The project

The export of works of art produced in the Southern Netherlands to the Iberian Peninsula is a well-known subject of research. The importance of the economic links, based mainly on the trade in wool from Castile for the looms of Flanders and Brabant, contributed to the creation of a commercial network for the distribution of works from the North to the Iberian Peninsula. In addition, the close diplomatic and dynastic ties between the Houses of Burgundy and Habsburg, on the one hand, and the Catholic sovereigns of Spain, on the other, encouraged the emergence of great patrons of the arts. These included Isabella the Catholic and Diego de Guevara. Numerous paintings, tapestries, sculptures and stained-glass windows found their way into Spanish collections, whether private or public, civil or religious, where they have often remained to this day.

Since 2020, the Instituto Moll (Madrid) and the Fondation Périer-D’Ieteren (Brussels) have been carrying out a research programme aimed at identifying and studying the art of the Southern Netherlands from the 15th to the 17th centuries preserved in Spanish collections.

By concentrating initially on painting (15th-17th centuries), this project responds directly to the needs of researchers expressed as early as 1953 with the publication of the Centre des Primitifs flamands first repertoire devoted to Spanish collections, under the direction of Jacques Lavalleye. The very aim of the repertory was "to make known paintings that had not been seen before or had been less studied (...) and that had been explored in a fragmentary way by researchers". Unfortunately, only two volumes were published, leaving a number of important paintings in the shadows. More recently, the work of Elisa Bermejo, Matías Díaz Padrón and Didier Martens, Pilar Silva Maroto’s major survey of the Burgos and Palencia regions, the Las Edades del Hombre exhibitions organised since the late 1980s, the doctoral theses of Constanza Negrín Delgado and Ana Diéguez Rodríguez, and the publications of scientific catalogues of Spanish museum collections have made it possible to reproduce and study a large number of little-known or previously unpublished Flemish paintings.

All these publications have made it possible to envisage a more extensive census in order to broaden the research themes and raise awareness among professionals and a wider public of the artistic and heritage issues surrounding these works. This survey take the form of a collaborative database with other researchers and institutions specialising in these fields. This tool, launched in 2024, was developed by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid.