Mutual Enrichment

Rafael Alonso Alonso, Restorer, 1978-2016

And he also learned a great deal from us. The whole experience was an example of mutual enrichment. Something else important that I witnessed was the restoration of the Immaculate Conception by José de Ribera, which came from Salamanca and was a large painting measuring 5 metres by 6 metres. We had to remove the lining, because it was poorly lined, and insert a new lining. The person who directed the lining process was Pepe Manso, who knew how to lay the paste on, how we had to iron the lining out. And then we laid on the canvas that had been prepared since the day before, starting the work at around nine in the morning and finishing at around eight in the evening, devoting the whole day to the lining process, due to the small movements or dampness that might occur, since we had to iron from the middle outwards so that there were no bubbles. What he coordinated was extremely difficult and the whole Workshop was involved in the task: twelve restorers at the Museo del Prado and even Alfredo Piñeiro. And John Brealey declared that this kind of work could only be carried out at the Museo del Prado, because there were no people left who were qualified to do it anywhere else, people capable of lining a picture like this one [«a la gacha»]. That’s why I’ve said that he saw a large number of things while we were working that he’d never seen before, that he’d never seen done, or that, perhaps, had fallen into disuse in other places. In this respect, there was an exchange of know-how and learning between us.