Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

   The museum houses the most important of the works of art collected by Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and his father Heinrich Thyssen. The first works bought by Heinrich Thyssen, son of a German industrialist who was one of the richest men of his time, were from the German renaissance, including Holbein's Portrait of Henry VIII of England and Dürer's Christ among the Doctors, and it is for works of this period that the museum is particularly distinguished. Further acquisitions before WWII were from the Dutch school, including van Eyck's Annunciation and Memling's Portrait of a Young Man, and from the Italian renaissance, including Ghirlandaio's Portrait of Giovanna Tornabouni, among the most admired works of the collection, and Carpaccio's Portrait of a Young Gentleman.

   In 1932, having lived for some years in Hungary, where he was created first Baron Thyssen-Borne-misza, and then in Holland, Heinrich moved to Switzerland, to the Villa Favorita on the shores of Lake Lugano, where he built an art gallery to display his collection. After his death in 1947, his son Hans Heinrich bought out his elder brother's and his sisters" shares in the inheritance, and became one of a very small number of major purchasers of art in the 1940s and 1950s. It has been his policy to acquire representative works of modern art, and the collection includes paintings by Corot, Rothko, Picasso, Van Gogh, Gris, Derain, Bacon and Dalí. In 1988, as the result of an initiative by the former Minister of Culture, Javier Solana, 775 works from the collection were entrusted by the official owners, Favorita Trustees Ltd, to Spain for exhibition in the Villahermosa Palace in Madrid and in the Pedralbes Monastery in Barcelona for nine and half years. In 1993, as a result of the generosity of the second Baron and his Spanish wife, that collection was bought by Spain for $350m, a small proportion of its market value and a fraction of the offer made by the Getty Museum. It is officially owned by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation, but cannot be alienated and reverts to the Spanish state should the foundation be wound up. The complete remodel-ling of the Villahermosa Palace except for its façade was directed by Rafael Moneo.

   See also: art collections; museums

   EAMONN RODGERS