Valentín Carderera (1796-1880). Dibujante, coleccionista y viajero romántico

Valentín Carderera y Solano (Huesca, 1796 – Madrid, 1880) was a painter, scholar, communicator, collector and traveller. His life was marked by his efforts to safeguard Spain’s historical heritage and he journeyed around much of the Spanish mainland to bear witness in his drawings and watercolours to significant monuments, many at risk of disappearance as a result of the modernising drive ushered in by the new liberal order. This catalogue, which accompanies the exhibition with the same title on view at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, reconstructs Carderera’s intense life in six thematic sections. A survey of his formative period, including his stay in Italy, is followed by a section on the Romantic generation that exposes his bonds with the Madrazo family, Mérimée and Stirling Maxwell. He shared with them the same nostalgia for the past and the need to define his position in the complex debate between tradition and progress.