Discovering the collection: Portrait of a Seated Woman, Anthonis Mor. By María Antonia L. de Asiaín

This virus that haunts us has stopped our life. COVID-19 makes us work these days in a different way. In the case of the restoration in the Museo del Prado, it keeps us away from the works and makes us work on reports, on organisation and on thinking a little about the restoration process of the works that we have seen interrupted. I am going to talk to you about Antonio Moro's The Sitting Woman. It is a portrait that we do not always have hanging in the galleries, because the collection of works by Antonio Moro in the Museo del Prado is very large and so they are usually torn down and moved from gallery to gallery so that they are always in the public eye. Perhaps some of you remember this work with its previous title, The Woman of the Painter, as it reflects this type of portrait by Esponsales in which the wife and husband were painted in two different works. It is a fact that corroborates the presence of the puppy in the arms of the woman as a symbol of fidelity. The origin of this work is foundational. It came to the Museo del Prado from the Royal Collections and we have in our archives three previous restorations. The first was made by Martínez Cubels in 1877. The second was made in 1897 by García Espaleto. This one does have a small detail in the archive that helps me to understand the nature of these three restorations that have not been able to solve the conservation problems of this work. In this detail in the archive we see that Espaleto removed the varnish and gave it a new one, from 12 May to 20 May, that is, eight days. A restoration that did not allow a complete investigation and process, as is the case of the one that is currently being carried out. The last restoration of which we have some news was made in 1963 by Martín Benito. The general state of conservation of this work was stable, it was correct, it could be exposed in these conditions, but the painting was covered by a layer of dirt fixed several times by various varnishes. For this reason its surface looked very uneven, with matte and opaque traces. It also had a large number of invasive and altered repaintings. What I have come to tell you today is the cleaning process and what has been discovered with the removal of all these varnishes that covered the original painting. The restoration began with the removal of this varnish, a relatively simple removal with not very polar dissolvents, since the composition of this varnish, as is usual in the Museo del Prado, is natural. Our laboratory has found, within these layers of varnishes, three types of terpenic resins, damascus resin, pine resin and damar resin, which are easily soluble. What the cleaning reveals is a generally well-preserved work, although the most deteriorated and repainted area in this painting is the dark background. It is common in these old restorations that this type of neutral background is less respected, perhaps because they do not have a pictorial identity, they are less significant, and the restorers thought that it could be reintegrated, retouched, without so much effort, and they did not put so much emphasis on its cleaning. For this reason, the brown background was blackened by dirt and darkened, while the black sheath was also yellowed by dirt and oxidation. The sheath and background merged, they had a much more common tone, causing the volume of the figure to be lost. One of the most important characteristics of this type of portrait of Moro was lost with it, which is the position of the figure, which occupies most of an undefined but vibrant space, with the shoulders diagonally, and the face in the gaze facing the viewer. With the cleaning, innumerable greenish repaints have been removed from the background, and with them its intensity of colour and vibration has been recovered. Now the original colour is already defined. It is warm in the case of the background, and black and cold in the case of the figure, with which its roundness is already recovered. In this cleaning, as with the restoration of Maria Tudor, the recovery of the space has been essential. This space is not only defined by colour, as I have mentioned so far, but also by means of volumes and details that were previously almost hidden by dirt. It is the case of a kind of line on the back wall that divides the background into two areas, one more illuminated and one more dark, so that it makes almost a chaflan and gives a certain entity to that space, almost undefined. The removal of repaints from this background has been necessary, although there is something deteriorated on its right side. It is a very special damage, perhaps caused by a wrong restoration. Perhaps at the time of the support treatment, when the clip was placed to level it, the work was not properly respected. In this way, if we look at the reverse of the piece, it is lowered, it is cut, making it thinner. It has thinned so that the clip could better domesticate the curvature of this piece. And in its lower area it was chosen to sand, to flatten the paint a little. What this deterioration leaves to be seen is the very preparation of the work. I take this opportunity to comment that the preparation of the piece is, as usual, of calcium carbonate, as our chemical laboratory has corroborated, with an imprimation of the same carbonate with alba alder applied to the oil. It is the oil of this oil that, penetrating the preparation, gives it a colour that is a little terraced, a little brownish, very characteristic. Except for these intentional mechanical damages, in general the colours are preserved in a very good state of conservation. Only the black colour of the skirt is somewhat blurred. It is interesting to see how, in the embroidered details of the skirt, where the painter has used grey, he has used a little lead white. This composition with lead white and its own technique, applied with brushstrokes, much more loaded with matter, ensures that it is preserved in the best state, while the areas of smooth fabric are painted only with smoke black and are preserved worse, they have been more abrasive. It is the same case as the face, which also has some small abrasions, some small damages, but it retains its look and the strength of its cheekbones perfectly. At this point in the restoration it was very interesting to read the book Vidas imaginarias, published by the Museo del Prado, in which Ada Del Moral makes a small chapter dedicated to this work, in which she defines this portrait as a man, as a soldier of emerald tenderness, that blonde with a clear forehead and rotten hair. Antonio Moro has surrounded this face so strongly that Ada Del Moral has wanted to see it almost manly, with delicate details such as the lace of the toque, the fine cords that tie the blouse, the golden necklace, the golden chain, or even the cork that will wrap around his skirt. A very particular fact in this painting is the pigment used in the skirt, in the part of the dress that peeks out over the legs of the portrait. It is a purple dress, but it presents its discoloured colour, very faded, with some blue streaks. It was a difficult fact to explain from the start, and the explanation was given by our chemical laboratory, which in the composition of the pigment used in this dress found florita, a pigment that, although it has always been used in painting, has been found in paintings of the Low Egypt, of a pre-Columbian Mexico, it is not very common, although it is found in paintings of Central Europe of this period. It is a purple colour, not very opaque, and becomes transparent when oil is used. This may be the main reason for the faded appearance of the colour in this skirt. As a contrast, the rest of the elements of the piece are very well preserved. This is the case, for example, of the dog. The figure of the dog, which is perhaps the most endearing element of the composition, makes our gaze turn towards it, is painted in lead white. Because of this composition and the pictorial technique of painting its coat with well-loaded brushstrokes, it is preserved in perfect condition. This is the same case as the lace toque that covers the lady's head, in which the painter used, in addition to white, very loaded brushstrokes to show the relief of the lace. It is peculiar in this toque that the lady wears that the back, which is of course also made of the same white cloth, has been painted by Moro in a pale ochre colour. It is not an alteration as a result of ageing, as one might think at first, but rather that the painter has not used so much white, perhaps to bring this toque down to a background and give more prominence to the face, but also perhaps to contribute to the effect of vibration with the background, unifying with that line that he referred to as chaflan, which differentiated the light and the dark, uniting and giving more vibration to the background to mark the roundness of the figure. The same technical perfection is preserved in the hands of the portrait, in which some regrets have been discovered with the cleaning. Initially, two rings were placed on the ring fingers of both hands and finally the painter has painted on other fingers, allowing time to bring out the light and make the regrets of these two forgotten rings more visible. One last essential detail in this restoration, and something that always excites us restorers and gives us great satisfaction, is the recovery of the signature. This signature is not covered by repainting, simply hidden by the dirt and opacity of the varnishes, as it is an extremely small black signature in the lower right corner, which was almost not visible to the eye. Today the signature is already visible in this angle. The painting is signed and dated in the lower right corner as MOR PINGE 1565. The cleaning of this work is almost finished, waiting to resume work, which will surely be soon. I could end this story using a phrase from the book Imaginary Lives, in which, as a closure, Ada Del Moral puts this phrase in the mouth of the dog, who is the one who makes the description of both the work and the painter. If you come to our gallery, stop for a moment in front of Metzen, as the portrait is called, and your favorite, so it is called, look at the beats of his muscles under the skirts, his evil virility because of Cupid's jokes.