The Reception of Late Gothic Spanish Sculpture around 1900: A Case Study of Collectors’ Archives as a Tool for Art-Market Research

Abstract

The discovery of previously unpublished documentary evidence in the archives of the Museum Mayer van den Bergh concerning sculptor Pedro Millán’s terracotta statuette of Saint George (circa 1487–1515, Victoria and Albert Museum) sheds new light on the position of polychrome Spanish sculpture from the late Gothic period in the international art market at the turn of the twentieth century. This article discusses the trajectories of Millán’s statuette, the agents and dealers involved, and the limitations of marketing Spanish sculpture internationally around 1900. The article employs the methods of economic history and theory, network analysis, provenance research, and the cultural history of taste. It brings to light the value of digitizing collectors’ archives to make visible the ways in which information and ideas circulated within collectors’ networks and how such exchanges created the conditions for a flourishing economy of knowledge, which was an essential component of the expanding nineteenth-century art market in Western Europe.