Spain Banknotes 500 Pesetas banknote 1951 Mariano Benlliure
Bank of Spain - Banco de España
Obverse: Portrait of Spanish sculptor Mariano Benlliure engraved by Camilo Delhom.
Reverse: The Julián Gayarre Mausoleum in bronze sculpted by Mariano Benlliure in Roncal Valley, Navarra Spain engraved by José Luis López Sánchez. (Sebastián Julián Gayarre Garjón (9 January 1844 in Roncal, Navarre – 2 January 1890 in Madrid), better known as Julián Gayarre, was a Spanish opera singer who created the role of Marcello in Donizetti's Il Duca d'Alba and Enzo in Ponchielli's La Gioconda.)
Watermark: Roman man's head in profile.
Size: 146 x 95 mm. Circulation: 32.934 million notes. In circulation from 16 September 1952.
Spain Banknotes - Spain Paper Money
1951 Issue
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Mariano Benlliure
Mariano Benlliure (8 September 1862 – 8 November 1947) was a Spanish sculptor, who executed many public monuments and religious sculptures in Spain, working in a heroic realist style.
He was born in El Grau quarter of Valencia. His earliest sculptures featured bullfighting themes, modeled in wax and cast in bronze. At the age of thirteen he showed a wax modello of a picador at the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1876. Pursuing the thought of becoming a painter, he went to Paris his expenses paid by his master, Francisco Domingo Marqués. A trip to Rome in 1879, revealing at first hand the sculptures of Michelangelo convinced him to be a sculptor. In 1887 he established himself permanently in Madrid, where in that year's Exposición Nacional his portrait sculpture of the painter Ribera won him a first-prize.
Benlliure's style is characterized by detailed naturalism allied to an impressionistic spontaneity. His portrait busts and public monuments are numerous, and include:
the tomb of Práxedes Mateo Sagasta in the Pantheon of Illustrious Men, Madrid
monument to José de San Martín, Lima, Peru
a bronze memorial to María Cristina de Borbón, Madrid
the bronze equestrian statue of Alfonso XII of Spain, in Madrid's Buen Retiro Park, the centerpiece of a memorial designed by architect José Grases Riera.
Julian Gayarre Mausoleum
The Julian Gayarre Mausoleum is in Roncal, a Pyrenean town 88 kilometres from Pamplona. This sculpted construction takes us back to the glorious era of the Navarrese tenor and the sculptor from Valencia who created it, Mariano Benlliure. The mausoleum was exhibited at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1900 where it won the Medal of Honour for Sculpture. It is hardly surprising that the then Queen Regent, Marнa Cristina, wanted to install it next to the Royal Theatre in Madrid, but the tenor's family refused and it is now the star attraction of Roncal's small cemetery, eight hundred meters from the town in which the great Gayarre was born.
An essential visit in Roncal is the Mausoleum where the remains of tenor Juliбn Gayarre lie. The road leaves from the Town Hall, passing the spacious open-air fronton court and the schools -both gifts to the townsfolk from the tenor- taking you to the town's peaceful cemetery in which the restored mausoleum stands out, less than one kilometre from the centre.
The sculpture, designed by the prestigious artist Mariano Benlliure from Valencia, was installed in the cemetery of the Pyrenean town in 1901, eleven years after the tenor's death. The funerary monument, built from white and bronze marble, rises up in four levels and consists of a marble sarcophagus embellished on the faзades by children, in very plain relief, singing librettos from the most famous operas performed by Gayarre.
On one side of the tomb is a female figure in bronze reclining in an abandoned pose with a lute, hiding her heartbroken face in a clear allusion to Music. The symbolic force of the mausoleum is completed by two more bronze figures; Harmony and Melody, who are balanced unsteadily on the slab of the tomb, holding up the bronze coffin in their hands. On top of the coffin, the figure of Fame leans over, as if wanting to hear the last notes from the tenor's voice, now silenced for ever.
The cemetery in Roncal is usually closed to visitors, but a visit to the mausoleum from the outside is well worth it.
From Roncal you can visit other towns in the valley such as Isaba and Burgui, with its Rafters' Museum, and the cheese-making dairies of Burgui, Vidangoz and Ustarroz. Another alternative is to climb up the highest peaks of Navarre in Belagua or practice cross-country and backcountry skiing in winter.