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While I was at the Research Council, don Diego Angulo, who had been the Museum Director, my teacher and the Director of the Diego Velázquez Institute at CSIC, said to me “you’re not going to come to the Council in both the mornings and the afternoons, no; in the mornings you’re going to go to the Museo del Prado, to the library, in order to learn how it works; and then we shall see”. I was delighted to be able to come and work at the Museum, mainly because… what art historian isn’t interested in coming to the Museo del Prado, even as a dilettante or apprentice? The fact is I really loved it; I was really interested. At the library, we began by looking at the old photos, putting them in order. And right after that they took us to the storerooms in order to see what was down there, and we began to look at pictures.
As you know, the Museum’s works of art have three origins. Essentially, the Museum is based on the Royal Collection, which was complemented with works from the Museo de la Trinidad, and then with new works that have been acquired. But there was no unified catalogue number. Each work had its own catalogue number depending on the inventory of the collection it had come from. And that was quite complicated for us. Just think of the photographer who was asked for reproductions of Work Nº 525 and he had to see if it belonged to one collection or another. So then we began to unify the number based on the numeration the catalogue had reached between 1910 and 1972, which was around 3000 or so. As of this point, we produced a series of conversion tables in which Nº 3280 corresponded to Nº 2325 in the Royal Collection; Nº 3281 corresponded to such and such number in the collection from the Museo de la Trinidad, and so on. This was the first task I carried out at the Museum, and I really think it turned out to be quite useful later on.
I can remember that I got very excited when don Diego told me, “you can’t stay here all day; you must go to the Museo del Prado to learn something”. But when I entered the storerooms, I don’t recall any particular emotion, just pure, hard and systematic work.
Conservator of the Museo del Prado since 1982. She began collaborating with the Museum in the 1970's, sorting documents and photographic archives. She documents and visits the depository institutions of works of the Museum, giving rise to the collection known as "Prado disperso" (Scattered Prado).
Interview recorded on April 08, 2018
