Draft:Gaspar Sensi y Baldachi

Federico de Madrazo: El pintor y grabador Perugino Sensi (English: The Painter and Engraver Perugino Sensi), 1873, oil on canvas, 37.2 x 31.2 cm, Madrid, Museo del Prado.

Madonna and Child with the Infant John the Baptist (painted by Antonio Correggio; directed by José de Madrazo; lithography by Gaspar Sensi.) Lithograph, print in the Real Establecimiento Litográficoof Madrid. Footer inscription: "El cuadro en el Real Museo de Madrid" (English: The painting in the Royal Museum of Madrid). Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España.

Gaspar Sensi y Baldachi, also called Perugino Sensi (Perugia, 1794-Madrid, 1880) was an Italian painter and lithographer who built the majority of his career in Madrid.

Biography and Works

Born in Perugia in 1794, he was a pupil at the Perusian academy and later at the Accademia di San Luca under Tommaso Minardi. Minardi was a distinguished representative of purismo, an aesthetic trend throughout Italy in the first decades of the 19th century.

Hired by José de Madrazo, Sensi y Baldachi arrived in Madrid around 1825 to work on the Colección litográfica de cuadros del Rey de España el Sr. D. Fernando VII (English: The Lithographic Collection of Paintings of the King of Spain, Ferdinand VII). This was the most ambitious of the works promoted by the Real Establecimiento Litográfico of Madrid, which was created by Madrazo and his associate Ramón Castilla with the intention of reproducing and distributing the works of the recently created Museo del Prado using the new technique of lithography.

To that end, Sensi made lithographic reproductions of the works of Andrea del Sarto (Sacrifice of Isaac, Portrait of a Woman); Antonio Fernandez Arias (La moneda del César (English: Caesar's Coin), or Jesús y los fariseos (English: Jesus and the Pharisees); Peter Paul Rubens (Thomas More, The Birth of the Milky Way, Mercury and Argus); Titian (Portrait of Philip II, Venus with an Organist and Cupid); Nicolas Poussin (The Triumph of David); Alonso Cano (The Virgin and Child); and Blas de Prado (La Sagrada Familia con San Ildefonso, San Juan Evangelista y el maestro Alonso de Villegas (English: The Holy Family, Saint Ildephonsus, Saint John the Evangelist and Master Alonso de Villegas). He also reproduced Cristo muerto sostenido por dos ángeles (English: Dead Christ Held by Two Angels) by Francisco Ribalta, Toilet of Venus by Francesco Albani and The Mona Lisa attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.

There are also known unpublished proofs of Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist by Correggio (Biblioteca Nacional de España). Also, loose prints of the portrait of Prince Maximilian of Saxony by Vicente López Portaña and a supposed self-portrait of Alonso Cano came out of the Real Establecimiento Litográfico. At that time, the Cano portrait was the property of Pedro de Alcántara Téllez Girón, the prince of Anglona and uncle of Pedro de Alcántara Téllez-Girón y Beaufort Spontin, 9th Duke of Osuna, of whose portrait (painted by Federico de Madrazo in 1844) Sensi had made a lithograph, which was printed in the lithographic establishment of the Parisian lithographer Alfred Lemercier.

Sensi's friendly relationship with José de Madrazo extended to Madrazo's sons Pedro and Federico, and it is possible that the Italian even gave the boys lithography lessons at the beginning of his artistic career. The portrait of Sensi as an old man painted by Federico de Madrazo in 1873 is a testament to their sustained friendship.

After the Real Establecimiento Litográfico of Madrid was liquidated, a work entitled La Armería Real ou Collection des principales pièces de la Galerie d’Armes anciennes de Madrid (English: The Royal Armory, a Collection of Important Pieces from the Gallery of Ancient Weapons of Madrid) was published in 1844 by Cosson, a Parisian printing house. This work contained bilingual text by the French historian Achille Jubinal, who collected pieces from the Real Armería de Madrid(English: Royal Armory of Madrid) from Sensi's drawings, which Sensi had signed as a member of the Perusian Academy and which were engraved by different authors using various technical procedures.

Bibliography

• Ibáñez Álvarez, José, El gabinete de estampas del siglo XIX del Museo Romántico de Madrid, Memoria presentada para obtener el grado de doctor por la Facultad de Bellas Artes de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, 2003, ISBN 84-669-1898-1
• Ossorio y Bernard, Manuel, Galería biográfica de artistas españoles del siglo XIX, Madrid, Imprenta de Ramón Moreno, 1868.

External Links

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Sensi y Baldachi's work in the Collection of the Museo del Prado