Voces del Prado

Francisco Javier Sánchez Cantón: Perhaps the Most Important Director in the Twentieth Century

Fernando Checa Cremades, Museum Director, 1996-2001

Sánchez Cantón relied a great deal on the recently created Board of Trustees, which included historians, but also politicians and others. Cantón realised that if you wanted to create a Museo del Prado that was at the forefront in academic terms, you had to use political and organisational forms of support such as the Board of Trustees, which was the body that promoted the expansion project and the acquisition of works of art. Francisco Javier Sánchez Cantón was perhaps the most important Director of the Prado in the twentieth century, because as the Assistant Director of the Prado and as the Director both before and after the Civil War (especially before the war), he was the one who really organised the collection of paintings at the Museo del Prado, in accordance with the criteria of the history of art. In the plans that I made as Director I simply followed, in good part, the criteria that Sánchez Cantón had established, and these same criteria are still followed in some places. He was the first Director who had an idea about what the Prado collection really is, the idea that it’s the Royal Collection and what Spanish painting means in relation to the Royal Collection. That is to say, he tackled all the great historical issues of the Museo del Prado.