Comillas adds 18,000 new volumes on art and patronage to its catalogue

Comillas Pontifical University has received 18,000 volumes from the library of Father Alfonso Rodríguez Gutiérrez de Ceballos, SJ, an extensive collection dedicated to Art History. Ceballos himself and the Director for Economic Affairs and Business Relations, Enrique Marazuela Cejudo, signed the donation document, in a ceremony held at the university.

The library of Fr. Ceballos, as he is known in many university, academic and Jesuit circles, dedicated exclusively to Art History, comprises approximately 18,000 volumes in six languages (Spanish, Italian, French, English, German and Latin) without forgetting other titles in Russian, Polish and Chinese. It is one of the most significant private collections in Europe on the artistic production promoted by the Society of Jesus.

Fr. Ceballos holds a degree in Philosophy from Comillas Pontifical University (1954), in History from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1960) and in Theology from the Faculty of Theology in Innsbruck. He holds a PhD in History from the UCM, has been lecturer in Art History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and is a full member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. He has devoted numerous studies to the theory and artistic treatises of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the art of the Society of Jesus and the iconographic programmes of the figurative arts in the 16th and 17th centuries. His scientific production has left us a vast bibliography on Spanish art and has been an important point of reference for many generations of young researchers on Spanish, European and Latin American Mannerism and the Baroque.

Comillas, and especially the Library Service, is very grateful to Father Ceballos for this donation, as it represents a notable enrichment of the book collections in Art History, and contributes to making our library a reference institution for the study, among other subjects, of the patronage and artistic dimension of the Society of Jesus in the Modern Age.