{"id":35782,"date":"2026-06-06T11:27:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T11:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/35782\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T11:27:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T11:27:10","slug":"two-17th-century-paintings-recovered-after-being-missing-for-nearly-100-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/35782\/","title":{"rendered":"Two 17th-century paintings recovered after being missing for nearly 100 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spain\u2019s<\/a> National Police recovered two 17th-century oil paintings in May that had gone missing in 1930, following their exhibition at the Ibero-American Exposition of Seville.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both pieces were returned to the Archdiocese of Seville during a formal handover ceremony on May 20th. The ceremony took place in Seville\u2019s church of the Hospital of the Venerable Priests.<\/p>\n

The event was attended by the Secretary-General and Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Seville, Isacio Siguero, Dean Francisco Jos\u00e9 Ortiz, the Cathedral Chapter\u2019s Executive Administration and Heritage Delegate, Francisco Rom\u00e1n, as well as members of the Historical\u00a0Heritage<\/a> Brigade of Spain\u2019s National Police.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The paintings, titled Samson Taking the Honeycomb from the Lion’s Mouth and David Receiving the Loaves of the Presence from Achimelech, had originally been part of the decoration of the church\u2019s center altarpiece.<\/p>\n

Both were painted between 1698 and 1700, and appear in the church\u2019s historical inventory as \u201ctwo stories from the Old Testament and are the ones that are on the sides of the canopy of the main altar, the Archdiocese of Seville shared in a May 20 statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks to the fruitful efforts of the Archdiocese, the collaboration of the last owners of the works and the intervention of the Historical Heritage Brigade of the National Police, these two works by Lucas Vald\u00e9s return today, almost one hundred years later, to the church of the Hospital of the Venerable Priests, where they can once again be contemplated by the faithful and visitors of Seville.\u201d<\/p>\n

The church<\/a> housed the paintings until the renovation of the main altarpiece in July 1889, when they were moved for safekeeping to the sacristy. According to the archdiocese, the paintings were again seen around 1921-1922 by researcher Diego Angulo.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Several years later, in 1929, the two pieces were loaned for display at the Ibero-American Exposition in the city. When the exposition ended a year later, the pieces were never returned and have been lost since, believed to have become part of a private collection.<\/p>\n

However, in September 2025, Spain\u2019s Culture Ministry received a tip about two paintings that fit the description of the missing Vald\u00e9s artworks, as listed in an auction house’s catalog.<\/p>\n

An investigation was immediately launched to identify the pieces and determine whether they were indeed the missing pieces from Seville\u2019s church.<\/p>\n

After being identified as Vald\u00e9s’ pieces, the two\u00a0paintings<\/a> were seized by police, who contacted the owners and advised them to return them\u00a0to the Archdiocese of Seville.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain\u2019s National Police recovered two 17th-century oil paintings in May that had gone missing in 1930, following their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[5163,17166,17165,1203,109,17,1196],"class_list":["post-35782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seville","tag-church","tag-paint","tag-painting","tag-police","tag-seville","tag-spain","tag-theft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}