Rafael Monleón

Rafael Monleón y Torres (1843 – 24 November 1900) was a Spanish artist (painting, engraving, ceramics), archaeologist, historian and naval pilot.

[1] His most ambitious work was never published during his lifetime: the treatise on the Historia gráfica de la navegación y de las construcciones navales en todos los tiempos y en todos los países (Graphic History of Navigation and Naval Construction...).

It was illustrated with over a thousand drawings, blue prints and watercolors; completed while he was at the museum, together with hundreds of texts and vignettes on every known type of ship, European and Oriental.

He participated in every National Exhibition of Fine Arts after 1864, except for 1892, owing to his involvement in the celebrations for the four-hundredth anniversary of the "Discovery of America", which included an elaborate scale model of the Santa María being made as a gift to the United States.

As an engraver, he provided illustrations on marine topics for La Ilustración Española y Americana, Nuevo Mundo (New World) [es] and other periodicals.