She is perhaps the only one who did not take a photo of the Virgin of Hope during this whole ordeal, nor did she take one with Her when she returned to what she was. His eyes and his hands witnessed … alive from the return of the Macarena. He got it back after a successful restoration Pedro Manzanothe man most applauded yesterday in Seville and the most sought after in the atriums and rooms after having returned the Virgin to so many who desired her. “When it comes to images of clothing, I like to respect their privacy,” summarizes Manzano to ABC de Sevilla just hours after receiving everyone’s affection and having satisfactorily accomplished the “greatest mission” of his professional career.
– Yesterday, you left the basilica in front of hundreds of Macarenos, who began to understand who you were, and you placed your hand on your chest. How does it feel to be the man who brought Hope back to Seville?
– Well, look, it was something, how to say, spontaneous. You know that to enter and exit the basilica, you have to go this way, right? Across the square. And people recognized me and spontaneously started a group of applause in one area and it spread to the whole line until everyone ended up clapping for me. I felt, well, I don’t know, stunned. I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know if it was better to run away (laughs).
– What I know is that more than running away from you, what everyone wanted was to hold you in their arms.
– It’s good that people congratulate you. Now I realize the dimension of it all. The truth is that it was something very important.
– What is the most exciting thing they said to you?
– Working on a work of this level and then, from an emotional point of view, having this repercussion… And above all, the best thing they told me was that Ella came back. What is she, what is her look, I think so. I think that was the main success.
Little shot of the Virgin of Hope last Monday
– They say that in April he will be nineteen years old.
– And this polychromy was also recovered. This layer, its original polychromy, which was there, a little tarnished by the recent interventions it has had. So, by calming all that down, logically, the image, which is already beautiful in itself, regains this power.
– Do you attribute these excesses to Arquillo?
– Listen, if you allow me, I’m not going to talk about what another colleague is doing. Everyone intervenes according to their own criteria, right? We all evolve in the same field of methodology and criteria, but hey, afterward everyone applies what they know. After having worked so carefully on the image and having learned so much about it, I cannot find an explanation for this. I can’t find it.
– What photographic equipment did you use to find the expression of the image?
– The photographic documentation was carried out on the one hand by Emilio Sáenz, photographer of the Macarena, and on the other hand by the photographer of the IAPH. They were the ones who documented the entire installation process. I didn’t need to photograph it.
– Should we restore the Lord of Sentence and the Virgin of the Rosary?
– I’m not going to say no or yes. I saw them from afar, on their altars. It would also take a period of prior study, as in the case of Virgo, to evaluate it.
-Will you miss praying to the Virgin so close every day, many of them alone?
– Completely. In other words, I arrived every morning, I had private access, I went straight up in the elevator to the top floor. It was like going to heaven.
The quote
“I will miss praying to the Virgin in the basilica room, it was like going up to heaven”
Pedro Manzano
Specialist in conservation and restoration of works of art
– You recently commented on Canal Sur Radio’s El Llamador on a nuance that I found interesting: How to restore visual history?
– The main difficulty of the last two interventions was to go back to what had been done, and from there, to put everything together, right? The expressiveness of the image. How is it done? Well, that would be very difficult to explain. I had a monitoring commission and also two other advisory and development commissions. One of the requirements is that it be multidisciplinary, which is why we have other professionals from other disciplines who come and contribute their vision.
– When will we have the results of the Carbon 14 test, which will allow us to go back to when the Virgin of Hope is located in the 12th century?
– I cannot tell you exactly when they will provide us with the results, because this type of study involves a waiting time, since it is done here in Seville, at the National Accelerator Center (CNA), as you know, and of course they are in high demand. A month or two is usually enough, it depends.
-How important was it to find the key to the eyelash question?
– I worked with Esteban Sánchez, who was already close to the Virgin before the Cabildo. And he was a very good professional in that sense. I wanted to count on him. Actually, the lashes that you have now, well, that’s the second set that’s done.
– You had two, counting the ordeal and the reintegration into the sect?
– A first set was used for the first costume test on site, both in the presbytery and in his dressing room. And then the final decision was taken on the basis of the observation that we made with the entire commission. We determined that there was a need for the tabs to have more unique features, more resembling those of photographic documentation.
-How would you define this second pair of eyelashes, the one we have been seeing since yesterday?
– The other was made by reminding me a little of the eyelashes I had before Arquillo’s conservative intervention. And these others got a little thicker with hair, fuller. With a more appropriate color tone, a dark brown.
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