The Prado restores Pablo de Valladolid, a painting that amazed Manet

Madrid. In the conservation plan of the collection, always active and to which a large part of the institution’s staff is dedicated, the Prado Museum began the restoration of one of its most iconic pieces, Pablo of Valladolid, by Diego Velázquez, defined by Manet as “the most amazing painting ever painted.” In addition to resolving some problems with the state of the painting, created in 1635, the experts will carry out a technical analysis to delve into its creative process and the reasons for its state of conservation.

Velázquez’s painting was in the legendary room 15 of the Madrid art gallery, one of the most visited because there are some of the masterpieces of Velázquez, who, along with Goya, Hieronymus Bosch and El Greco, is one of the artists most admired by visitors. Now, Paul of Valladolid It will be in the restoration workshops, which are in the same building, but in rooms closed to the public, where dozens of artists, historians and conservators work daily to ensure the good condition of the collection.

The institution explained that the work “is one of the portraits in which Velázquez took the restriction of pictorial resources further in order to enhance the intensity and expressiveness of the figure represented.” Hence, during his visit to the Prado, on September 1, 1865, the French artist Édouard Manet, considered one of the fathers of Impressionism, wrote: “the background disappears, it is really air that surrounds that poor man all dressed in black and so alive.” Furthermore, in a letter sent to his painter friend Henri Fantin-Latour, Manet wrote: “it is perhaps the most astonishing piece of painting ever made.”

The restoration, which will be carried out thanks to the sponsorship of the Iberdrola Spain Foundation, will allow us to analyze this unique portrait of Velázquez, who during his most prolific period transferred to canvas the images of the jesters and men of pleasure at the court of Philip IV and, from this collection, precisely the portrait of Paul of Valladolida character documented in court service between 1632 and 1648, whose function would respond to his acting skills or his burlesque character.

declamatory attitude

Museum staff explained that “Velázquez portrays him as an isolated figure, firmly established in an indefinite space, constructed solely through the shadow cast by his body. The neutral background concentrates all attention on the character’s gesture, captured in an attitude that has been interpreted as declamatory. The painting is done with a mixture of security and ease typical of Velázquez’s mature style, and stylistic analysis allows it to be dated between 1632 and 1635, during the early years of the “artist at the service of the court”.

Before beginning the restoration, technical analyzes will be carried out to expand the material information that is already known about this portrait. The recent incorporation of new research equipment to the Prado Museum makes it possible to deepen the study of the work from two complementary approaches: material analysis using “XRF scanning”, a non-destructive technique, which allows the identification of the chemical elements present on the pictorial surface and, by stimulating the painting with

The other system that the institution will use to analyze the painting will be multispectral infrared reflectography, which studies the response of the painting to different wavelengths, from the visible to the infrared (between 400 and 2,600 nanometers). This analysis provides diverse information, depending on the depth observed, and allows us to reveal details invisible to the naked eye.