Colonial-Era Artwork Restored at Boston Church

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS—The Sentinel reports that conservators Gianfranco Pocobene and Corrine Long have removed seven layers of paint from eight images of angels at Boston’s Old North Church. Constructed in 1723, Old North Church is the oldest surviving church building in Boston. Painted by a member of the congregation around 1730, the total of 20 angel images, made to look like stone sculptures, were first covered with white paint during a renovation in 1912. To remove the paint, the conservators first softened it with a solvent gel, and then removed it with plastic scrapers. Then, they cleaned the colonial-era paintings with cotton swabs, and retouched the images where necessary. “They all have their own character—they’re not copies,” Pocobene said of the angels. “The artist John Gibbs painted them individually and they’re all in different poses, which gives them a really wonderful rhythmic kind of pattern across the surface of the church,” he added. To read about a seventeenth-century Italian plate found during excavations of Boston's Pierce-Hichborn House, go to "Artifact: Sgraffito Slip-Decorated Plate."