Seventeenth-century paintings found in Spain after almost a hundred years missing. Two rare paintings with biblical themes by Lucas Valdés have been recovered by Spanish police nearly a century after they disappeared. Their whereabouts had remained unknown since 1929.
Two paintings by the 17th-century Seville artist Lucas Valdés, considered lost for nearly a century, have been discovered by Spain’s National Police. This was reported in a press release from the country’s law enforcement agencies.
These are two oval canvases depicting biblical scenes, which previously adorned the main altar of a church at one of Seville’s hospitals. In 1929, these works were sent to be exhibited at the Ibero-American Exposition, after which their whereabouts became unknown. Since then, the paintings were considered missing and their fate remained unclear.
The investigation was reopened in September 2025, when Spain’s Ministry of Culture drew police attention to auction lots listed in the catalog of one of the auction houses. The ministry suspected that the works for sale could be the very paintings that had disappeared from the church collection nearly a century ago.
The police conducted an inspection and confirmed that the recovered paintings do in fact belong to Lucas Valdés and were once housed in the church at the hospital. According to the investigation, after the 1929 exposition the works were not returned to the church, and their subsequent movements were not officially recorded.
The fate of such works of art in Spain is often complicated: many pieces disappeared during wars, political upheavals, or due to neglect of cultural heritage. The return of Lucas Valdés' paintings has become a significant event for Spain's cultural scene and may provide new impetus for the search for other lost masterpieces.
