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I recall a defining moment for me. When “Vermeer” exhibition [2003] had concluded, we asked the Museum of Vienna, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, whether they might allow us to continue exhibiting The Art of Painting, the great masterpiece by Vermeer from the Museum of Vienna, for another two weeks alongside Las Meninas. Both works address the mystery of artistic creation. Vermeer tackled the issue in Holland and Velázquez did the same in Spain, but more or less at the same time. The Museum of Vienna agreed, and we were able to see these two masterpieces side by side in Hall 12, the great basilica devoted to Velázquez. Comparing the two pictures was fascinating; they are of different size and different scale, etc., but clearly some kind of electrical charge existed between the two.
At the same time, we were assembling the exhibition on Titian [2003], for which the Uffizi had loaned us the painting Venus of Urbino, which had never been exhibited before in Spain. This painting was linked to the Titian nudes in our own collection. So we hung the Venus of Urbino in the Main Gallery, close to the entrance to the Velázquez Hall. This meant that, for ten days, the visitor could stand in the middle of the Main Gallery and view Titian’s Venus of Urbino and, looking towards Hall 12, could also see Las Meninas and Vermeer’s The Art of Painting. I felt this was a truly defining moment, a little piece of heaven, having so many masterpieces in the same place.
Assistant Director of Conservation and Research at the Museum from 2002 to 2015, year in which he was appointed director of The National Gallery in London. At the Museo del Prado he assumed responsibility for the collections, research projects, restoration projects and exhibitions related to the same.
Interview recorded on July 30, 2015
