Voces del Prado

What you learn from seeing the insides of works of art

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 was at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and at the University, both at the same time and very young then, when they asked me to direct the Painting Department and the Restoration Institute, recently founded by the director, Gratiniano Nieto. I was among the younger historians of art, the most materialistic, oblivious to the charms exerted by art, a sort of poetry. They saw me as being rigid, very technical in my judgments. Being at the Restoration Institute I got the chance to see the works live, as if I were a surgeon in an operating room. I got to see the insides of works of art, that's the advantage I had over other colleagues, I got to see the innards. We often fall into simple theories, in a simple poetic, artistic and documentary view of art. All very pretty, but as a doctor you can see all the innards and there you find the truth, that's where you can acknowledge the quality and beauty, the fundamental solution to art. I was fortunate to be there in that world, which opened up so many possibilities, the findings, solutions in the works I identified, working in contact with that reality. I was able to focus on a fundamental aspect, the quality of a painting. Unfortunately many of us finish our studies as Historians of Art and we cannot tell whether something is well painted or poorly painted. That is something you learn by exercising your eyesight, just as a soprano can do wonderful things through her voice. Our eyesight allows us to distinguish whether something is good or bad, whether it has quality.