On 27 December, 1902, Seville-born painter José Villegas wrote a friendly, informal note to Francisco Belda, Marquis of Cabra, who held the position of Deputy Governor of the Banco de España, telling him that he planned to bring him the drawings and the portrait of the King on the following Monday, 29 December and asking Belda to let him know if the date was inconvenient. Villegas, who had been the director of the Prado since the end of the previous year, had asked Belda some days earlier to lend him his 'four drawings so that, with the remaining ones, I can show the complete series to H.M. the King, who has told me he would like to see them. After a few days, I will deliver all ten of them myself'. He was referring to the drawings for the models for banknotes that the Bank had commissioned from him at the same time as it requested a portrait of the king. The spectacular portrait immediately became one of the most significant pieces in the Banco de España Collection, and it is undoubtedly one of the finest pictures of King Alfonso XIII. It was recognised by critics as a most outstanding example of contemporary Spanish painting.

The drawings of the series of new banknotes to which the painter refers in those letters, however, did not meet with the same fortune. The models designed by Villegas received extensive coverage in the press, but not all of them went into circulation. Instead, they stand as examples of an attempt to introduce new artistic approaches to banknote design, frustrated by poor technical workmanship.

In order to prevent counterfeiting, the Board of the Banaco de España had decided to draw up a General Plan for Spain's paper currency. This included commissioning original creations that would be difficult to imitate from renowned artists. The works commissioned from Villegas were the first artistic creations designed by a painter to occupy a space that had traditionally seen reproductions of famous works or decorative structures with modest allegorical details. Through the use of symbolist language, they seek to give substance to concepts related to their fiduciary value, but above all to some of the signifiers of the country's common wealth. They are also amongst the earliest examples in the history of Spanish banknotes in which an artistic composition covers both sides of the paper, incorporating the essential monetary information into the artistic composition itself.

The drawings in the Banco de España Collection are carefully prepared on a pink gouache background on which the white section was carefully reserved for the watermark. This can be seen in the precise lightly-drawn pencil marks to line up the gouache, and the use of squared paper. They must therefore have been considered definitive models, suitable for viewing, unlike a preparatory drawing for the twenty-five-peseta note, which is kept in the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville. Most of the designs in the Madrid set are drawn with a characteristically steady, calculated stroke, reflecting the conscientious work of the artist. Perhaps for this reason, they contain none of the characteristic sinuous and elegant graphics of the painter's drawings, which are always recognisable from the rhythmic, loose lines with which he worked. Here, in contrast, the line is more closely reined in by its intended purpose as an engraving.

The figures are, unmistakably, very close related to a group on which he had been working since 1898, called The Decalogue. Originally derived from a commission for an illustration for a religious text, the work had little by little become the great pictorial epic of the last years of the Andalusian master's life. The design of the banknotes is therefore of interest in that it brings some continuity to the symbolist language that he developed around these works, with which the figures in the compositions for the banknotes are directly related, or even in some cases reused.

A complete description of all the banknotes in the General Plan was announced in the press on 2 January 1903, and on that same date the Bank's Board of Governors agreed to send its thanks to Villegas for the drawings received. However, Tortella dates the Board's agreement to commission the drawings from Villegas to earlier that year. On 1 July, the first of Villegas' banknotes, the 100-peseta note, was launched. It represented a stoker in a steam engine and, on the back, a hippogriff embodying progress, surrounded by elements representing modernity, such as blast furnaces, the railway and the telegraph, a set of images adopted by the powers that be to represent the drive for modernity under the protection of the state. The drawing preserved by the Bank, however, is not exactly the same as that image, and it may therefore have been an early rejected version. It shows only the hippogriff with its naked rider, with none of the symbols of modernity portrayed on the final note. Moreover, in the lower left-hand corner there is a phylactery with the fiduciary value of the note, shown above the head of the hippogriff in the printed version with rays arranged about it in the form of a nimbus, whereas in the drawing they surround the gap left for the watermark. The bill was circulated in October 1904 and by early 1905, forgeries had already appeared. Despite these developments, a new print run was issued with an identical design on 25 August 1905. This would seem to rule out the possibility that this is an alternative version, and it seems more likely that this drawing was the first version submitted by Villegas, probably before it was reworked to the final design engraved by Bartolomé Maura.

Another two other banknotes designed by Villegas went into circulation during these years. The 500-peseta note, engraved by Maura, bears drawings apparently approved in September 1903. It represents Mercury, with four arms, foreshortened at the top; on the reverse are depictions of Science and Agriculture. It went into circulation on 9 April 1906 and we have no record of any extant preparatory drawings. As already mentioned, there is a sketch for the twenty-five-peseta note, notable for being the first banknote to show the new façade of the Banco de España. There was no further talk of the design for a thousand-peseta note.

The last three drawings in the set are related, since they show the two sides of the same banknote, the fifty-peseta note, which is not known to have gone into circulation either, although some, extraordinarily rare, proofs of the definitive print, with the watermark, have survived. This is interesting, because two drawings for the obverse have been preserved, described in the press as depicting the 'Inspiring Genius of Painting'. One of them still retains the passe-partout with the signature of Ricardo Maura —Bartolomé's son — who was commissioned by the Bank to adapt the design by the Andalusian master to the conditions required for printing at the time. Under the drawing there is an inscription stating that it had been approved for printing. It is possible that this is why it was redrawn to adapt to new measures. A third drawing, for the reverse of this note, is also preserved, depicting Commerce protecting the Arts as conceived by Villegas, as had been announced in the press.

There is no doubt that this small set of drawings drew on Villegas's models, to whom the ideas and the formal concept, unequivocally belong. However, given the existence of a drawing with only minor alterations, almost certainly by Ricardo Maura, in the set used to adapt the compositions to the formats of each particular banknote, on the Board's instructions, and the absence of any signature by the Sevillian painter on the remainder, one might well wonder whether all of these drawings might not in some way be part of that internal processing of the first models submitted by the director of the Prado in 1902, but actually carried out by Maura, with the necessary retouching and informative and regulatory requirements issued by the Bank. Perhaps this would better explain the drawing of the hippogriff in flight, which may have reflected a first alternative submitted by the painter and rejected by the Board, necessitating the changes that we now see in the definitive design. In any case, this small set is invaluable for any understanding of the process behind the publication of the Bank's notes.

Carlos González Navarro