Voces del Prado

I’ve Worked a Long Time at This Institution

Mercedes Orihuela Maeso, Conservator of the Service of Deposits, 1975-What's on

When you’re thirty or forty years old, you think you’re going to miss everything when you retire. But when you’re on the verge of retirement, you think that you’ve done everything you needed to do. What’s important now is not to lose contact with people, but just to change your life… not having to work from eight in the morning until seven at night. There are always other things to do. People tell me that I could write a book with anecdotes and stories about the Museum. Well, I don’t know. I might do it, if I feel like it. There are many things I like, such as Goya’s La pradera de San Isidro (The Meadow of San Isidro). I like the work by Antonello de Messina: The Dead Christ supported by an Angel. I’m very interested in the Spanish still-lifes. In my opinion, the two best painters at the Museo del Prado and in the history of art are Rubens and Velázquez. I would certainly come and see them. And any visit I make would be a completely romantic affair: I’d come to see people and to have breakfast. But you’ve removed a great weight from your shoulders, and that’s something you also deserve. I don’t think I shall find that particularly hard. I’ve worked a long time at this institution.