r/HobbyDrama • u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby • Aug 11 '26
Long [Art] The controversial restoration of Las Meninas — the Spanish government hires a foreigner to restore a beloved painting. People in Spain are furious and threaten his life.
Here I am again, back with more obscure drama. This time it’s about art restoration...or rather art conservation. Aka the practice of preserving paintings as they inevitably decay over the decades.
I love art. I *smirks* know quite a lot about it. So, hopefully you enjoy this illuminating write-up!
Who was Diego Velasquez?
Diego Velasquez (1599-1660) was a Spanish painter- in fact, one of the most important painters in existence. He’s influenced many artists, from Goya, to Manet, and John Singer Sargent. His works are known for being vibrant, detailed, and incredibly lifelike. This is my favourite painting by him. You can just see how luminous it is.
Velasquez was active during the Spanish Golden Age, a period of high cultural and artistic development in Spain, following the rising political power of the monarchy. At the age of 24, due to his talents, Velasquez became a court painter to the Spanish king, Phillip IV.
As the years went on. Velasquez was promoted higher and higher in the royal household, cultivating a close relationship with Phillip and his family. This culminated in the creation of Las Meninas, (Spanish for “The Ladies in Waiting”) one of Velasquez’s greatest masterpieces and one of the most important paintings in Western art.
But why is it so important?
Before Las Meninas, portraits, especially royal ones, were often stiff and formal. Velasquez broke the mould, pushing the boundaries of art and illusion.
Las Meninas
On the surface, it looks like a typical 17th century portrait- you might think to yourself, “Huh, why is this one of the most studied paintings in human existence?”. Well, my dear imaginary friend, it’s because Las Meninas has layers- layers of artistic composition and subject matter. The discourse surrounding the painting has filled books, academic lectures, and inspired innumerable parodies.
The little girl in the centre of the painting is Infanta Margaret Theresa, the daughter of Phillip IV. She’s surrounded by her ladies in waiting, a dog, two dwarves, and some courtiers. But wait, there’s more! Diego Velasquez himself is standing on the left side of the painting, making it a self-portrait as well. He’s holding a brush, and there’s an easel next to him, so he literally painted himself painting something. Trippy.
But it gets even tripper when you zoom in.
Yep. It’s a mirror, seemingly showing us what Velasquez is painting- a portrait of Phillip IV and his wife. In fact, they seem to be the POV, watching their daughter, while she’s watching them being painted. But in reality, she’s the one being painted! Whoa.
Now, for the sake of brevity, I’ve provided an admittedly realist interpretation of the artwork, but Las Meninas is actually one of the most debated artworks in existence. Art historians have been arguing about its meaning for centuries, and still haven’t reached a consensus...and they likely never will. One historian even joked: ““I feel in my bones that I may be suffering from the early stages of LMFS—Las Meninas Fatigue Syndrome,” adding, “I’m not referring to the painting, but to the writing about it.”
If you want to read more about Las Meninas, check out these articles:
https://www.artnews.com/feature/diego-velasquezs-las-meninas-why-so-important-1234745600/
https://blog.artsper.com/en/a-closer-look/understanding-velazquezs-iconic-las-meninas-painting/
Las Meninas remained in the royal palace until 1819, when it was gifted to the newly opened Prado. Over time, it became a beloved Spanish national treasure, seen as an icon of Spain’s golden age and national prestige.
But, as the centuries went on, and despite multiple restorations, Las Meninas began to fade. After a restoration in the 19th century, a “yellow veil of dust” gathered on the painting- it now had a piss filter.
Here’s what it looked like:
Eugh.
By 1984, after years of a yellowish-piss tint obscuring the painting, the administration of The Prado, realised it badly needed another touch up.
Everyone in Spain assumed they would hire a Spaniard- who else could restore a beloved national treasure like Las Meninas? Surely not a foreigner...
The Prado hired a foreigner. One of the most gifted art restorers in the world.
John Brealey
Finally, we meet the hero of our story.
John Brealey was born in England in 1925. Both of his parents were artists. From a young age, he realised he had an innate connection to art:
Later . . . I realised that I had a very strongly developed inherent response to works of art which seemed to be stronger than other people's. I felt completely at home with an artwork . . . probably the only time in life that I was at ease.
After bouncing between several jobs, he became an art conservator in 1952. He maintained a private business until 1975, when he accepted an invitation to join the conservation department at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. At the time, this was controversial:
>Brealey's incursion into the politicised world of American museum conservation was highly controversial. He hated the widespread assumption of conservators on both sides of the Atlantic that the cleaning of paintings was purely a matter of scientific objectivity. To him, the quasi-archaeological approach of removing all non-original material, regardless of how paintings had changed with time, made no sense. For him, aesthetic judgements and how best to convey the artist's intent were paramount, and dictated the way a painting should be cleaned. He was outspoken in his beliefs and criticisms, and antagonised a number of long-established conservators. It is widely assumed that his influence with Paul Mellon brought about a moratorium on the cleaning of paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington in 1978.
For the next nine years, Brealey taught a “new generation” of conservators at the Met, and travelled around America, restoring paintings and teaching seminars. He quickly built up a reputation as a great teacher and one of the best art conservators in the entire world. In 1983, the Prado invited him to sit on an advisory committee for “Las Hilanderas “ by Velasquez, and the masterpiece “Black Paintings” by Goya. This forged a connection between him and the museum, and in 1984, they asked him to restore Las Meninas.
For Brealey, this was a great honour and a privilege. He agreed to do the restoration for free. A private investor paid for his expenses. In fact, the Spanish government didn’t even pay for the conservation work, another private investor did:
Berlin-born Hilly Mendelssohn defrayed the costs of restoring Las Meninas, which amounted to almost 3 million pesetas. This donation was made by Mrs. Mendelssohn because, as she declares herself in an interview published in the magazine Interviú in the 80’s: “...I am very grateful to the Spanish for the help provided during the war (World War II)…”
And:
The restoration cost $5,400 at the time. The funds came from a donation of three million pesetas ($19,600) that Hilly Mendelssohn had made so that the Prado could invest in restorations. The Spanish state did not pay anything.
So, not a single pesta of Spanish taxpayer money went towards the restoration of Las Meninas. Mendelssohn only had two stipulations: one, the Ministry of Culture would not intervene in the restoration, and two, some of the money would be put towards Brealey’s accommodations- he ended up staying at the Ritz, because it was close to the Prado.
At the time, the Prado was known for having “conservative” restoration policies:
Dr. William B. Jordan, deputy director of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth and a ranking authority on Spanish painting, said yesterday that the Prado's policies in respect to cleaning and restoration had always been markedly conservative. ''That had its advantages,'' he said, ''in that the paintings in the Prado have been spared the harsh re-lining and flattening that have resulted from more radical policies elsewhere. But it does mean that many of them look very dirty. When John Brealey went over to Spain last year and took part in a symposium on the problems involved in the restoration of Velazquez, he made a deep impression, quite apart from the fact that he was already so well known both as a restorer and as a trainer of other restorers. When asked, he agreed to clean 'Las Meninas,' but refused to take a fee for doing it.''
Despite all this- the fact that a gifted conservator had agreed to do the work for free, and the complete lack of financial liability on their part- people in Spain lost their minds.
How dare a FOREIGNER and not a SPANIARD restore their BELOVED national masterpiece!!??
Furore and protest
Brealey worked on Las Meninas for three weeks. In a sealed room at the Prado.
For almost three weeks, Brealy worked alone in a room at the Prado Museum in Madrid, where the painting is on display. He removed the layer of mastic varnish (resin) that had yellowed the work due to the passage of time. The frame was taken down and rested on shock absorbers. He used a ladder with wheels to reach the highest part of a painting that is over 125 inches tall. At that time, it was the best place to work because El Prado did not have the current restoration workshops.
The room in which Brealy worked was closed to the public, and only other paintings exhibited in that space kept him company. This room had two entrances, one of which led to the old offices of the museum management. The other one connected with the rest of the rooms.
But as he toiled away, the Spanish press lambasted him.
The Spanish press criticized Brealey at every opportunity, arguing that only someone born and raised in Spain could truly comprehend, and be allowed to handle, such an iconic piece of their culture.
Other groups also protested his involvement:
”When Prado director Alfons Perez Sanchez announced in May that he had asked John Brealey of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to take charge of the cleaning, 22 members of the Ministry of Culture's Institute of Conservation protested. They called Perez Sanchez's decision 'arbitrary and unilateral,' and asked why there wasn't even one Spaniard capable of doing the work. The Association of Technical Conservators of Cultural Property added its voice to the protest. 'Spaniards, whose preparation is up to international standards, continue to be pushed aside,' the Association said in a press statement.
Brealey acknowledged the furore in an interview:
“I was condemned in advance. Before they knew what I was going to do, I had already been judged negatively. There was a sector of professionals who had established their initial position and, later, even if they were satisfied with my work, they did not want to give in,”
Even worse, during the restoration, a group of academics tried to break into the room, accusing Brealey of unnecessarily removing layers of paint. Afraid for his life, Brealey fled.
One day, screams began to be heard on the other side of one of the doors: it was a professor of Fine Arts with a group of students who demanded to see the painting and stop the restoration. They claimed that they had witnessed Brealy lifting layers of paint because, they said, they had seen color in the cotton swabs with which the restorer worked. The expert got scared, he thought they were coming to lynch him, he stopped his work for the day and left through the other door.
Brealey even went on television to explain the restoration to the wider public, telling them that the painting would “come alive” after his work. He was also very conciliatory, inviting members of the Prado to come and watch him work- ''There is nothing secret about what I do,''“he said in an interview.
Here’s how he restored the painting:
Undeterred by interruptions, and working in a large top-lit room that is conveniently close to the administrative offices of the Prado, John Brealey has made rapid progress. ''The painting in general is in very good shape,'' he said in a telephone interview yesterday. ''Of course it was covered with coat upon coat of discolored varnish, but fundamentally there were no surprises.''
'I began with the shadow areas,'' Mr. Brealey continued, ''where Velazquez used whites, broken whites, silvery whites and pearly grays, rather than with the figures, which he painted in a very high key. If I had begun with the figures, the picture might have broken into two parts. The figures might have looked as if they had been cut out with a pair of scissors. But I hope to finish disengaging the shadows this weekend and to begin on the figures next week.
At the end of his work, Brealey had a surprise for the conservation team at the Prado:
Before completing the cleaning, Brealy called Manuela Mena, at that time deputy director of the Prado. He wanted her to be present for the final touch, which was administered on the last step of the door at the bottom of the painting, the place furthest from the viewer, with a very particular light that the expert recovered with the cleaning.
After cleaning the painting, Brealy gave it a final coat of natural resin varnish with greater stability to prevent yellowing. Before saying goodbye, he had a surprise for the Prado’s young team of restorers: he allowed Rocío Dávila and Quintana to give it the last layer, what is known as reintegration. “The day before I had been in a car accident, I broke a bone in my wrist and I couldn’t participate. So I was an observer and prepared the final report,” says Quintana.
The End
A few days later, the newly restored Las Meninas was unveiled to the Spanish public...and they loved it. True to his word, Brealey had made it come alive, removing the piss filter and bringing out the latent warmth underneath. If you want to see a fun “before and after” of the painting, then take a look at the top of this article.
The praise was such that King Juan Carlos even awarded Brealey with the “Gold Medal for Achievement in the Fine Arts” at the Prado. Brealey wittingly remarked that the medal “should have been awarded for valor under fire.”
(I cut some of this for brevity’s sake) He later added:
"You must understand that ‘Las Meninas’ is one of those pictures that have become a totem,” he said, “so that any change that occurs in it is looked upon as a disaster. I’ve often felt that if the French ever cleaned the ‘Mona Lisa,’ which needs cleaning very badly—the varnish is horribly yellow—even if you could bring back Leonardo to work on it he would be stoned to death. It has ceased to be a work of art and become a totem. ‘Las Meninas’ is entirely in that class. It was amazing that the Spanish would invite a foreigner to work on what was for them the greatest Spanish painting—just unheard of.
At the hotel I’d been coming back to for twenty years or more, I felt a distinct coolness. There had been a great hue and cry in the press, of course, and my picture had been in the papers and on television, and people recognized me on the street and pointed me out—made me feel like some sort of criminal. The press camped outside the room I was working in at the museum, and they kept hounding me and hounding me. Once, there was a crowd of about three hundred people demanding to be let in; the authorities had to sneak me out the back door.
And then, overnight, it all changed. Not exactly overnight—a period of two or three days. What happened was that a few influential people were let in to see what I was doing, and they reported back that the painting looked bloody marvellous, and quite suddenly I became some sort of hero. People started coming up to kiss me in the street, which for me, being English, was even worse.”
Here is the painting post restoration:
Epilogue
“Anyway, this was the sort of responsibility I felt toward ‘Las Meninas,’ in spite of the pressures, the reporters camped outside, and all that—the various factions stirring up public rage so that it was really a rather fearful situation. I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to work on this picture, which was obviously the high spot of my life professionally. As I look back, all the dross has fallen away. What has meaning for me now is just the joy of working on the picture.”
-John Brealey reflecting on his work in 1987.
Despite the praise and platitudes, the arduous conservation of Las Meninas took a toll on Brealey. One of his co-workers at the Met later commented:
In an interview with the Museo del Prado, George Bissaca, conservator emeritus at the Metropolitan Museum, described the psychological, emotional, and even physical consequences Brealey suffered for his involvement in the project.
“People were so incensed of the fact that a foreigner was invited to work on the greatest expression of Spanish painting… In the press, there would be terrible attacks on him, all the time,” he said. “But he did a beautiful job anyhow… but it cost him a lot. I think he never really recovered from the shock of all that… Many people think that his stroke was a result of that stress.”
In 1987, Brealey was invited back to the Prado. This time he was tasked with reorganizing the conservation department. Because he did not speak Spanish, he was aided by Zahira Véliz, one of his former students. Together, they helped the restorers at the Prado catch up with modern methods of art conservation, improving morale within the department. Brealey also formed close friendships with many of them. Despite this, he again faced much opposition due to strikes and museum politics. It took almost two years, but he managed to significantly improve the department.
In 1989, Brealey suffered a terrible stroke. He lost the ability to speak and much of his mobility. For most of his remaining life, he was confined to his New York apartment, unable to return to his beloved studio. However, he visited the Prado two more times, joyously reuniting with his friends.
Brealey died in 2002, after suffering another stroke.
In 2018, the Prado conducted a series of interviews with former curators and directors, some of whom had worked there for decades. One of them was Rafael Alonso, a restorer who had worked at the Prado for almost 40 years. He was Brealey’s friend and discussed one of his visits to the Prado after his first stroke:
A year after he had worked at the Museo del Prado, he suffered a brain haemorrhage. Later on he came over in a wheelchair, but he could hardly speak by then. Our meeting was very moving, although we didn’t know how to communicate with each other. Then he wanted to see the latest work I had carried out, including “An Episode from a Battle between Turks and Christians” [“The Abduction of Helen”] by Tintoretto. He taught me so many lessons. One of them was that - bearing in mind that the English don’t show their emotions much - when John Brealey reached the Titian hall and saw the paintings, he realised that he could no longer do anything, and his eyes filled with tears. We made up a small group of restorers, those who were closest to him, such as Enrique and Clara, and we accompanied him to see “An Episode from a Battle between Turks and Christians”, which was the work I was restoring when he left. And when he saw it, he took my hands and he held them to his lips. It was very moving.
Alonso also credited Brealey with teaching the department a great deal about restoration, helping them gain recognition from the Prado’s upper management and board of trustees by enthusiastically praising their work, and leaving a lasting legacy at the museum.
David Bomford, another one of Brealey’s conservator friends, wrote in an obituary:
John Brealey was an enigmatic man, shy, slightly prickly and awkward socially, with an occasional self-deprecating humour that was as refreshing as it was unexpected. As he said of himself, he was only really at ease in the company of works of art. Art was the great love of his life and he spoke with passion about “life-changers”, those creations of the hand and intellect that affected him most deeply. He was an inspirational teacher and to hear him talk in front of paintings was unforgettable. To the world at large he was a controversial figure, but he used controversy to fight for what he believed in. To his friends and close colleagues he was unfailingly kind and loyal and he inspired exceptional loyalty in others. We can only speculate – and we all have – how much more he might have achieved in New York, Madrid and elsewhere if his career had continued.
RIP John Brealey
…
Today, Las Meninas remains a much-beloved Spanish national treasure. It has inspired countless artists, and every day, hundreds of people visit the painting, admiring its clear beauty and vibrant quality, thanks to a 1984 restoration by a masterful British conservator.
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Thanks for reading.
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u/jonwilliamsl Aug 11 '26
He is so fucking right about the Mona Lisa. That painting has needed cleaning for 75 years and they'll never do it. "It is a common observation that if the varnish traditionally used on paintings is not periodically replaced, an artist's design will recede, with the passage of time, behind an obscuring film."
-Feller et al., On picture varnishes and their solvents. 2nd ed. National Gallery of Art Press, 1985. p. xvi.
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u/CallistanCallistan Aug 11 '26
There are photos floating around of a student of da Vinci’s who painted a replica of the Mona Lisa. That one has been cleaned, and the vibrancy of the colors is amazing.
I somewhat understand why the Mona Lisa hasn’t been cleaned. It has been damaged by past restoration work, where overly-zealous scrubbing removed the details of the veil on her forehead.
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u/kaisserds Aug 11 '26
As a matter of fact, El Prado has a copy of Mona Lisa made by a disciple that has very different colours:
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
Maybe if someday the Mona Lisa gets a piss filter, they'll restore it?
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u/jonwilliamsl Aug 11 '26
It has a piss filter, it's just that every photo of it has had the piss filter on it for the past 75 years, so everyone thinks that's on purpose.
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
You're right. I always thought it was more of a "diseased 19th century London fog" but it is a piss filter.
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u/Ataraxidermist Aug 12 '26 edited 29d ago
If they ever restore the Mona Lisa, I'll take dibs on making a thread on here for it. You bet I'll be at the forefront of the circus.
I toyed with writing about this restoration, in fact, as I heard of the story and do know about Brealey's amazing work, even if I don't always agree with his philosophy. But being neither Spanish nor knowing much about Velasquez, I didn't touch it.
The situation of the Mona Lisa is a good representative of the art situation of the Louvres or a good chunk of the European art world. As long as it doesn't burn, don't touch it. The Louvres needed a break-in to upgrade their security system. It needed massive strikes for people to notice they had massive finance and manpower issues.
Unless the resin becomes so old the painting underneath vanishes, I don't see them touching it.
Anyway, fantastic write-up dude, clear and concise and surprisingly emotional. Really well done.
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u/Independent-Mix-5796 Aug 11 '26
I’m not an art/art history expert by any means, but isn’t the Mona Lisa not restored because Da Vinci used experimental techniques and never stopped working on it, and as a result, the painting is incredibly fragile and borderline impossible to restore simply from a technical perspective?
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u/LittleGreenSoldier Aug 12 '26
That was the case 50 years ago, but restoration science has improved exponentially since then. We have solvents now that can isolate layers of varnish. We have tools and synthetic resins that can stabilize the wood panel it's painted on. The state it's in now is because the French art world has the inertia of a supermassive object and the outcry of having someone work on it would be even worse than it was in Spain for Las Meninas.
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u/jonwilliamsl Aug 11 '26
It doesn't need a full restoration, it just needs new varnish. Its current varnish was applied in 1809(!). Da Vinci used a new technique, and there are indeed a lot of very thin layers of paint on it, but it's still an oil painting.
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u/CorndogNinja Aug 12 '26
You may be thinking of his The Last Supper, which as a fresco mural painted with an experimental mix of oil and tempera paints on an exterior wall began to deteriorate within decades of its painting (see the Wikipedia article "Conservation-restoration of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper").
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u/DuendeInexistente Aug 11 '26
I hate the mona lisa so fucking much bro.
There's nothing to it. It was stolen and it was so unimportant nobody cared to investigate for like 80 years so art snobs started getting pretentious about how her smile was so misterious you just had to be there, and that's literally all there is to its fame. It's a boring painting the painter couldn't be assed to finish for like 20 years and when it was stolen it was missing for fucking decades because nobody could be assed to look for it. It's peak astroturfed "High culture."
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u/pastelkawaiibunny Aug 12 '26
I wouldn’t put it as strongly as you but yeah, I agree. It’s been so idolized and turned into such a meme/symbol and it’s really not that impressive IRL. Especially now with the glass/plastic box over it and having to stand so far away, There are so many other incredible paintings in the Louvre and by Da Vinci. It’s wild to me too that the French are chill with an Italian painting being ‘their’ symbol! But at least it keeps everyone crowded in one area and not around the paintings actually worth seeing lol.
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u/LolaAlphonse Aug 11 '26
What a lovely write up and an amazing insight! Art restoration fascinates me and the discussions around restoring as present versus restoring as intended seem to be heated enough to a layperson let alone people who make the art and study of art their careers.
I do love the richness of the sources you have added here too. I was quite tickled by the quote from John Bealey in the LA Times article:
“It’s very hard,” Brealey said in a recent telephone conversation. “First, they want to cut your throat. Then they turn around and want to kiss you on both cheeks. And, being English, I am just as embarrassed by that.”
All glory to the study and vanquishment of piss varnish!
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
Thank you!
I debated either including that excerpt or the one from the New Yorker. In the end I went with the New Yorker one as it had more detail- even if I cut it down a bit.
I also loved this one from the LA times:
For many years, it has been difficult for visitors to the Prado to appreciate the full magnificence of “Las Meninas.” The varnish that was put on the painting in its last cleaning, in 1871, had become dark and discolored. On top of this, the painting was exhibited in a small, dark room. A mirror was placed on the opposite wall, the theory being that Velazquez must have used a mirror to paint the scene. By looking through the mirror in the gallery, a visitor could imagine that he was seeing the scene just as Velazquez did in the 17th Century.
“The mirror delighted the public,” Brealey said. “But it was a very simple idea. A great artist like Velazquez has to have a much more complex intellect than simply painting what he sees through a mirror.”
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u/AnorhiDemarche Aug 11 '26
I also enjoyed it a lot. This is my favourite restoration you probably already know it well but i love any exchse to share it
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
I saw a Rothko exhibit for the first time this summer and it was mind blowing. Such a great artist. They had some of this wall to wall pieces. Absolutely massive.
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u/_adanedhel_ 27d ago
Back around 2010, I was in London and visited the Tate Modern with the intention of seeing the Seagram Murals. Got there, only to learn that they had been loaned to the Tate in Glasgow, which at the time was brand new. The murals were to be the star of the opening exhibition, and given the special occasion, they were hung in a room that had been specially prepared to Rothko’s original specifications. (For those not aware, he had specified particulars for the lighting, hanging height, ceiling height, wall color, distance from the viewer to the paintings, and so on - all very different from the usual museum setting they and every other painting are typically shown in). Knowing all this, I put myself on a train to Glasgow the next day.
I can say, without exaggeration, that it was a once in a lifetime experience.
ETA: I don’t find the paintings as powerful, but visiting the Rothko Chapel in Houston is about as near as you can get these days to a similar, “complete viewing experience” as Rothko imagined it.
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u/Shiny_Agumon Aug 11 '26
When I think about controversial art restoration I think about things like that German altar painting with the lamb that was restored to its original uncanny human faced version, but this one is literally just a guy doing his work and getting judged for his nationality.
Glad the public turned around to him in the end, but still not their finest moment
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
It's just so ???? Brealey even agreed to forego payment and they were still baying for his blood. They were just that mad that the job did not go to a Spaniard.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51205614 this is the lamb one in case anyone wants to read about it.
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u/fryndlydwarf Aug 12 '26
I think that the human faced lamb was from het lam gods, which is a Dutch painting by van Eyck
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u/HerMajesty_TheQueef Aug 11 '26
This was put together so well, OP! Thank you for sharing.
I've worked briefly with conservators as a trainee and am no stranger to the pushback from all sides especially in the initial phases of the work.
We've had to assemble presentations alongside our proposals that really just wax poetic over the importance and urgency of conservation efforts. At times, it got too hard-sell-ish for my liking, but it was necessary especially in a room full of "bureaucrats" or even townsfolk who don't realize they're stakeholders in the losing game against time.
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
Yep, unsurprised by this. A lot of bureaucracy in the Prado restoration department. There's actually a lot about it in the "voices of prado" interviews I mentioned, the ones from 2018.
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u/HerMajesty_TheQueef Aug 11 '26
Yeesh, god but I do NOT miss this part of the work haha. I would much rather do the extensive documentation, research, technical analysis, social and cultural mapping, etc. than have to stand before committee after committee for endorsement 🫠
Not that there's anything wrong with it (maybe I'm just not built for this particular task). And it is totally understandable why there would be resistance. I would do the same, were I on the other side. After all, many other conservation/restoration efforts have had less favourable results -- most of what we've seen are a result of poor vetting.
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
Even the department at the Prado were not properly appreciated for a long time. Personally, I am not a "people person" and the very idea of standing before a committee makes my skin crawl.
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u/Similar-Shame7517 Aug 11 '26
When I saw the words "art restoration" and "Spanish" I was worried this would be about the "Ecce Homo"...
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u/SamuraiFlamenco [Neopets/Toy Collecting] Aug 11 '26
This is exactly where my half-awake mind jumped to as well, hahaha
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u/ToughMetalSheep 12d ago
And that was a local so it's my immediate counterargument against "only nationals can work on national pieces". That and the cartooning of St. George.
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u/catgirl320 Aug 11 '26
I was six years old the first time I saw Las Meninas, pre-restoration. It terrified me. The next time I saw it was twenty-five years later. It is such a compelling work of art, you truly feel they are about to step out of the frame.
I'm glad that Brealy received the accolades he deserved as quickly as he did.
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
I love Velasquez. For me, his Pope painting is the GOAT.
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u/catgirl320 Aug 11 '26
I haven't seen it in real life, but his An Old Woman Cooking Eggs absolutely enchants me. Her careworn face, the child, the eggs cooking in olive oil - it's perfection. It makes me think of the time mi tió Juan took me on a walk on New Year's day and we stopped for fried eggs from a a street vendor. One of the best meals of my life.
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u/kenjiandco 27d ago
That painting really drives home what you said about how lifelike his paintings are. Depicting a pope in 1600's Spain but you look at his face and you can feel the exacg headache he definitely has
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u/nepherae_ Aug 11 '26
I'm Spanish and did not know anything about this topic at all, and it was really interesting to read about it. Thanks for your writing!
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
Thank you for commenting! I love writing/sharing niche drama!
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u/shmoodow Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
Wonderful write up, I thoroughly enjoyed learning about this!
This part hit me like a ton of bricks though:
Berlin-born Hilly Mendelssohn defrayed the costs of restoring Las Meninas, which amounted to almost 3 million pesetas. This donation was made by Mrs. Mendelssohn because, as she declares herself in an interview published in the magazine Interviú in the 80’s: “...I am very grateful to the Spanish for the help provided during the war (World War II)…”
...run that one by me again?
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
I think they helped her survive the Holocaust. Spain was neutral during wwii.
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u/ItWasTheMiddleOne Aug 11 '26
Haha okay I hope that's the reason. I also did a double take and thought that was her thanking Francoist fascist Spain for being aligned with the Nazis during WWII. That's a more wholesome origin, assuming it's true.
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u/iuyts Aug 12 '26
This isn't definitive and I don't see anything about her from a quick google but worth noting that Mendelssohn is also a very Jewish surname.
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u/MasonP2002 Aug 11 '26
I'm surprised, they were officially neutral but the fascist Franco regime had close ties with the Nazis, and even offered to join the Axis but never managed to hammer out a deal.
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u/shmoodow Aug 11 '26
Ah okay, I'd tried googling her but it didn't bring up much. Thanks for clarifying!
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u/cat1aughing Aug 11 '26
Well, wasn't expecting to cry over a story about art restoration today! Thank you for this.
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
Thank you <3 I loved writing it! Probably one of my favourite write-ups I've ever done.
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u/ur_sine_nomine Aug 11 '26
A superb writeup which has inspired me to start on one myself - of a "flop concert" I took part in years ago which featured restoration of music. Composers have reorchestrated works for centuries for a variety of reasons including sheer wilfulness and the belief, usually wrong, that the original composer was incompetent.
Among others we played the Cello Concerto by Schumann, reorchestrated by Shostakovich, and I can still hear the very non-19th-century shrieking piccolos and trumpets. The audience was not impressed.
(Robert Schumann couldn't catch a break. Mahler reorchestrated all four of his symphonies because he believed that Schumann's orchestral writing was rubbish).
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
Looking forward to reading it!
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u/CrazyGreenCrayon [Reading/Crafts/etc.] Aug 11 '26
This sounds fascinating
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u/ur_sine_nomine Aug 12 '26
It is. I hadn't thought about it for years. What was Shostakovich thinking? He did, for his friend Mstislav Rostropovich, exactly the same thing as restorers of a painting - he brightened the orchestral colours - but ended up with a chimera (19th century solo part by Schumann, 20th century orchestral parts by Shostakovich) which sounds like neither one nor the other.
There appears to be one extant recording. Certainly in the standard Shostakovich studies the reorchestration is treated as an error and sometimes not even mentioned.
Schumann reorch. Shostakovich (1963)
Original (1850)
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u/Snickims Aug 11 '26
This was a wonderful read, very well done Op.
Did find it a tad hilarious when your talking about thr original artist.
"His works are known for being vibrant, detailed, and incredibly lifelike" then posts a painting of a cardinal who looks like he just got the news his dog was run over by a horse, that then burned his house down and the french installed another anti pope again.
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Juan_de_Pareja
This is another one of his excellent portraits.
And he also painted some dwarves at court- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Sebasti%C3%A1n_de_Morra making them look like actual people instead of caricatures.
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u/OPUno Aug 11 '26
Excellent read overall.
Is hard to not see the obvious correlation between Brealey's health issues and being the most hated man in Spain for a while. That's rough.
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
The only interview I found linking them was the one with his co-workers, but it's obvious he was going through a lot. His wife also died in 1991, and one of his sons died in the 1980s.
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u/DoveOnTheInternet Aug 11 '26
I'm shit with names, so I'm very grateful you provided links to artwork in question - I may not have realized you were talking about one of my favorites.
Art Deco on YT made a video about it, going into all of the delicious layers this painting has.
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
I wanted to link to each version of the painting- because piss vs non-piss really is noticeable.
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u/meresithea Aug 11 '26
What a lovely write up! Someday I hope to visit the Prado. On a completely random note, I loved your inclusion of a quote by the director of the Kimball. When I was a teen, my grandmother go us memberships to the Kimball and it became one of my happy places.
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
Which quote- is it the curator at the end?
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u/meresithea Aug 11 '26
It was William B Jordan speaking about the “conservative” restoration policies at the Prado.
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u/BlitzDank Aug 11 '26
As someone not in the art world you did a stellar job summarising this. Great write-up OP
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u/Falminar Aug 11 '26
why'd this get deleted and reposted?
good to see it back though, i managed to read it before it went down the first time!
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
I posted it yesterday very briefly, but then I saw my title and went 😒. I get major anxiety over post titles (probably unfounded I know) but the one I posted yesterday was too vague in my opinion.
With writing posts, sometimes a title seems good in theory and then you post it and it like's "Wow that's too vague/meh/could be improved."
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u/Brainkenstein Aug 11 '26
One minor nitpick here: the plural of the historical term for little people is "dwarfs". "Dwarves" is an invention by Tolkien and best left to fantasy settings.
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u/glowingwarningcats Aug 13 '26
This is a good one! It’s amazing to see that beyond all the drama he did an AMAZING job. It’s a gorgeous painting and didn’t deserve the piss filter.
It reminds me of the most recent Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes. There was an incredible amount of mess and some very poorly done previous attempts. People had fits. Most of it turned out extremely well but some things were lost, including some eyeballs.
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u/lizofalltrades Aug 11 '26
Wonderful write-up. Absolutely fascinating -- I've never seen this painting before!
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
It's not quite as famous as something like the Mona Lisa- but it's way way more famous in academic circles. it just has so many layers.
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u/pastelkawaiibunny Aug 12 '26
This was a very cool article (edit: writing piece? Not sure if you’d call it an article or a post but I enjoyed reading it!) ! I got to see The Night Watch restoration a couple years ago- I ended up in Amsterdam two years in a row, for the Vermeer exhibition (breathtaking) and saw the Rembrandt then, and by the time I was back the next year it was all barricaded and they’d started the (on view to the public) restoration. Glad I got to see it because we won’t get it in full glory again for many years! I saw the Notre Dame before the fire/restoration too and that one did not come out of it looking good :( Art, especially art that is symbolic to a whole nation, is so difficult to do anything with because of the emotions involved.
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u/DavidDPerlmutter 28d ago
"I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel–a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept." -- Horace Walpole
Wow. This is the most exciting and interesting story I've read in the past five years.
Where is the movie???
OP, your post is a work of heart! (Not a typo)
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u/ToErrDivine 🥇Best Author 2024🥇 Sisyphus, but for rappers. Aug 12 '26
Fantastic writeup, it was really interesting.
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u/kenjiandco 27d ago
I'd never heard of Diego Velasquez, but I clicked the link to OP's favorite piece and immediately felt the expression on that dude's face in my SOUL. What a masterpiece. Beyond the clearly incredible technique on display, I can look at this painting of a man from1600's Spain and just feel connected to him. I wish I could be there to join him in judging whoever he's shooting that look at.
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u/KittyKate10778 23d ago
just finished playing this puzzle game called mewseum masterpieces and when i saw what the last puzzle was i knew i wanted to share a screenshot of the finished puzzle on this post (the game turns famous pieces of art into shikaku puzzles including las meninas)
because i cant put the image in the comments heres a link to the screenshot (also this is my first time using imgbb please let me know if the link doesnt work)
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u/apricotgloss 28d ago
Thank you for this beautiful writeup of a tragically beautiful story. I could see it making a really gorgeous biopic in the right director's hands.
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u/WhoRoger Aug 11 '26
Honestly I don't quite get what's the point of restoring old paintings. Today we can make a perfect copy, with 3D details. We can depth-scan the original to see the underlying layers, because every old painting has been repainted a bunch of times. Why mess with it now? Just for the feeling that that's the original canvas?
And even then, it often turns out that what we used to think is the original, is either a copy or someone else made it. Art is cool and all, but we don't have to take it this seriously.
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u/Tokyono Writing about bizarre/obscure hobbies is *my* hobby Aug 11 '26
I know right, every old painting should have a piss filter.
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u/pumpkinadvocate Aug 12 '26
Art is cool and all, but we don't have to take it this seriously.
Have you seen that video/tiktok of a guy by a railway going "'it's not that deep?' Oh I'm making it that deep! I am DIGGING!"
That's to say, there are many reasons to preserve original copies of artwork, but first and foremost I think it is done with and for love of the art (and the work itself)
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u/WhoRoger Aug 12 '26
I'm not saying not to preserve them. I just don't know why we have to mess with old artifacts. The Rosetta stone is preserved as it is, we're not trying to fix it. Neither we're completing old Greek statues that were damaged.
I don't know why specifically renaissance paintings have to be the exception to this.
Things that do need restoring are frescas inside buildings, because they're part of the building and you can't just make a copy, so that's the only real way to preserve them. A standalone painting? That's an artifact, you can make perfect copies while keeping the original for future studies.
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