Voces del Prado

José Milicua: A Wise Observer

Fernando Checa Cremades, Museum Director, 1996-2001

From the point of view of artistic sensibility, there are two individuals I would like to highlight: Gustavo Torner and José Milicua. These two figures taught me how to really see paintings. With Milicua I learned everything: how to see, how to eat, how to take a stroll and how to have fun. He was a great man, now sadly deceased, and a Trustee of the Prado for many, many years. He was there before I was, and he continued after I left, until the day he died.
Milicua was, above all, a great observer. He knew how to explain works of art really well. He helped you to see the small details: a gesture, a colour, a shadow. It was obviously there, but you’d just never realised it before. He was highly intuitive and helped to see the most essential aspect of a picture or sculpture. My first visit to a museum with Milicua wasn’t even in Spain and it wasn’t even an art museum. It was the Acropolis Museum and then the Archaeology Museum in Athens. I was completely fascinated by the way he described Greek sculptures and their folds. I’d met him a couple of times before, at some meetings. But I’d never spoken much to him. But on that trip we were together the whole time. It was a real lesson for me.
We met again at the Museo del Prado. We went to exhibitions and looked at the Museum’s works all the time. And he always had that sense of what is beautiful at a particular moment, in a work, through his observation of the smallest details. It’s what you might call the connoisseur’s eye, which I don’t really believe in, but Milicua certainly had it. He was truly able to appreciate a colour, the contrast of a colour. He’d say, “this couldn’t have been painted by so-and-so, because he wouldn’t have placed that colour alongside”. It seems obvious, but it’s only obvious if it’s pointed out to you. And that’s what Milicua would tell you, with his considerable historical wisdom, which, furthermore, he never boasted about. He was a great reader. During this trip from city to city, from museum to museum, we would chat on the coach and discuss books. It was then that I realised he’d read everything. That man was wise, not only because he had good sight and a great eye, but because he’d read all the literary and academic literature. He was a truly cultivated man, but one who, nevertheless, wrote very little, because he found it hard. His articles were published recently. He didn’t write much, although it was always very good. But there was little of it. It’s a shame. Milicua’s legacy was really more for those of us who had the opportunity to get to know him as the most refined of individuals.