The Royal Academy of Fine Arts restores and brings back to “life” masterpieces by Velázquez, Zurbarán and Bellini

The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando presented the exhibition this Thursday ‘The art of restoring. Patronage of the Callia Foundation at the Academy’ composed of a selection of twenty “master” works of the institution, among which pieces by Velázquez, Zurbarán or Bellini.

“When the works leave an artist’s studio they begin to live, but also to degrade. Restoration tries to avoid this degradation to the point that the works exceed the life of humans.“said Commissioner Víctor Nieto at the presentation ceremony.

The curator has asserted that the restoration also allows us to engage in dialogue with history and see how that work “has lived.” “From the moment a piece is placed in a place, that work begins to live and suffer.“just the way life is,” he insisted.

“Even if the works are well preserved, there is always wear or the varnishes or frames degrade“, he noted. On this occasion, ‘El Salvador’ (1502), by Giovanni Bellini, ‘The Holy Supper’ (1629), by Otto van Veen, or ‘The Holy Supper’ (1629), by Velázquez, have been brought back to light.

The exhibition is completed with videos and panels explaining the process carried out, information on the origin and intrinsic characteristics of each work, promoting the understanding and appreciation of the careful work carried out.

Specifically, the specialists Rafael Alonso and Alfonso Castrillo They have proceeded to pictorial consolidation and the elimination of repainting, rusty varnishes, stuccos and anomalies caused by selective cleaning and other previous interventions that distorted the original work.

For his part, the director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, Tomás Marco, thanked the Callia Foundation for its generous collaboration, which makes possible the restoration of works of art from the Academy’s heritage. For her part, Carmen Reviriego has stressed the importance of “transmit to society the given fate“.