Voces del Prado

Painters and Ways of Working

Rocío Dávila Álvarez, Restorer, 1974-2015

Some painters are just marvellous: they build the works up as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. It may seem easy, but it isn’t. You can see Titian working with glazes, which he places over and removes. He’s a painter who fights within the work. And Velázquez does the same, because he constructs the work in his head and presents a tremendous facility in terms of his precise brushwork. First, he’s completed the picture inside himself, and that means his work is really very clean. I also love Zurbarán, who is quite the opposite; the poor thing creates colour through masses. I like all artists who are sincere in their work and you can see that they find it hard. I’m less keen on the artists of the eighteenth century, artists who are more academic and who all follow the same canons, except for those few artists who are better.