Good exhibits are filled with surprises, but the experts who conserve master paintings and sculpture don't like the unexpected. Before shipping Landscape With a Garland of Flowers by Juan Van der Hamen y León (1596-1631) to the Albuquerque Museum for the upcoming show of Spanish masters, restorers cleaned the painting and got a jolt. The vignette had been heavily repainted, perhaps during an overzealous restoration in the 19th century. Conservators found Van der Hamen's landscape, painted in 1628, safely underneath. The restored painting, which looks markedly different from the catalog image, is part of El Alma de España (The Soul of Spain), opening Sunday, April 17, at the museum. The exhibit comprises almost 100 pieces of Spanish art from the mid-16th century to the early-19th century -- turbulent, terrifying years during which Western civilization made a transition from a medieval worldview into modernity.

El Alma is the first of three shows of Spanish art at the museum during the coming year. Prelude to Spanish Modernism: Fortuny to Picasso opens in August, and Picasso to Plensa: A Century of Art From Spain opens in December. Published reports have stated that Picasso to Plensa was canceled, but museum director James Moore told Pasatiempo the show will open as planned.

The oldest work in El Alma, Mary Magdalene -- painted on wood and attributed to the Master of Astorga -- is from the 1620s, when the Spanish Empire was expanding and acquiring undreamed-of wealth and power. The Aztec Empire had fallen to Spain by 1521, the Mayan Empire by 1524, and the Inca Empire by 1533. Gold and silver treasure looted from the New World was about to change Europe forever. El Alma covers a time span from 1525 to 1830, during which Spain gained and lost a global empire.

Retired Albuquerque Museum art curator Ellen Landis devoted the past two years to developing this exhibition. She believes two-thirds of the art produced in Spain during this period was religious, which is reflected in El Alma. Portraits, still lifes, everyday scenes, and one landscape make up the remaining third of the show, yet within this handful of subjects a full range of human emotion and intellectual inquiry finds expression. From still lifes arranged, observed, and recorded with a calm precision that reflects Enlightenment beliefs in the power of human reason to the austerity of a solitary saint contemplating a human skull to the rapture of the Virgin in Immaculate Conception, Spanish art reflects a vital and complex society.

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