Manuel Revuelta’s attention to the artistic heritage of his native Palencia

Abstract

We highlight a facet of the enormous work of Manuel Revuelta that combines the love for his native land and his expert gaze as a historian, addressing his attention to the vicissitudes of artistic consciousness in the province of Palencia, developed especially in a study that appeared in 1999. Revuelta starts from an interesting notion of «artistic consciousness», which implies not only the conservation and care but also the valuation and study of the heritage of a region, with its cultural and religious implications. The tour he proposes focusing on Palencia and the knowledge of its artistic treasures is both a very suggestive analysis of the history of Spain between the eighteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, and of the relevance of the relations between the church, the state, new political ideas and the spiritual and cultural value of art.