The Restoration Workshop in the 1970’s

Rocío Dávila Álvarez, Restorer, 1974-2015

At that time, restoration was split between different vocations. There was a picture liner, who was the one who came to reline the paintings. Then there was a carpenter and his assistant. The restorer was the one who retouched the painting, the most important part of the restoration process. And the colleagues who worked alongside me in the workshop at that time were: Cristóbal González Quesada, who was the Head of the Workshop; Manuel Pérez Tormo, who was the second restorer; then there was Antonio Fernández Sevilla, who was a restorer who also came from the Restoration School, who had only just joined the Museo del Prado a few months beforehand. There was Tirso Guevara Muslares, who was an assistant restorer. There were also two other marvellous people whom I’m extremely fond of: Martín Gamo, who was the person in charge of restoring sculptures and decorative works of art, who had been the sculptor who’d made all the films with Samuel Bronston in Spain about war and history; then there was Lorenzo Garrido, who was responsible for framing. This was the workshop as I found it when I joined. Then later on came Alberto Fraile Martínez, who was the boy who made the preparations for restoration work. The workshop was located on the ground floor of the Museo del Prado. It had an exit that led out to a small garden, which they sometimes opened in the summer, and where you could go to have a cigarette; and those of us who didn’t smoke would just go out to get a bit of air.