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Valentín Carderera y Solano (14 February 1796, Huesca - 25 March 1880, Madrid) was a Spanish writer and portrait painter in the Academic style. He was named honorary court painter during the reign of Isabel II.
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Biography
He attended the Universidad Sertoriana de Huesca, where he studied philosophy then, thanks to the patronage of José de Palafox, studied drawing in Zaragoza with Buenaventura Salesa (1756-1819) and painting in Madrid, where his teachers were Mariano Salvador Maella and José de Madrazo. In 1822, he won a grant to study in Rome, awarded by José António, Duke of Villahermosa. He remained in Italy until 1831, travelling widely and creating an album of sketches. While there, he also became involved in the study and collecting of antiquities; a subject that had interested him since he was a boy.
He was particularly fond of the engravings of Francisco de Goya and owned a large collection of them. In 1835, he wrote the first substantial biography of Goya, which was published in the journal El Artista.
In 1836, he received a commission to make an inventory of several abandoned monasteries. From 1838, he was a governing member of the board at the Museo Real de Pintura y Escultura. He was also a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he taught art history and, from 1847, he held a chair at the Real Academia de la Historia. In 1873, he helped establish the Museo de Huesca by donating pieces from his own collection.
His most familiar works are portraits of famous Spaniards throughout history; gathered together in a large anthology called Iconografía Española (1855, enlarged in 1864), which constitutes his magnum opus. In order to defray the costs of publication, he had to sell his collection of prints to the Biblioteca Nacional.
As a writer, he also contributed regular essays on cultural subjects to España Artística y Monumental, El Liceo Artístico y Literario, El Museo Universal and the French Gazette des Beaux-Arts. In 1866, he edited the first edition of the Discursos practicables del nobilísimo arte de la pintura, written in 1675 by Jusepe Martínez.