The Palacio de Liria contains in the Zuloaga room the most symbolic self-reference of all the self-references that make up the largest gallery in private hands in Spain. The only painting of Ingres exposed to the public in our country represents the moment in which the Casa de Alba receives the duchy of Liria that gives its name to the place, the French construction that Madrid has surrounded by pragmatism. There are ways and ways of living on Calle Princesa. "The Prado does not have a painting by this author," says Álvaro Romero Sánchez-Arjona, cultural director of the Casa de Alba Foundation. The Palacio de Liria survived the Civil War combo - bombing, fire and looting - when its location was the front. "Fortunately, the works were distributed between the Prado Museum, the British Embassy and the Bank of Spain."

Let's go back to Ingres. "The scene depicts the decoration with the Golden Fleece of Felipe V to Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart", one of the fifty lineages that make up the House, "for his support in the battle of Almansa" of 1707, decisive to reach the throne in the War of Succession. "The king also granted him the duchies of Berwick, Liria and Xérica", says the person in charge of the collection. James was one of the four children that the last Catholic King of England, James II of Stuart, had with his mistress Arabella Churchill, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting. Arabella is an ancestor of the British statesman through her father and Princess Diana of Wales by their daughter Henrrieta, the first of the bastards. Along with the work, there is a sketch of the same painting. Both hang on a desk by which Franco was infatuated. "The author gave the sketch to the intermediary between the duke and Ingres."

The first Duke of Liria was born in France in 1670. He fought at the age of 16. He participated in all his father's attempts to regain the throne. He was a prisoner of his uncle, he married and was soon a widower. He joined the French army at age 23. With his second wife he led a different life, "austere, without honors or intrigues of the court", perhaps, finally, boring: they fathered ten children. He had a baraka in Almansa. And the income captures the great moment of his biography . Later, he died "after a cannonball blew up his head," after being appointed Marshal of France. His eldest son would inherit the titles granted by Felipe V.

The oil on canvas made in 1818 was commissioned by the VII Duke of Berwick and XIV of Alba, Carlos Miguel Fitz James-Stuart Silva , the man who gave rise to the union of the houses. It is a key scene for the family. Cayetana, the XIII Duchess, dies without descendants. She is a distant relative of Carlos, who inherits the title, producing the change of Spanish surnames for Fitz-James Stuart. Ingres's work is now the demand for the reopening of the Liria museum, opened in September. "The pandemic has stopped our growth. We had a waiting list of two and a half years , "says Romero. The exhibition has been adapted to sanitary protocols. “The groups are smaller. We take the temperature. Audio guides are disinfected ».

Liria's palace is Princesa, 20-22 for the current Duke of Alba and his children. "We want to give the feeling of home," explains Romero. The visit ends in the library. "We have a fund of 20,000 copies." Original documents such as "the role of the sailors on Columbus' first voyage to America or the first translation of the Bible into romance" are exposed, among others . Along with the works of Tiziano, Rubens, Velázquez, Madrazo, Zurbarán or Juan de Miranda there are frames with family photographs, as if the entire exhibition, divided into 14 rooms, no longer confirmed the presence of the family. " The duke sometimes appears in the halls. It is that we are at home, "says the director as he walks through the garden, closed to the public. The Duchess of Alba's pet cemetery extends a row of small headstones that are lost at the end of a hedge. "There is no other museum like it in Madrid."

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