Daniel Ralston and Gabriele Finaldi, ‘The Spanish Collections of the National Gallery’

Talk details:

When the National Gallery opened its doors nearly 200 years ago, it contained only one painting considered to have been painted by a Spanish artist. Since then, the Gallery's collection of Spanish paintings has grown into one of the most important in the world, and includes great masterpieces by Velázquez, Murillo, and Zurbarán. In this conversation, Gabriele Finaldi, Director, and Daniel Sobrino Ralston, CEEH Associate Curator of Spanish Paintings, reflect on the collection's history and development as the National Gallery approaches its bicentenary on 10 May 2024.

Speaker biographies:

Gabriele Finaldi

Gabriele Finaldi has been Director of the National Gallery since August 2015. He was previously Deputy Director for Collections and Research at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, a position he took up in 2002. Prior to his role at the Prado, he was a curator at the National Gallery between 1992 and 2002, where he was responsible for the later Italian paintings in the collection (Caravaggio to Canaletto) and the Spanish collection (Bermejo to Goya). Finaldi studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where he completed his doctorate in 1995 on the 17th-century Spanish painter who worked in Italy Jusepe de Ribera. He has curated exhibitions in Britain, Spain, Italy, Belgium and the US. He has written catalogues and scholarly articles on Velázquez and Zurbarán, Italian Baroque painting, and religious iconography.

Daniel Sobrino

Daniel Sobrino Ralston is the CEEH Associate Curator of Spanish Paintings. Before arriving at the National Gallery in 2021, he was a fellow at the Meadows Museum, where he curated Sorolla in the Studio, a focused exhibition that explored the artist's working methods. Ralston, whose research interests range from the 17th to 19th centuries, has contributed to several catalogues at the National Gallery, including Saint Francis of Assisi and After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art. His reattribution of a painting in the collection to Murillo appeared in the catalogue of the Kimbell Art Museum’s exhibition Murillo: From Heaven to Earth. He received his PhD from Columbia University.

The event is part of the Research Seminar Series organised by Durham University's Zurbarán Centre with the ARTES Iberian and Latin American Visual Culture Group in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes and the Embassy of Spain in London.

The series provides an open forum for engaging with innovative research and exhibition projects relating to the visual arts in the Hispanic world.

The sessions usually take place on Wednesdays, 6.00-7.00 pm (UK time). 

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https://durhamuniversity.zoom.us/j/98646981419?pwd=SVRmR3QySTdjek1tdEwzaksvWUhWdz09

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