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I have been with him and with Manuela Mena on several occasions in the Restoration Workshop in order to see things that were being carried out. The first time I saw him, or I was with him, was when I was restoring The Last Communion of St. Joseph of Calasanz by Goya. This is a picture that had never been cleaned or restored until I did so. And I remember how he jumped around and got all enthusiastic when he saw Goya’s technique, because there is a lot of sand mixed with the oil to give texture to the black. Given that the painting is predominantly executed in black and grey tones, he used sand in order to give the colour substance. When he saw these textures produced by Goya, he jumped up and down with enthusiasm. When a person knows about something and explores it in his works, being able to see the tricks used by the great masters is something that really excites, evoking emotions that are quite different to those of a historian. It means recognising the trade, the material, the form of experimentation, the way something is expressed through the picture’s material dimension. It’s not about the iconography or the image, but about how it’s made.
In The Last Communion of St. Joseph of Calasanz, for example, there is a vault on one side where the children are kneeling. This vault or architectural construction is made of varnish and a little pigment. But it’s as if it were gouache, and the varnish even trickles a little. The artist isn’t bothered, because he’s interested in the texture and the way the light vibrates. Obviously, it’s very difficult to clean this, removing what is on top without touching Goya’s work. Barceló loved observing all that. I don’t remember what other works he saw when I was restoring them. But I do remember this one, because it was the first time I was with him. Later, he came again with his daughter. But that was the first time I was with him, and I saw what it meant to understand the painter and to have the same vision, to understand the expressiveness of a brushstroke, the search for texture, what it means to explore material.
He works at the Restoration Workshop of the Museo del Prado, specializing in the works of El Greco. He is also Professor of Restoration at the Official School of Applied Arts in Madrid, and he received the National Prize for Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Goods in 2010.
Interview recorded on April 19, 2018
