Voces del Prado

Collaborations between Casa Macarrón and the Museo del Prado

Ángel Macarrón Serrano, Transportation of Works (Casa Macarrón), 1937-1939

My grandfather began to do all sorts of things. He shifted paintings and did the packaging. In short, my grandfather did everything that was required at that time. He also perfected many things, because there were materials that didn’t exist in my grandfather’s time, and then they were developed and were gradually improved.
Casa Macarrón was the company that was commissioned to do all the packaging work for the Museum. Not only the Prado, but other museums too. Shifting works within the Museum itself, even here in the Prado, because our employees came to carry out work at the Museum itself. Because at that time the Museum didn’t have the team that it has today. I don’t know whether the two altarpieces that were at the entrance to the Goya Door are still there, but I assembled those myself.
Yes, I’ve done a lot of work here. The Christ by Ribera that’s in Álava, in Vitoria, well I had to go and fetch that painting so that it could be restored at the Prado, because it was in a terrible state. I had to go and pack it up. So I went up there with a truck, but I had to do the best I could on my own. The painting was big.
One of the last things I did for the Museum was to set up the Maderuelo Chapel with Pepe Manso, because there seemed to be various wooden pieces missing, pieces that made up the construction of the chapel. And given that the Museum’s workshop didn’t have the necessary machines to do the work, they said “since you have powerful machines, you can do this”. I was looking on and said, “we can make those pieces back at the workshop”. And I made a structure for the roof and other things that were missing, in collaboration with Pepe Manso.