Crónica de un viaje sin retorno del patrimonio eclesiástico: Julián y Antonio Zabaleta y las pinturas del convento de Santo Tomás de Ávila en el Museo del Prado

Abstract

The exit of artworks from suppressed convents during the confiscation decreed by Mendizabal caused an irreparable loss of a valuable heritage. Besides, the dispersion of the pieces resulted in a decontextualization that hasn’t allowed us to know their original location neither their meaning. This paper proposes to follow the travel of some remarkable paintings of The Prado collection, those that belonged to the monastery of St. Thomas of Avila, focusing on the reasons that produced the exit from their original places, their arrival to Madrid, the final ingress in the museum, and the dispersion of some of them, that modified the original purposes and their contextual meaning.