Voces del Prado

1946. placement of a large work by Vicente López on the ceiling

José Manso Gómez, Textile and Panel Painting Conservator, 1953-1992

Sánchez Cantón was a great man, reliable, easy to talk to, a good man. He arranged the works for the ceiling of the hall that is now dedicated to Goya, because there was a painting on the ceiling that they wanted to remove. I offered to remove the picture, and I did it. With two iron pawls I made a sort of photographic roll, removing nails and rolling it up. It was over four metres wide and nearly five metres long. I rolled it up and brought it down. It was like a roll of photographic film of over two metres. I had to join it together; I fixed it together with a tube, a handle to gather it all. And I brought it down. Afterwards, when taking it back up, I followed the same process. But it was not centred and it was hard to fit it in the centre. The brick mason made a wooden piece fastened to the ceiling with dovetail clamps, and patiently I raised it up and sewed it on. There was extra canvas around 60 cm wide. There was space on the fringes, the part stitched to the frame that was not cut, and using that I stitched it onto the ceiling. When I got to the end I thought, "This is no good, it didn't go well." And suddenly the picture clicked and fit perfectly in its place. I was given a bonus, but the officials said that they had been up there. And they had been, but not the way I was: I was doing something, they were watching. So then they said they too were entitled to a bonus and what was going to be for me was split up among all of us--I even got less than the rest of them.