A student of José Romero and of Eduardo Cano in Seville, José Villegas y Cordero worked as a copyist in the Museo del Prado in Madrid and trained at the studio of Federico de Madrazo thanks to the support of his parents. When he was twenty he moved to Rome, where he spent long periods of time in contact with masters of his generation including Fortuny, Pradilla and Rosales. In the Italian capital, he moved around from studio to studio and place to place, until his commercial success enabled him to build a luxurious house in the Hispanic-Muslim style in 1887. This house became an important inner sanctum for the artistic circles and Roman society of that time. In 1888 he was appointed director of the Spanish Academy in Rome, and from 1901 to 1918 was the Director of the Prado, where he organised the institution’s first monographic exhibitions on El Greco (1902) and Zurbarán (1905).

Villegas y Cordero continued to paint after leaving the Prado in early 1921, but the accounts of the time report that he withdrew from society and was afflicted by a progressive loss of sight. He died in Madrid on 10 November of that year.

• Julián Gállego Serrano
• María José Alonso
• Carlos Martín

Francisco Belda y Pérez de Nueros was the son of Francisco José Belda y Belda and of Aurelia Pérez de Nueros y Levenfeld, the descendant of the former Governor of the Banco de España, Martín Belda y Mencía del Barrio, Marquis of Cabra. In 1879 he graduated in Philosophy and Literature, and the following year in Canon and Civil Law. In 1881 he married Rosa María Méndez de San Julián y Belda, his third cousin, at the parish church of Santa Cruz, in Madrid.

He joined the Banco de España in 1881, in the service of the General Delegation for the Collection of Contributions. He worked at the institution for fifty years, moving up the ladder to second co-counsel (1889), first co-counsel (1893), deputy secretary (1901), Head of the Advisory Department (1909), second deputy governor (1912) and eventually first deputy governor (1927), in which post he replaced the late Pío García Escudero y Ubago.

Belda was a great lover of the arts and an amateur painter. In his youth, he had won several diplomas and medals from the Madrid School of Arts and Crafts, and had taken First Prize and Medal at the Special School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving of the San Fernando Academy. He painted a portrait of the Deputy Governor Benito Fariña Cisneros (1833-1903), which he donated to the institution in 1905. Thanks to his artistic sensitivity and knowledge, he purchased a painting of the jurist Pedro Sainz de Andino, which was closely linked to the history of the bank as he was the author of the Articles of Association of the Banco de San Fernando. Belda offered the portrait, painted by Antonio María Esquivel in 1832, to the Board for the same price of 1000 pesetas that he had paid. One of Belda’s great contributions to the bank was the discovery, in a dark room at the Calle Atocha premises, of six paintings which he recognised as being by Goya. There were the portraits of the directors of the Banco de San Carlos– José del Toro Zambrano, Francisco Cabarrús, Francisco Javier Larumbe, Count of Altamira and Marquis of Tolosa – along with one of King Charles III of Spain. The paintings, except for the last in the list, were loaned to the recently founded Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts for the major exhibition ‘Goya 1900’, organised in that year. Several experts and critics at the exhibition raised doubts as to whether Goya had painted the portraits, as ‘his family air was not convincing’. Not satisfied with the reasons given, Belda searched the Banco de San Carlos archives and found the commissions to the painter in the minute books and the entries for the payments in the accounting ledgers. He was the author of Instituciones de derecho civil, for which he received a gratuity from the Bank. Belda died at the age of 71 in his home at Paseo de la Castellana, 74 in Madrid. He had four children: Francisco José, Aurelia, Fernando and José María.

Elena Serrano García