Immaculada Socias

Next December 1, Immaculada Socias presents a The Hispanic Society of America the book The Correspondence between Isidre Bonsoms Sicart and Archer Milton Huntington: The Collecting of Antique Books and works of Art.

Immaculada Socies Professor of Art Departament of the Barcelona University (UA) could wrote this book about the correspondence between these two lovers of books and art,  because The Hispanic Society of America preserved nearly a hundred letters of this correspondence, that goes from 1903 to 1913.

Archer Milton pintat per José María Lopez Mezquita

Archer Milton Huntington was the most influential person in the field of studies of Hispanic Culture in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. His most popular and more durable contribution was the creation of the Spanish Museum founded in 1904.  Over fifty years the filled the museum with its collections of paintings, decorative arts, manuscripts, maps, prints and photographs. Among his travels he rebuild the road of the Cid between Burgos to Valencia, it was in 1892.



Regarding the content of this Museum you could see paintings by El Greco, Goya, Sorolla, as well as notable pieces of medieval art. In decorative arts you can highlight the Custody from the Church of Saint John, made by Cristobal Becerril, around 1585. As for the sculptures, there are samples of the tombs from the Monastery of San Francisco de Cuellar, among others. Or about the old books you can see an edition of Don Quijote from 1605 by Juan de la Cuesta. The library contains over 250.000 books and news papers, about 15.000 are prior to 1701, and more than 200.000 manuscripts from the twelfth century onwards.

Portada del llibre en castellà

 As for Isidre Bonsoms a catalan bibliophile who started a library – he gifted it to the Institute of Catalan Studies – with a celebrated collection dedicated to Cervantes, as well as prints covering the fifteenth to the nineteenth century (Briefs Bosoms) there are over 5.000. Another collection from Spanish literary works prior or contemporaneous to Cervantes, and the oddities of manuscript of the Decameron in Catalan, or a unique piece of Tirant lo Blanc translated in Spanish.