The Museum of Beautiful Arts of Valencia, also known as the Painting Museum of the Carmen, Provincial Museum of Beautiful Arts, or more recently the Museum San Pío V from the building that hosts it, is one of the most important in the Valencian Community as far as historical paintings go.
It is formed by a great pinacoteca and an ample floor of drawings and engravings, besides sculptures, archaeological pieces, architectonic fragments, decorative photographs and arts. Its history is long and risky, with of ups and downs of all types, in which stages and moments of crisis are laid out, but it always leads towards an illusory, conscious future to belong to the elite of the Spanish museums.
To speak of the museológico phenomenon in Valencia we must begin to talk about the Academy of San Carlos, that formed in the later half of the 18th century.The idea was to create in Valencia an academy of beautiful arts, the initiative of the brothers Jose and Ignacio Vergara who, with a group of artists founded on the 7th February 1753, the Academy of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture of Santa Barbara, in tribute to the Barbarian queen of Braganza, the lady of Fernando I. The life of that academy was very short.
Years later another attempt was made, on the 14th February 1768, the monarch Carlos III, who approved the statutes of the new and definitive Real Academy of Noble Arts of San Carlos, and with thanks to the magnanimity of the City council of Valencia, it could open its doors establishing its place in history.
You will find a multitude of works: ” Primitive valencianos” (from the end of 14th century until the beginning of 16th century) with artists like Miquel Alcanyís, Pere Nicolau, Starnina, Gonçal Peris, Jacomart and Joan Reixac. The 16th century brings works of Paolo of San Leocadio, Yáñez of the Almedina, Vicente Macip and Joan de Joanes. The 17th and 18th Centuries are represented by the rich Valencian school barroca, with works of Francisco and Juan Ribalta, Espinosa, Shore, March or the traveling Orrente, as well as by artists of universal reputation, among them the Greco one, Morals, Vela’zquez, White Alonso, Loyal Murillo, Buckets, Goya and Lopez. The 19th and 20th centuries brings work from Benlliure, Muñoz Degrain, Ignacio Pinazo and Joaquin Sorolla, to only mention most well-known.
