The feeling is indescribable when the two gigantic metal doors open to the sides and the filtered light from the cloudy sky pours in from the cloister windows. The almost physical assault of beauty was expected, but the emotion is unpredictable, uncontrollable, dizzying. Something like what those who suffer from what they call Stendhal syndrome must feel. A peaceful silence reigns in the wide space that opens around the windows. Dominating the scene is an immense naked painting by El Greco, with all its bright reds, deep blues, impressive yellows in the air. Also, its wounds, scratching the faces, the sky, the garments.
A woman leans over the canvas perched on a metal ladder, wearing glasses straight out of a science fiction movie and a very fine brush like a scalpel that brings back to the present. Even, to the past. Around both, the woman and the artwork, perfectly aligned canvases full of flowers, vegetation, mythological scenes, religious scenes, or simply pure botanical hedonism rest. In front of some of them, more women; more futuristic glasses; more surgical precision, more soft murmurs of work.
Enrique Quintana drops the key piece of information four hours after entering his domain, already retracing the labyrinth of corridors and elevators on the way out, still with the beauty etched in the heart and in the pit of the stomach and a slight intoxication of data, names, and faces. He mentions it in passing, as if it were of no importance: "Notice how unique the Prado restoration workshop is, the Louvre, the largest museum in the world, does not have its own workshop. They outsource each job".
The chief coordinator of Restoration and Technical Documentation at the Prado Museum boasts of this feat, and rightly so, because behind its exhibition walls, the Madrid art gallery hides one of the most cutting-edge restoration workshops in the world, where craftsmanship and technology, experience and modernity converge in a true hospital of art where the heart, the painting restoration workshop, is just the beginning. Sculpture, graphic arts, and even wooden frames and supports have their own services, to continue with the medical metaphor, and the chemical analysis laboratory and technical documentation office serve as diagnostic and consultation units. The whole forms a well-oiled mechanism in constant communication, and that, says the chief, is the key to their success: avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy.
The first time a painting restoration made headlines, Enrique Quintana was a 26-year-old apprentice restorer. It was in 1984 when the British John Brealey, chief conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, arrived at the Madrid art gallery with the task of restoring the lost luster to Las Meninas by Velázquez. After 23 days of cleaning practically in secret amidst a loud uproar in the streets - How could the government allow a foreigner to intervene in a national symbol?! - Brealey left a first layer of varnish on the artwork and a gift to his four local disciples: they would be in charge of the final touches.
The day before undertaking such an imposing mission, Quintana broke his wrist. He took revenge on bad luck 24 years later when he was entrusted with coordinating that cutting-edge workshop that once again made Velázquez's masterpiece shine. Those who know him say that his ability to move around the studio without disturbing but keeping a close eye on each work in rehabilitation was inherited from that British man who arrived from New York. He is about to reach the majority of his tenure in the position.
"One thing I ask of you, do not talk about me. Let the restorers speak, I am just a guide." Quintana will forgive us for not complying with his request, but the passion of the man at the helm of one of the most important restoration workshops in the world, also thanks to him, is inseparable from the life that bustles behind the security door that separates the Prado open to the public from where only the chosen ones can reach, where the magic happens. He opens the door as if it were the first time, he has the "wow effect" well calibrated. "Let's go up the freight elevator that we use to transport artworks. As you will see, the floor is all smooth, without bumps, to avoid vibrations," he explains as the metal box reaches the fourth floor.
Restorer Marta Méndez works on 'The goddess Flora', from the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens.
After the initial impact, we follow the guide's orders and enter the painting workshop in search of the first-person narrative of its protagonists. The woman on the ladder adjusts her glasses and descends a couple of steps. She is Almudena Sánchez, the senior restorer at the Prado, her professional home since 1982. "It's a real privilege," she acknowledges. "Keep in mind that we examine the painting millimeter by millimeter, it is impossible to contemplate it with this level of intensity in any other circumstance."
Before her stands The Baptism of Christ by El Greco, the last great work of the Cretan painter in the hands of the Prado awaiting restoration. Almudena has been working on it since September, and her work will likely extend for a year. "I have already finished the cleaning phase, removing the layers of aged varnish that dulled the work and gave it a yellowish appearance, and just recently I started with the chromatic reintegration, which will be very long due to the large number of losses it has. Do you see here how the painting seems better preserved, without damage? That's the part I have already worked on," she points to the area where she was applying pigments with her millimeter brush a while ago. "My job is to bring the artist back, to tell him: 'Don't worry, you will breathe again and they will see you as you wanted to be seen'," she explains.
"Our mission is to improve communication between the visitor and the artwork. Facilitate their conversation"
The alarm to start a restoration can be raised by the professionals themselves, who have the collection distributed for periodic reviews, but also by the gallery attendants, responsible for reporting any anomalies and who even have a small emergency kit to facilitate an eventual intervention in case of disaster, whether accidental or vandalistic. Also passing through the workshop are the works destined for temporary exhibitions, many coming from storage and in need of a good touch-up before being exhibited to the public.
The floral exuberance that fills the easels in the workshop today is actually part of the exhibition Botany in Art. Plants in the collections of the Prado Museum, organized in collaboration with the La Caixa Foundation and which began last summer in Girona. "Our ultimate goal is to improve communication with the viewer, for the visitor to engage in a fluid and intense conversation with the artwork, to suggest reflection and distract them from their problems as when we read a book, watch a movie, or listen to a song," explains Quintana. "And you might say: how are you going to relate to an angel or a religious scene from the 15th or 16th century? Well, fantastically well, we are still human and our problems are still similar. Paintings contain more stories than can be appreciated at a glance, we must listen to them well, and we must facilitate that conversation."
Sorry, Enrique, it just sounded so nice.
Wooden support expert José de la Fuente transports a portrait of Catherine of Austria by Antonio Moro.
Let's go back to Almudena and the spectacular three and a half meters high El Greco that she repaints dot by dot. "You find an eye, a mouth, something tiny that gets lost in the whole. You look at it very closely and with a magnifying glass and discover those tiny brushstrokes that are building something truly great, which up close sometimes looks like a blur and from afar forms a perfect construction with all the luxurious details," she marvels while pointing, with the end of the brush, at tiny white reflections in Christ's iris and in the water falling on his head.
In 44 years of career, the restorer holds on to two particularly exciting works: The Annunciation by Fra Angelico -"When we think about it, there's no need to explain why, it's sublime"-, and the Gioconda, which under successive layers of varnish hid a revelation as mysterious as her smile: it wasn't just any copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, but a work from his workshop painted at the same time as the original by one of his students. Almudena was the one who unveiled the yellowed veil: "Something like this only happens once in a lifetime. Or never".
Back to back with Almudena Sánchez and her monumental canvas, a young woman immerses herself in a small panel full of botanical details. She is Elisa Baronti Marchiò, born in Rome, trained in Florence, and arrived at the Prado with the first of her numerous scholarships without speaking a word of Spanish. Years later, she practically expresses herself without an accent and has been a permanent member of the museum staff for a month. She is the latest arrival. This combination of experience and youth is a pattern that repeats in every area of this restoration workshop, all with interns to ensure their future. Each specialty functions as a craft in which masters like Almudena train their disciples. "What surprised me the most during my learning period was the enormous generosity of all professionals in sharing their knowledge. That's not common," Elisa acknowledges.
"It's a dream to be here, I hope to live up to it." Says the Italian who has managed to turn her imposter syndrome -"Inevitable for a young woman," she points out- into a working tool: "You must always approach the works with great humility and with the idea that you still know practically nothing about them even if you have studied them for years."
Emerging from the open doors of the lift, a man appears, one of the few we will see in this workshop throughout the morning, such is the feminization of the artistic profession. His gloved hands carefully transport a painting on wood, a portrait of Queen Catherine of Austria by Antonio Moro. He is José de la Fuente, a worldwide authority, one of the very few active experts in wooden supports. His interventions have been as significant as those on The Three Graces by Rubens; The Adoration of the Shepherds by Mengs; Adam and Eve by Dürer; David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio; or The Holy Trinity by Botticelli. However, the work he remembers with the most affection is perhaps the one he did with The Descent from the Cross by Rogier van der Weyden in 1991, because it was the one that changed his life.
"I was working in the painting workshop, and the museum management assigned me to work with George Bisacca, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. My first impression upon learning his way of seeing and understanding painting on wood was that he went from the 19th century to the 20th century," he recalls. "Life led me to a specialty that did not exist in Spain and that has no more than five or six people in the world. And consider that, until 1470, all paintings were done on wood."
The discipline of José de la Fuente lies at the perfect intersection between art and engineering and requires both ingredients. No, he is not just a kind of master cabinetmaker: "Understanding the material is not enough, you have to understand the painting. I don't work with wood. I work with paintings", he concludes. On his table, all kinds of gadgets are spread out, all designed by him. Also his are some peculiar articulated nylon screws emerging from a braided frame supported on an easel. "It's to be able to transport the paintings without damaging them. This invention allows all kinds of movements in the wood: expansion, contraction, vertical flexion... The canvas is almost an inert support, but the wood is not, it moves with changes in humidity, making it much more fragile. I often worry more about transportation than the restoration itself," he admits.
De la Fuente says that his work is very anonymous: "Once we have finished, no one knows what's behind it". Also, that in his specialty, they take more risks than any other restorer, and he picks up some small wooden wedges used to fill the small cracks to which the passage of time and atmospheric changes condemn most works predating the 16th century. "We carve them to fit from behind, but we always go to the edge. The closer you get to the painted surface, the better the result. But if you're not careful, you go through the paint. It's a very delicate balance," he describes.
Still fascinated by the technical demonstration of a demanding master, who has trained a couple of dozen disciples but would not entrust an important job to more than three, we change the scene to arrive at the sculpture workshop, where Sonia Tortajada is immersed in cleaning a portrait of Isabel of Portugal, a work by Leone Leoni. "This jewel of the Renaissance was in the Gardens of Aranjuez on an albero earth floor, so the bottom was full of orange splatters. Look, there are still some left," she points out.
And what does the laser do, some kind of peeling? Wrong question. "No, for God's sake, no! That would be a mortal sin!" she exclaims. "The original surface is never sacrificed. This laser allows us to shoot in three wavelengths and cause a phenomenon known as photoablation. To put it simply, it removes the bad from the pores and leaves all the good." Behind her, an imposing bust of Antoninus Pius has the lower half of the face wrapped in plastic. "We are giving him a beard hydration treatment," the restorer laughs. "In reality, we have applied a gel solution that we made ourselves to remove a very aged and deeply embedded wax coating; so much so that it would be impossible to clean it and restore the marble surface with a swab soaked in solvent no matter how much we insisted for hours."
If what has been seen so far has not exuded enough magic, it is time to delve into the depths of each work. Literally. That is the task of the technical documentation department, created in 1975, to which the chemistry laboratory was added in 2007, responsible for analyzing the materials of which the works are composed. Maite Jover proudly displays the latest X-ray fluorescence analysis technology acquired by the Prado to create overlapping pigment maps that sometimes reveal hidden works beneath the visible surface. On her computer screen appears a Ferrer Bassa. With each click, the image turns into a spectrum, each time a different color. Click. "Here we highlight where there is gold." Click. "The green represents pigments containing copper." And suddenly, from a smooth, golden sleeve, a hidden Latin inscription emerges. "The painting was completely overpainted. A few years ago, this almost archaeological work was unthinkable. You could reach certain pigments, but this complete image was pure science fiction," Jover rejoices.
In the adjacent door, at the back of a room full of computers, a white screen covered with X-rays lights up. "Unlike other museums, we continue to work with film to analyze paintings because its range of grays allows us to reach a level of detail and focus that digital cannot achieve. If I can, I will retire with film," says a passionate Laura Alba in the technical documentation department. For sculpture, however, the team has designed an industrial tomograph with a rotating axis. "It's like a medical CT scan, but here the piece rotates," explains the restorer, returning to her computer to display all the possibilities that technology opens up in the study of a sculpture.