This elegant work in oversized format presents another chapter of the largely as yet untold Malaspina saga. Publication in the late 18th century would have heightened both Spanish national and naval prestige; but court intrigue cancelled contemporary plans for promulgation of results, and the Parma-born leader was banished. Perhaps as much as a result of his exile as his writings, South Americans consider Alejandro Malaspina as a worthyprecursor of, and spokesman for, colonial emancipation. However, his Minister of Maríne, Antonio Valdés, felt that the young naval captain was the only person in the Spanish Navy who could achieve the desired results to be derived from a round-the-world exploring expedition devoted not only to scientific and hydrographic investigation but also to observations of a political nature.
At the heart of this presentation are twenty-five fine examples of some of the earliest and most important iconography of Argentina and Chile, done by Malaspina’s group during two visits there in 1789-1790 and 1793-1794. Formerly belonging to the Bauzá Collection, these are now owned principally by Bonifacio del Carril, Minister of Foreign Relations of Argentina, and Dr. Armando Braun Menéndez, lawyer, editor and hacendado. This splendid collection was until recently in the hands of Felipe Bauzá’s descendants. As Chief of Charts and Maps of the Malaspina expedition, and later as second director of the Depósito Hidrográfico, the Mallorcan geographer Bauzá had close contact with the materials of the expedition. As deputy from Mallorca to the Spanish Cortes, he voted against absolute monarchy in 1822, went into exile in England, and was condemned to death in absentia by Fernando VII. Upon departure for London, Bauzá took “a rich personal archives with him which doubtless differed, by a selective criteria now difficult to establish, from the archives left in the Depósito.” The Bauzá Collection in the British Museum and the previously mentioned drawings were included.
One correction involves the possibility tentatively advanced that José Cardero was the artist of a drawing of a gaucho in plate #25. Upon the first visit Cardero was orderly to Lt. Dionisio Alcalá-Galiano, and he is noted to have commenced his artistic activities in Guayaquil in 1790. By 1793-1794 Cardero had been detached and was then at the Academia de San Carlos de México, almost ready to return to Cádiz.
The book sheds some light on the “problema del humanista Tadeo Haenke” suggested in 1960 by Kühnel and Arnade. This concerns the supposed authority of an account of an overland trip from Chile to Buenos Aires. This frequently published account is ascribed in this work to José Espinosa y Tello and Felipe Bauzá.
