This activity is focused on the organisation and commission of an exhibition that takes place in the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia. The guiding thread of the exhibition is the Escuela de Flores y Ornatos (Flowers and Adornments School) that was created in the 18th century associated to the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts to train painters that used the decorative models that needed to be used in the Valencian fabrics and ceramics. The arrival of the Age of Enlightenment and the concept Arte Útil (Useful Art) get together for the desire of enlightened monarchs to provide with artists the Royal Factories (Tapestries: Goya, Mengs, Bayeu; Crystals, Silk, Alcora, Onda, etc.). In the Valencian case are in ceramics (Manises, Paterna), porcelain (Alcora, Onda) and the Valencian Silk the sectors where the Valencian painters formed within the Academy work. Renowned painters as Benito Espinós, José Zapata, Miguel Parra or Vicente Castelló (disciples of Vicente López).
For them they will use natural models (of the disappeared Valencian gardens, even the botanic), still life paintings and flowers of the Baroque period (Yepes, Arellano), plaster models, etc.
The Museum of Fine Arts has a rich collection of paintings, drawings and knitting models. This exhibition will be preceded by a historic preamble in which paintings related to silk will be chosen, ceramics, commerce, craftwork and the activity of guilds as an educational way for explaining the production and its commercialisation and social impact prior to the implementation of the Royal Factories. To this end, the Museum collection and some emblematic pieces of the national heritage (Royal collections) of Valencian silk.
This exhibition could be enriched with a route of the museums of the Silk Road that could show its rich collections associated to this heritage, such as the Museum of Fine Arts of Castellón (Ferran Olucha), the Museum of Alcora, the one of Onda and the González Martí Museum of Ceramics and Decorative Arts (the ceramics of La Ceramo). In order to create an exhibition synergy referring the Silk Road. In order to do it, the first contacts are already taking place.
Location: Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia
Date: First term of 2017
Valencia, Silk Road
