A sketch by Spanish master painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, depicting Saint Anne teaching the Virgin Mary to read, has been discovered in the storage reserves of the Pau Museum of Fine Arts in southwestern France. The artwork, which had been stored away from public view for years, was recently identified as having been stolen from Madrid's Prado Museum in 1897. The French museum has decided to return the piece to Spain for a 10-year loan period.
The discovery came as a complete surprise during a routine inventory mission conducted by the Louvre Museum at the Pau facility. "We decided not to exhibit it because it wasn't legitimate to display a work that doesn't belong to us," explained Manoli Miremont-Saves, collections registrar at the Pau Museum of Fine Arts. The unsigned and undated sketch was purchased by the city of Pau in 1907, with the curator at the time unaware of its stolen origins.
The revelation emerged through a regulatory inspection process called "récolement," which occurs every ten years in French museums. During this mission, Louvre representatives visit regional museums to verify that deposited works are properly maintained and accounted for. "They come to see the deposits that have been made here to verify if the works are in place and well-preserved," detailed Fabien Leclerc, director of the Pau Museum of Fine Arts.
The breakthrough came during a cross-referencing of data, when investigators realized they were looking at a sketch by Murillo that had been reported stolen from the Prado Museum. "We didn't expect it," recalled Miremont-Saves. She noted that it's common for museums not to know the complete provenance of certain works in their collections. "Some have never even been properly cataloged," she assured. "When they saw this painting, they began to suspect something," Leclerc explained.
Leclerc acknowledged that the museum doesn't have complete acquisition records for all its holdings. Some works are purchased directly from artists, while others come as donations from private individuals. "Until fairly recently, we didn't seek to trace the provenance of works, so sometimes there are surprises like with this sketch," the museum director admitted. This lack of historical documentation has made it difficult to track the origins of many pieces in the collection.
After verification, the work was confirmed to be an authentic sketch for a painting created by Murillo in 1655. The full-sized painting, much larger than the discovered sketch, is currently housed in the Prado Museum in Madrid. Both the painting and its preparatory sketch were originally acquired by Elisabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain and wife of Philip V, who bequeathed them to the Prado upon her death.
The sketch has now left Pau for Madrid, where the Prado Museum is preparing to inaugurate a new exhibition in early December featuring the returned work. A secret and unprecedented transport operation was organized to safely move Murillo's sketch from France to Spain. The artwork will be on deposit in Spain for ten years, though it technically remains the property of France.
"Officially, the work belongs to us," stated Miremont-Saves. While the Murillo sketch has received authorization to leave France for the decade-long period, it will return to Pau at the end of this arrangement. France has no legal obligation to permanently return the work to Spain. "There is no restitution law covering this type of theft," Miremont-Saves explained. Should such legislation be enacted in the future, France could then officially restitute the artwork to the Prado Museum.
