Juan laurent, noted french photographer, established a studio in madrid in 1856. He is recognized for his architectural and landscape scenes of spain and portugal as well as his extensive documentation of the collections of the prado museum and the royal armory in madrid. By the 1860s he was the proprietor of laurent y cia, the largest photographic publishing house in spain. Laurent's prints and albums were marketed to a wealthy clientele through his gallery in paris and distributed in england by marion & co. Of london. (hannavy, encyclopedia of nineteenth-century photography, vol. 2, pp. 829-830). The ruiz vernacci photo archive owns a glass plate negative (vn-20166) that reproduces an early j. Laurent y cia. Photographic print of this murillo painting. It shows the effect of an 1874 attack on the painting, when just the figure of saint anthony was cut out and stolen. The image in the negative shows the piece of paper with saint anthony cut from and moved to the side of a full view of the painting. This diagram-like lay out may have been used to illustrate a magazine article explaining the robbery. The following year, the spanish embassy in the united states managed to buy back the stolen piece from an antique dealer in new york and return it to seville, where it was reunited with the rest of the canvas in 1875 by the most renowned art conservator of his time, salvador martínez cubells. Martínez, a long-time conservator of the museo del prado, was famous for transferring goya's frescoes known as the black paintings from the walls of goya's home to canvas in 1874. The subtext in the labels of two of the image collections' photographs indicates that they were shot from the original painting after martínez's restoration. The print mounted in a223, vol. 1, pl. 72, has a different caption, and may have been shot before the robbery and the subsequent restoration; it also has substantial fading at the edges. Date: Photo c. 1875.
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