Voces del Prado

Analysing the Guernica

Inmaculada Echeverría Elvira, Head of the Technical Office, 1981-Up to date

The director of the Prado Museum was Pita Andrade and my first experience, for me being a San Sebastian born Basque woman, was dealing with the technical documentation on Picasso's Guernica. Since the painting was so large we couldn't do it in its entirety. There wasn't enough room. I also remember that in order to prepare the X-rays there wasn't even a darkroom, so we had to close the shutters to keep out the light, and set up the X-ray film right there. We took X-rays of all the little details. Approximately five or six films of significant parts of the painting and likewise with infrared reflectography. We didn't prepare the full technical documentation on the Guernica at that point because it was impossible, but we did have enough for an article published by José María Cabrera and Carmen Garrido, especially regarding changes in composition and on the state of conservation, which we knew was quite delicate.
The usual method is to do absolutely everything and after that, the Guernica, with the grant for El Greco, we incorporated everything in the method. When a work of art arrived at the cabinet or if we were working on it in the hall, we did the X-rays, reflectography (of the full painting, if possible, and otherwise just of the details we considered significant), we analysed pigments, took samples, using ultraviolet light, etc.