Museu Frederic Marès

This guide to the Museu Frederic Marès in Barcelona traces the life of sculptor and university professor Frederic Marès, who began collecting as a boy after his family moved from the border town of Portbou and never stopped. It follows his decades of buying at Paris auction houses to fill the former Royal Palace rooms behind the cathedral, once a seat of the Inquisition, with crucifixes, carved saints, and an entire floor of nineteenth-century everyday objects sorted by gentleman's and lady's rooms. Notice how each commission he carved as a working sculptor seems to have gone straight back out the door toward the next auction lot.