Voces del Prado

Learning from people with huge personalities

Matías Díaz Padrón, Technical Advisor and Head of the Department of Conservation of Flemish Painting and the Northern Schools up to 1700, 1970-2005

I don't know whether you know that I'm from the Canary Islands, it's a well-known fact, to which I may add something that the wife of Xavier de Salas told me: "My husband used to tell me, How is it that this man from so far away, the Canary Islands, right next to Africa, has achieved so much and learned so much about the Prado Museum?" We had a collection of wise men here at our disposal, Sánchez Cantón, who was a professor of mine at the University, later became a tyrant boss here at the Prado Museum. Diego Angulo Íñiguez, Xavier de Salas. It's funny because they were here at the Museum but they wouldn't leave the University, in other words they were directors of the Prado Museum, with all that it means, but they never stopped teaching at the University. They continued directing the doctoral dissertations of their students. Today I am surprised about these characters, people who were astonishing for me and who continued building up their knowledge, their preparation was top tier and they were always doing research, the number of published works by Diego Angulo or by Javier Sánchez Cantón is impressive. These ogres who used to teach us, they'd take us to the Museum, it could be on a Saturday or a Friday, we'd spend two hours and they would be standing up all that time past the age of 70, telling us about the paintings one by one starting in the Middle Ages, then the Renaissance and Baroque periods, explaining everything, that was our class. They'd explain the characteristics of an artist, their brushstrokes, execution, prototypes and drawings and how we could distinguish them. We would see the works directly with these professors, even those who taught archaeology took us to see the sculptures at the Prado. Among my teachers were [Antonio García] Bellido and [Antonio] Blanco Freijeiro (Member of the Royal Trust), two eminent men, and we were fortunate, I was fortunate, to have the best professors in Spain. As you are surely well aware, those who made it to Madrid were elite professors, nearly measuring up to or examining each other. That was our fortune and it paid off. We didn't realize what huge personalities they were until many years later, these people who had experienced the war and were building up the Prado Museum. They were very dry personalities, all those professors we had, you got the impression of being a wee little soldier under a drill sergeant, not like today that teachers are much more open—in those days they kept their distance. Sometimes they said "Gentlemen", in capital letters. They were the type you keep admiring over time.