In compliance with the schedule, the Consortium of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia (MNAC) put out to tender this Monday the contract for the dismantling, packaging, transport and unpacking of the secular paintings of the Monastery of Santa María de Sijena (Huesca).
The entity’s action plan for the year was already committed to taking a step forward in the execution of the sentence that requires the return of the Romanesque paintings from the monastery of Santa María de Sijena before the end of the first semester, and it was in March when the tender was made public and allocation of 81,000 euros for the work of transferring the so-called “profane” paintings, with an estimated duration of 12 months. If the calculations are true, that part of the murals could be in the Huesca monastery in 2027.
Finish before 2026
The base tender budget with VAT is 81,527.14 euros and the deadline for submitting offers for interested companies will end on March 19, as Europa Press has learned. The execution of the contract services must begin after the signing of the contract scheduled for May 15 and end before December 2026, with no extensions planned.
The purpose of the contract is to carry out the necessary work to remove the secular paintings from their current location, exhibited in room 17 of the MNAC permanent collection, as well as the provision of packaging appropriate to their typology, and transport to the monastery, in Villanueva de Sijena.
The unpacking of the paintings and all actions derived from these transports are also the subject of the contract, and, considering that they are fresco paintings, torn off and transferred to canvas, the packaging and transport must be carried out under conditions that guarantee their conservation.
The secular paintings are a set of mural paintings—fresco transferred to canvas—formed by eight panels that, like a continuous frieze, decorated the upper part of the walls of a rectangular room located between the church and the cloister and are in the custody of the community of San Juan nuns.
