The IRNAS researchers Valme Jurado, José Luis González Pimentel, Bernardo Hermosín and Cesáreo Saiz Jiménez have just published the paper Biodeterioration of Salón de Reinos, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain in the scientific journal Applied Sciences. This study incides in the research of the microbial communities involved in the biodeterioration of the mural paintings decorating the Salón de Reinos.
The Salón de Reinos, former Museum of the Spanish Army, nowadays being restored in order to serve as a hall for exhibitions in the extension of El Prado National Museum, is the only remain, as well as the Casón del Buen Retiro, of the former Royal Palace of Buen retiro, built by Philip th Fourth in the 1630s as a second Royal residence in the ancient limits of the city of Madrid. The Salón de Reinos is so called because of the coats of arms of the kingdoms forming the Hispanic monarchy, painted in the ceiling as well as an important set of grutesque decorative motifs. The Salón was the place for which the huge iconographic-propagandistic artistic programme of king Philip the Fourth, painted by genii of the painting as Velazquez and Zurbaran.
The work published in Applied Sciences has been performed in collaboration with the company Ágora Restauraciones de Arte, S.L., which is the responsible for the restoration of the mural paintings, and has constituted an great impulse for the recovering of an important part of our Cutural Heritage.