The Institution

History of the Foundation

The process of building a historical artistic heritage

The Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli is a private cultural institution created by the will of Her Excellency Doña Victoria Eugenia Fernández de Córdoba y Fernández de Henestrosa, XVIII Duchess of Medinaceli, with the aim of conserving, restoring, reintegrating, studying, promoting and disseminating the historical heritage, both tangible - movable, movable and documentary - and intangible - traditions, devotions, rituals, etc. - linked, over time, to this House and to its aggregates. It was constituted on 14th September 1978 and approved by Ministerial Order on 20th October 1980.

Initially endowed with the historical patrimony of the founder, donated at the time of its constitution, throughout its more than four decades of existence, the number of historical-artistic assets managed by the Foundation has grown in two fundamental ways:

- acquisition of goods historically linked to the House of Medinaceli.
- merger with other foundations whose patronage was exercised by this Ducal House.

Through these three channels, donation, merger and acquisition, the Foundation has built up a historical-artistic, real estate, furniture and documentary heritage that extends across eight autonomous communities in Spain: Galicia, Cantabria, Catalonia, Madrid, Castilla León, Castilla La Mancha, Extremadura and Andalusia. As far as the immovable heritage is concerned, the process has been as follows. At the time of its constitution, it received eight properties from the founder:

1. The Ducal Palace of Medinaceli in the province of Soria.
2. The Basilica of Jesús de Medinaceli in Madrid.
3. The palace of the Dukes of Alcalá, better known as Casa de Pilatos, in Seville.
4. The Pazo de Oca, in the province of Pontevedra.
5. The Castle of Sabiote, in the province of Jaén.
6. The Palace of Los Cobos, in Úbeda.
7. The Tower of San Miguel das Penas in the province of Lugo.
8. A quarter of the palace of the Acebedo family, in Hoznayo, Cantabria.

To this initial endowment, the Foundation has added, through the two aforementioned channels, the following:

9. The Hospital of San Juan Bautista, vulgo de Tavera, in Toledo.
10. The Sacred Chapel of the Saviour in Úbeda, Jaén.
11. The Collegiate Church of Santiago, in Castellar, Jaén.
12. The Fortress of the Counts of Castellar, in Castellar de la Frontera, Cádiz.
13. The Torés Fortress in As Nogais, in the province of Lugo.
14. The castle of Feria, in the province of Badajoz.
15. The Castle of Nogales, in the province of Badajoz.
16. The hermitage of San Baudilio de Taballera in El Port de la Selva, Girona.
17. The pantheon of the Marquises of La Torrecilla, in the Sacramental de San Isidro, Madrid.
18. The pantheon of the Dukes of Denia in the Sacramental itself.

For the conservation of this vast architectural heritage, the Foundation has sought to apply, on a much smaller scale, an already venerable model, that of the National Trust, a private institution which has been operating with growing success in Great Britain for over a hundred years and which has been exported to other countries with mixed results, with greater success in general in those countries with a form of State similar to the British one. The operating scheme of this institution is relatively simple and basically consists of the group of immovable properties forming a solidarity network in which the monuments with more income support, permanently or temporarily, those with less, so that the heritage complex is restored and conserved with the income generated by the group as a whole. The precarious state of conservation of most of the assets that have been incorporated by any of the three aforementioned routes has greatly conditioned the first decades. However, as the state of conservation of each of the properties improves, so does the income of the ensemble, allowing the restorations to be accelerated, entering into a virtuous circle of more conservation and increased income.

This is where the uniqueness of this foundation's project lies, in that its resources have never depended either on a monetary endowment, which it did not have at the time of its constitution, or on the contribution of a third party, but on the income generated by the fulfilment of its own foundational aims, which can be summarised as the conservation and dissemination of the tangible and intangible historical heritage linked to the Ducal House of Medinaceli and its aggregates.

With regard to the Foundation's movable heritage, with the exception of the sculpture collection, due to the importance of the marble collection of the 1st Duke of Alcalá of the Casa de Pilatos, the remaining collections have been formed through mergers and acquisitions. By merger, it succeeded in incorporating into its collections the largest existing fragment of the original Medinaceli collection, which corresponded to the Duke and Duchess of Lerma in the hereditary division of this collection carried out at the beginning of the 20th century. By purchase, since its establishment, the Foundation has acquired more than three hundred objects historically linked to the House of Medinaceli, obviously of very heterogeneous importance from the point of view of their pecuniary value, but all of them contributing equally to the Foundation's aim of restoring historical interiors, The Foundation's aim is not to exhibit its collections in a museum-like manner, but rather to recreate historic interiors with them, so that our monuments maintain the greatest possible harmony between container and content, thus helping to reduce the deficient conservation of historic interiors that characterises Spain in comparison with some of our neighbouring countries. For this reason, we try to avoid the use of explanatory posters for each piece and replace them with explanations by guides or audio-guides.

The purpose of the Foundation is neither artistic encyclopaedism nor the collection of decontextualised masterpieces, which we understand to be the task of the great national museums. For this reason, we have no objection to depositing a masterpiece in the Museo del Prado, either because of its special relevance or because it requires special conservation conditions, such as Sebastiano del Piombo's Pietà or The Bearded Woman, which José de Ribera painted on behalf of the 3rd Duke of Alcalá.

In short, following the aforementioned routes and criteria, the Foundation has managed to bring together an important art gallery, an extraordinary sculpture collection and a large and relevant collection of furniture that could be included in what is known as the decorative arts, a collection that can be discovered in the section dedicated to it on this website, which will be periodically completed.

No less important is the Foundation's documentary heritage, which comprises two very different types of archives: the Ducal Archive of Medinaceli and the Archive of the Hospital Tavera. The former is an archive of archives, as it brings together the archives of the house of Medinaceli and those of all the houses that were added to it, which in turn were also, in most cases, the result of the aggregation of several houses. All these archives, scattered throughout each of the estates, were gradually brought together as a single collection through their concentration in Madrid, in a long process that began at the beginning of the 18th century and did not conclude until the end of the 19th century or the middle of the 20th century, if we also consider the incorporation of the archive of the Marquises of Camarasa. The result is the private archive with the broadest time span, as its documentation begins with a document from 847, that is, from the reign of Charlemagne's grandson, Charles the Bald, and reaches the present day, and with a vast geographical framework organised into 70 organic collections, which cover practically the entire peninsular territory, and as many other collections that bring together the documentation of function, that is, that of the different positions that its members held in the Hispanic Monarchy, which covers a large part of Europe, especially Italy.

The archive of the Hospital Tavera is obviously more modest, but nonetheless very important, as in addition to documentation on Cardinal Tavera, Archbishop Primate, Inquisitor General, president of the Council of Castile and Regent of the kingdom, it contains uninterrupted documentary series on the running of a hospital, such as salary, pantry and factory books, etc., from the 16th century to the 20th century. Thus, to give two examples, the Hospital Tavera is privileged in that its restoration projects can be documented from its own archive, using the factory books, and its salary and pantry books have been and continue to be used to detail the evolution of the standard of living from the 16th to the 20th century, due to the completeness and homogeneity of its series.

Finally, part of the heritage that the Foundation protects is particularly fragile due to its intangible nature. For this reason, we have sought to bring all the traditions and relations with other institutions historically linked to the House of Medinaceli under the protection of the Foundation. One of the most important members of this heritage is the devotion to Jesús de Medinaceli, so called because it was exposed to worship since its arrival in Madrid in 1682, after being rescued from the hands of the Sultan of Meknes, in one of the convents that housed the palace complex owned by the Duke of Medinaceli on the Paseo de Prado. From there the devotion spread throughout Spain, so that today we have been able to census nearly three hundred images of this devotion on display for worship, and it even spread to America and Europe, with six having been found in Poland. In order to ensure the continuity over time of the cultural and cultic aspects surrounding this devotion, the statutes stipulate that the Elder Brother of the Royal Archconfraternity is the president of the Foundation. The Via Crucis to the Cruz del Campo, instituted by the 1st Marquis of Tarifa at the beginning of the 16th century, which is traditionally attributed a leading role in the origin of Holy Week in Seville, is even older. Of a different nature is the tradition of the liturgical singing of the six children of the Salvador de Úbeda, which the Foundation revived after its disappearance in the sixties, by recovering the eighteenth-century organ and the posts of chapel master and organ master. More modern and modest is the celebration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus which is held every 25th August in the primitive labour square of the Pazo de Oca.

Another important part of this intangible heritage are the patronages historically exercised by the House of Medinaceli and its aggregates, a list that would be very long. Of these, we have a singular relationship of guardianship and custody with two. One of these is the Monastery of Santa Clara de Montilla, founded in the early 16th century by the 2nd Marquise of Priego on the site of a male monastery built by her father next to the palace of the Marquises of Priego. A full-time employee of the Foundation works in the monastery, taking care of the convent's factory, its collections and its archive and library. The second is the Carmelite convent in Valladolid, founded by María de Mendoza and burial place of the Counts of Ribadavia.

We understand that this process is not closed, but open, within our aims, which cover the very extensive heritage historically linked to the House of Medinaceli, to new incorporations, with the aim of contributing, as far as we are able, to the increase and improvement of the Spanish historical heritage.