COMUNICACIÓN Y PRENSA

The painter Mariano Fortuny y Marsal lived in Granada for about two years between the summer of 1870 and autumn 1872.  Initially he and his family stayed at a hotel called la Fonda de los Siete Suelos that was very popular with artists visiting the city, and later they rented a house in the Realejo district.
However as an artist Fortuny also needed somewhere to work that was separate from his home, so he decided to rent a studio in which to paint.
Readers of this article can find out where this studio is, as it still exists in Granada today, and how the author located it using different sources, the most unusual of which were an oil painting in the National Museum of Arts in Catalonia entitled Paisaje de Granada (Landscape of Granada) and a photograph taken by the English photographer Charles Clifford during a trip by Queen Isabel II to Andalusia and Murcia. This photograph is part of an album entitled Photographic souvenirs of the visit of Their Majesties to the provinces of Andalusia and Murcia in September and October 1862, a copy of which was donated to the Library of the Council of the Alhambra by Count Romanones in 1909, where it remains today.
We hope that after reading this article you will be able to find the artist’s studio in the busy streets of modern Granada.

Rosa García Blanco
April 2016