, he is documented to have been in Urbino, where he worked for the Duke, whom he portrayed in the Portrait of Federico de Montefeltro with his Son Guidobaldo (1476–1477, National Gallery of the Marche,

Urbino). During his stint in that country, Berruguete was able to reconcile the Flemish painting in which he was trained with the Italian style, while also becoming familiar with classical art, from which he learned to paint nudes and the human figure in motion, giving them greater volume and monumentality.

Back in Castile, Berruguete worked between 1483, when documents reveal him to have been at the cathedral of Toledo, and late 1503, when he died. The works he made in these years differ from the ones he painted in Italy. He had to adapt to his customers’ taste and the nature of the commissions, most of them altarpieces, which he had to execute more quickly and for a lower price. This

was coupled with the fact that what his clientele valued was an abundance of gold, which became more valuable than the artist’s work. There are few examples of independent works from that period in which Berruguete was able to showcase the originality of his style, with his clear knowledge of Flemish and Italian art, as well as the influence that the Castilian milieu had on him. However, good proof of all of this is the Annunciation from the Miraflores monastery in Burgos (1495–1500), funded by Queen Isabel the Catholic.

_{[Pilar Silva Maroto]}

Performed between September 2024 and March 2025, the conservation and restoration treatment of this oil painting on wood sought to recover the visual balance that had been compromised by different factors over its more than five centuries of existence. Two different specialities were required for this treatment to restore the beauty and harmony of the work as a whole: one for the paint layer and the other for the gilded elements.

Paint layer

The preliminary studies—technical X-rays, infrared and ultraviolet rays, among others—confirmed the presence of surface cracks, loose paint, holes from wood-boring insects, scratches and small hollows. Several areas of craquelure could also be seen, some perhaps caused by the heat of candles. Colour alterations and different areas where paint was missing were found on the paint layer, as well as oxidised varnishes and a dense layer of environmental dirt that gave the work a dull, matte appearance.

The restoration started by fixing the colour in the cracks and areas that needed it and continued by cleaning the surface of the painting and eliminating the oxidised varnishes. Next, the missing areas in the paint layer were filled in, and once everything was flush, that served as the foundation for the addition of colour with reversible materials, thus bringing visual unity to the work. Finally, varnish was applied to unify the lustre and colour.

Gilding

The gilded parts of the work—the angel’s cloak, the cushion on which the Virgin Mary is kneeling, the halo and the tapestry—showed the usual features of Berruguete’s gold motifs: a warm tone; the use of thin reddish and brown layers to add volume; and burin work with gouges, punches and awls to create borders and other decorations, usually with plant motifs. Just as with the oil painting of the figures, the architecture and the landscape, the gilding had undergone changes for a variety of reasons: losses of material and the layers adhering to the support over time, old paintbrush restorations which had darkened over time, and others with a burin of a lower quality than what was used in the originals. All of this created visual confusion that hindered a grasp the technical virtuosity and balanced beauty of Berruguete’s gilding.

The conservation and restoration treatment began by regenerating the adhesive quality of the materials and consolidated the strata over the wooden support. Then the accumulated dirt was cleaned and the repainted areas and retouches over the original gold from earlier treatments were lessened to help clarify the surface to be treated. Next, the losses of material and burin decorations were filled in and replaced using a paintbrush. Mostly gold watercolour was used to replace the gilding, and for the paint layer a final protective coat of varnish was applied.

In addition to restoring the visual lushness of the painting, the restoration also revealed more details like Mary’s halo and the beams emanating from the dove of the Holy Spirit, while it also restored the spatial depth and elegant colours that are the hallmark of one of the best painters in the Spanish Renaissance.

Fundación Iberdrola España, committed to society

Ever since it was founded, Iberdrola has been committed to the development of energy, culture and society of the communities where it operates. To this end, the Fundación Iberdrola España is a further step in this commitment by promoting initiatives that contribute to improving people’s quality of life. One of its focal areas is cultural development, especially the care and maintenance of cultural and artistic assets.

This is the context of its collaboration with the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, which includes support for the Conservation and Restoration programme, the creation of training and research grants in the field of the art conservation and restoration and collaboration in developing educational activities specifically designed to share the museum’s collection with audiences with special needs due to visual or cognitive impairments or in social insertion programmes.