Casto María del Rivero

Casto María del Rivero y Sáinz de Baranda

Director from 20 February 1937 to 15 July 1937Salto de línea

Casto María del Rivero (Madrid, 18 October 1873 – Puebla de Montalbán, Toledo, 8 September 1961) had a degree in Philosophy & Letters (History section) and a PhD from the Central University. In 1892 he obtained the title of Archivist, Librarian and Antiquarian from the Spanish School of Diplomatics and was admitted to the Specialist Corps of Archivists, Librarians and Archaeologists in 1904. He entered the Numismatics and Glyptics section of the National Archaeological Museum in 1916, and by 1930 had risen to the position of section chief.

The records from 1934 list him as deputy director of the museum, a post he still occupied at the outbreak of the Civil War. For this reason he was appointed director of the museum, with Felipe Mateu Llopis as acting secretary, when Francisco Álvarez-Ossorio was forced to retire in accordance with the Ministerial Order of 20 February 1937.

At the time, all the museum collections—except for the replicas that formed part of the building’s architecture—had been packed up and placed for safekeeping inside a two-storey wooden scaffold in the Egyptian gallery. Furthermore, the museum was one of the buildings taken over by the Delegate Board of Confiscation, Protection and Rescue of Art Treasures, and as the board’s repository or storage facility, it received all the valuable artefacts that were collected from different places and secondary stores.

Del Rivero was forced to retire by virtue of the Ministerial Order of 15 June 1937 but was re-admitted as a museum curator in 1938. In 1940 he was appointed to the Board of Trustees.

After he resigned in 1943, having reached retirement age, he was appointed honorary curator in recognition of his achievements during his years at both the Museum of Artistic Reproductions and the National Archaeological Museum.Salto de línea