Voces del Prado

John Brealey and the restoration of Las Meninas

George Bisacca, Restorer, 1985-What's on

People where so incensed of the fact that a foreigner was invited to work on the greatest expression of Spanish painting. People were furious at this. In the press, there would be terrible attacks on him, all the time. But he did a beautiful job anyhow. And, of course, as time went on it got to be recognized that he did do a great job. But it cost him a lot. I think he never really recovered from the shock of all that. Like I said, many people think that his stroke was a result of that stress. Well, this will never know.
Until his arrival in America, restoration, you know … people had to wear a lab coat, and they talked about been in the laboratory, not the studio. Not for John; we were in the studio. I know that in Spain they still call it restauración, whereas in the Anglo-Saxon world they don’t call it that anymore. They don’t call it “restoration”; they call it “conservation”. Because the idea that you can somehow “restore” something to some previous original state is ridiculous, because all the materials change over hundreds of years. And so, it’s more conserving what’s there. John was a gifted orator in that sense; but he was also very confrontational. A lot of people in America were … you were either a disciple or you were cast out. It was sort of one thing or another. He could be a very difficult character too, but he was larger than life.