Voces del Prado

At the Service of the Artwork

Rocío Dávila Álvarez, Restorer, 1974-2015

The difference between a restorer and a painter is that the restorer is not creative. Quite the contrary, in fact. The restorer has to be alert to what the work itself dictates. You have to place yourself at the service of artwork and your own personality is placed on one side. Conversely, a painter is creative. That’s the reason why, in the old days, when painters devoted themselves to restoration, there were problems, because they would reinterpret the work. They very often interfered in the artist’s work, because they painted new backgrounds and corrected what they considered to be mistakes. But if you’re going to correct a Rubens or a Titian, you can very easily be wrong. The restorer works in the opposite sense. The only thing he does, or should do, is preserve.
In the work itself, there are colours that have lasted well and others that haven’t. So it’s up to you to determine the balance between the part of the picture that is well preserved and the part that isn’t. You have to know what to do in order for the work to be seen in its best condition. You have to choose. You can be more conservative and think “if I clean a lot I have these ranges of blue shades that have deteriorated over time or I have this carmine that has faded, but if I clean the lighter shades that are well preserved, what I’m really doing is just highlighting what is poorly preserved”.
You can’t restore a work without understanding it, so the initial work consists in observing it carefully. Until the work says to you “come on then, I think you’ve understood me a little”, you don’t set to work. In restoration there is no haste, although there has always been considerable haste at this Museum. But things shouldn’t be rushed. The really important thing is to observe and assimilate the work so that you get the very most out of it that you can.