Voces del Prado

Rubens and The Three Graces

George Bisacca, Restorer, 1985-What's on

It’s been very special to me to see, to understand, Rubens, I think, in a particular way. He was a different kind of genius. He had a great understanding of classical literature; he had a great understanding of classical sculpture; he had a great understanding of the history of art; he had an unbelievable ability to put down so quickly … that there’s no translation between the thought in his head and what comes off the brush. It’s very different painting a portrait or something, or painting a narrative scene; and Rubens has this ability to synthesize a whole story into one concrete moment. So, he can make a single composition that alludes to everything that came up to that point, and suggests what comes after. This ability to put that together in a composition it’s just amazing.
The Three Graces … it’s just a really poignant, wonderful picture. It’s a picture that Rubens painted for himself. He had it at in his home until the time of his death. Even though it’s mythological subject, and it’s a grand subject from classical times, it’s also incredible intimate, because the Grace on the left is his wife, his young wife, and the one in the middle has her arms out and she is touching both of the other two. What’s happening is the figure on the right, I believe, is Rubens’s first wife, who died. He loved both of them. What’s going on in the picture is that he’s introducing his deceased wife to his other wife. So, at the same time you have this incredible monumental picture, and at the same time a very intimate picture. There are so many aspects of it that I love. He painted the picture first so that all three figures fit within a few centimeters of the edges, but it was too crowded and he added a piece on the left, and he added a piece on the top, and he added a piece on the right. So that it gives it more space, it gives it the landscape and so. Because he had it at home, he could look at it often, and he always found ways to improve it. That’s a really special picture for me.
After José and I completed the treatment of The Three Graces, they were going to put a new frame on it. It had a kind of late 19th early 20th century big gilded frame and it was just wrong for the picture. The Prado was really not used to the idea of framing a major work of art with a simpler uncarved border that was not even gilded maybe. This idea was too foreign to them. They were so used to Spanish baroque paintings that had carved and gilded frames quite ornate. There was almost a perception that the more gilding and ornate ornament, the more important the picture was. I got lots of photographic reproductions of 17th century paintings of collections in the Netherlands with showed very narrowed black frames with gilded borders. I went to Fernando Checa to argue the case that we really needed to put a much simpler frame on this; that we could scale up the proportions, because it had to hold the wall in an enormous grand galleria at the Prado, where instead it was in very intimate situation in Rubens’s own house. So, he allowed myself and Timothy Newbery in London to design and make the frame —Timothy Newbery made the frame—. We even made the frame slightly curved to fit the warp that the painting had developed, so that it fitted right in, so that you weren’t even aware of the curve anymore. That was a special case.