{"id":432895,"date":"2026-02-18T20:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T20:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/432895\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T20:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T20:42:12","slug":"masterpiece-of-spanish-vasari-rises-from-the-ashes-after-almost-a-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/432895\/","title":{"rendered":"Masterpiece of \u2018Spanish Vasari\u2019 rises from the ashes after almost a century"},"content":{"rendered":"

For ninety years after anarchists set fire to the Valencia church at the start of the Spanish Civil War, its baroque frescoes were blackened and charred.<\/p>\n

The Republican militiamen did their work thoroughly on July 18, 1936. They smashed all ornaments and effigies, tossing them onto a fire in the nave of Santos Juanes Church, turning the building into a furnace that burned for eight days.<\/p>\n

The fire destroyed Antonio Palomino\u2019s painted barrel-vault ceiling, monumental altarpiece and sumptuous stucco sculptures \u2014 and damaged the church\u2019s medieval structure.<\/p>\n

After a five-year restoration, the church has reopened, with much of its former glory recovered. The project has involved new scanning techniques, cleaning with bacteria, a restorer\u2019s family history and suspected thefts of artworks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been almost a miracle that we have been able to save so much after the terrible fire of 1936,\u201d said Pilar Roig, who led the restoration. Pointing to the ceiling, she added: \u201cPeople have wept with joy on seeing it. What was once stained black is now brilliant again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pilar<\/p>\n

Pilar Roig<\/p>\n

VICENTE LARA SAES\/UNIVERSITAT POLIT\u00c8CNICA DE VAL\u00c8NCIA<\/p>\n

The church has a special place in Valencia\u2019s heart. \u201cThe historic triangle formed by La Lonja [the merchant\u2019s exchange], the Central Market and Los Santos Juanes, which was the commercial hub in the 17th and 18th centuries, is now complete and alive once again,\u201d said Hortensia Herrero, whose eponymous foundation funded the restoration.<\/p>\n

Surrounded by figures and seated on a throne of clouds, God the Father has indeed returned to his heaven, at least the one depicted by Palomino on the church ceiling. Its 12 side chapels also once again gleam with stucco sculptures of biblical figures and allegories.<\/p>\n

Palomino, one of the most prominent artists of the Spanish baroque, served the royal court as a painter, working with Luca Giordano on the ceiling vaults at El Escorial palace-monastery<\/a> near Madrid. Dubbed \u201cthe Spanish Vasari\u201d due to the 18th-century biography he wrote about the lives of his country\u2019s artists, \u201cat Santos Juanes he was able to demonstrate his astonishing technical prowess as well as his profound knowledge of art and theology\u201d, said Roig.<\/p>\n

But a major gap in that legacy \u2014 and a mystery \u2014 remains. The flames destroyed most of Palomino\u2019s frescoes on the vault over the apse, but those that survived were taken to Barcelona as part of a \u201cdisastrous\u201d restoration attempt in the 1960s. \u201cThey disappeared there and the theory is that they were sold,\u201d said Roig. \u201cInterpol is still supposed to be on the lookout for them today.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Roig, a professor from the Institute of Heritage Restoration at the Universitat Polit\u00e8cnica de Val\u00e8ncia, the restoration of the church has been a work of three decades since the regional government asked her to write a conservation report when the church was abandoned in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The church ceilings were painted by Antonio Palomino<\/p>\n

EVA MANEZ\/REUTERS<\/p>\n

It has also been a family affair. Her father, Spain\u2019s first professor of restoration, worked to recover its large communion chapel in the 1940s. Three of her children have helped in the restoration project, including her daughter, Pilar Bosch, a microbiologist who used bacteria to remove glue<\/a> that had been used to pull the frescoes from the walls during restoration work in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Pilar Roig, left, with her daughter, Pilar Bosch<\/p>\n

EVA MANEZ\/REUTERS<\/p>\n

Bosch trained bacteria by feeding them samples of the glue, which was made from animal collagen. The bacteria then naturally produce enzymes to degrade the glue. She mixed the bacteria with a natural algae-based gel and spread it on the paintings. After three hours, the gel was removed, revealing glue-free paintings.<\/p>\n

The restoration has been on a grand scale. The 21-metre high ceiling is involved a mass of scaffolding. \u201cThe largest work Palomino ever did was Los Santos Juanes between 1699 and 1702. It covers 1,200 square metres,\u201d Roig said. <\/p>\n

\"Restoration<\/p>\n

To recover the frescos, they were separated from the plywood panels on which they had been mounted in the 1960s and cleaned. They were returned to the ceiling vault mounted on new panels made of carbon fibre and resin.<\/p>\n

For the larger damaged areas, a key aid in the restoration were old photographs, particularly a black-and-white photograph taken before the civil war that was digitised, corrected, coloured and magnified 140 times. \u201cThis gave us an enlarged digital image that was transferred to the wall,\u201d said Roig. \u201cThe image was printed on a temporary medium which, when peeled away, left only the pattern of coloured ink on the surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roig noted that the fire altered the pigments of the surviving frescoes and that the restoration has sought to strike a balance between \u201crecovering the original and adapting to historical memory\u201d. She added: \u201cSantos Juanes is spectacular but the mark of history is there and must be respected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pilar<\/p>\n

Conservation and restoration technicians clean a fresco with gelled solvent emulsion<\/p>\n

EVA MANEZ\/REUTERS<\/p>\n

The spaces where paintings were totally lost above the apse and in most of the ovals in the nave have been left bare. Video recreations of the works are projected onto the spaces. \u201cI still hope the originals will be found,\u201d said Roig. <\/p>\n

The restoration of the church\u2019s stucco sculptures and decorations, originally made by the Italian artists Giacomo Bertesi and Antonio Aliprandi, was done by elderly craftsmen: a sculptor, a plasterer and a gilder. \u201cWe had young people doing work experience and learning from these masters who cannot be found at universities,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

It has been a labour of love and faith, Roig concluded. \u201cIn the end, the spiritual aspect is there,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd when you\u2019re up on scaffolding and you see it up close, the sheer majesty of it, too.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For ninety years after anarchists set fire to the Valencia church at the start of the Spanish Civil…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-432895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}