Virginia Gomez Madrid
Photos: Felipe Díaz de Vivar
Madrid
Updated Sunday, March 24, 2024-00:53
On the fourth floor of the
Royal Palace
of Madrid there are dozens of unimaginable rooms that awaken the senses. A few meters above the luxurious rooms that
inhabited
from
Charles
III
to
Alfonso
National Heritage
places
. There are metal and armory workshops, porcelain, paintings, sculptures, books and documents, stones, textiles, cabinetmaking... A paradise for art lovers like no other.
If anyone knows every corner of this amazing place, where the clock seems to have stopped, it is
Lucio Maire
. He has been in the
Gilding and Stucco Workshop
for 49 years . No restaurateur has more experience there than him. He laughs every time we hint that no secret should escape him. And he talks and talks non-stop about all (or almost all) of the objects (thousands and thousands) of the Royal Palace that have passed through his hands: cornices, vaults, frames, consoles, chairs...
He says that he was privileged in his time, because when no one shared the techniques, he had already learned them from home. «
Almost my entire family has been linked to the restoration of the Royal Palace.
My grandfather was a cabinet maker; my cousins, painters of pictures; my brother, a gilder... Some masters were upset that I knew a lot when I was an apprentice," he says and laughs as he slides a sheet of
gold leaf
with a light blow before dropping it on one of the historical frames he is recovering. "You can't touch it with your hands," he explains. «
We reintegrate like the Egyptians did 4,000 years ago
. They were very smart! “We glue the gold leaf with rabbit glue, a natural adhesive, and, when it dries, we shine it with the agate stone,” he adds.
Lucio Maire with the carriage of Alfonso XIII.
He knows the Palace
floats
like the back of his hand, as he has spent half his life reintegrating and consolidating them. «
Alfonso XIII married this one and the bomb on Calle Mayor fell on her
. It is from the 19th century, but it has everything, even a toilet. That they have been taken to the Gallery of the Royal Collections is the most [previously they were in Campo del Moro, where he himself came to live] », he points out proudly from the exhibition, where he asks us to accompany him to see his works.
of him in situ
. Also to the Royal Palace, where he shows stucco cornices that imitate marble, a trompe l'oeil that he painted in a room where a door was missing, the oldest carved marble and stucco table or
the magnificent Gasparini Room
, where, lying face up, everything a challenge, he gilded the roof. "It's the most special thing," he says after giving us a trip to another time.
«For me this is not a job, it is a pleasure.
Developing as an artist here has been something unique
," highlights Lucio, an expert in gilding and stucco who knows all the Royal Sites (including Zarzuela) through his work and has even given presentations at the Prado Museum.
Back on the fourth floor, a few doors from her workshop, is
Margarita Tapia
, a porcelain technician. «Above all we do preventive conservation. And
the most important thing for this is documentation
. In restoration you don't have to invent anything. “We make it integrated but not invisible,” says the restaurateur, who has also been around for 35 years, looking at the Plaza de Oriente from the window of her
office
.
Margarita Tapia restores a vase from the time of Charles IV.
During the visit to what is his house, he shows us some porcelain plates that are in the Casita del Príncipe in El Escorial,
a tortoiseshell
funerary mound dedicated to Alfonso
hunting scene in
biscuit
(first firing of porcelain) by Ferdinand VI that has been restored with non-invasive techniques.
But if something attracts attention in his workshop, it is the wonderful
trophy vase from the time of Charles IV
(18th century), usually exhibited in the Hall of Mirrors, which he is rehabilitating. «It is from the manufacture of the Buen Retiro Porcelain Factory. The best time », he says. «We have given him a water bath. It had a lot of dust and dirt. And a lot of yellowish resin. It has relief applications, all made of porcelain. And we just discovered that it is not painted.
And without further details he directs us to the Royal Palace
Laboratory
, where restorers go if they have any questions.
Silvia Pérez
, belonging to the new generations that are little by little finding their way there, reveals the mystery to us under the microscope.
«
We took a sample of the vase where there were leaks to see if it had gold
. And, yes, there are everywhere. Glossy and matte », she explains. «Before we had passed it through the
X-ray
fluorescence equipment
, which performs an analysis without taking samples. And the blue part is cobalt oxide," says this chemist, specialized in conservation, restoration and analysis of works of art who has worked in Vienna, Santiago de Chile and Zurich.
The X-ray team analyzes whether the vase contains gold.
He details how this last device works, which can be read in graphs, together with radiologist
Santiago Herrero
, a biologist who throughout his professional career at the Royal Palace has radiated the famous Stradivarius and also
Caravaggios
,
Goyas
,
Velázquez
and
Grecos
. and finished with the rotting of dozens of pieces of furniture with the
anoxia chamber
(which changes oxygen for nitrogen) that he directs. "This is not paid for," he says.
A short distance away,
Pepa Parra
is restoring a jasper and bronze frame at the
Taller de Piedras Duras
. «I have cleaned it and glued it with plaster, because many of the stones were fragmented, in addition to consolidating it mechanically. "It's an 18th century frame," she details before showing us another of the pieces she is working on,
a religious glass and gilded silver ornament from 1900
that bears the figure of the devil.
Pepa Parra with jasper frames from the 18th century.
Through her hands, in the six years she has been in National Heritage - although she has been linked for 25 -, all those objects that have quartz or amethysts have passed, and also, even if they are not hard stones,
diamonds, rubies or corals
, among others. Also the
dessert
(centerpiece) eight meters long, with a stucco base and marble and bronze decorations, which was used
at the wedding of the current Kings
and which is today exhibited in the Gallery of the Royal Collections. «It is the most special piece I have restored. And the most laborious.
Paco
Serrano
is also enthusiastic about what he does. “For me this is a passion, it is not work,” he says as he walks from one place to another in his workshop, impregnated with the smell of leather, to show us, without leaving anything out, what he does and how. He is one of the few saddlers left in our country, because his profession has almost disappeared, and he is somewhat saddened.
Paco Serrano with the garrison of a horse of Carlos III.
He's been there for 35 years. He mainly restores harnesses (what we might call the horse's
costume
) and also makes pieces, with deskirted bull or cow leather blades, for the Heritage horses. "And I sew everything with these hands," he says before showing us the treasure he has on one of his work tables:
a garrison from Charles III
, made up of more than a dozen pieces. «This is going to take me a long time. "It's in very bad condition," he says.
Surrounded by time, and among glasses, tweezers, screwdrivers and keys to wind it, we find
José Antonio Gismera
, the National Heritage watchmaker. For 32 years he has been the man who maintains the institution's extensive collection. «They are all very special.
Every time I open one, I continue to be surprised
. That they work is amazing. There are clocks from the 18th and 19th centuries, French, English, Swiss, Spanish... The oldest is from Philip II, from 1583, and is on display in the Gallery," explains José Antonio, who has to walk through the Palace every week. to
wind the 230 clocks
there are, including the one in the tower.
José Antonio Gismera fixes a Heritage clock.
We talk to him while he is working on a clock, from the 19th century, for which he has had to make a watch. "As they are such old watches, there are no spare parts," he says and adds: "
The main thing is that they are always working
and that, as they are unique pieces, they are not lost."
But, immersed here... let time stop.
A job in figures
13 workshops.
There are in the Royal Palace and they are divided between Decorative Arts and Fine Arts. In addition, to this number we must add the Chemistry and Radiology laboratories.
35 technicians.
They work in different restoration jobs.
759 works.
The number of pieces restored per year is difficult to specify, but a file on these began in 2024.