The restoration of the San Lorenzo Mártir church in Altos, one in every of Paraguay’s oldest and most necessary spiritual heritage websites, has been formally accomplished after a phased venture that lasted practically eight years. Situated about 60km from the capital of Asunción, the colonial Franciscan church remained open all through conservation, permitting work to maneuver ahead with out interrupting its spiritual and group features.
Designated a Nationwide Cultural Heritage Website in 2017, the church’s unique look was progressively revealed as work superior. The method, begun in 2018, additionally introduced into focus the historic depth of a website linked to the early days of the Franciscan presence in Paraguay, when Asunción was nonetheless a younger colonial settlement surrounded by Guaraní territories.
The ultimate conservation part, centered on the church’s wood doorways and home windows, was lately accomplished, says Ana Butlerov, the brand new head of the Historic Heritage Unit at Paraguay’s Ministry of Public Works and Communications (MOPC). Work on the primary and aspect altarpieces, she tells The Artwork Newspaper, was accomplished in an earlier part.
“Throughout work on the doorways and home windows, spiritual providers continued with out interruption,” Butlerov says.
San Lorenzo Mártir church Courtesy Ministry of Public Works and Communications
One of many central parts of the venture was the restoration of the primary altarpiece, thought of some of the important examples of Paraguayan colonial Baroque. Shortly after the work started, Myrian Mármol (Butlerov’s predecessor) warned of the essential situation of the church and its altarpiece. Chatting with the native press, Mármol described the altarpiece as “in a state of disrepair and utterly eaten away by termites”, including that her staff had arrived simply in time, for the reason that wooden was crumbling.
Measuring 5.5m excessive and three.75m extensive, the primary altarpiece had not been absolutely restored for greater than a century. Conservators dismantled it into greater than 300 items to permit for cautious therapy in opposition to termites and moisture, two of the primary threats to wood heritage within the area. The hassle, which took three years, made it potential to consolidate the construction and get well a part of its unique polychromy, which had remained hidden beneath layers of deteriorated varnish, repainting and subsequent interventions. Because the cleansing progressed, colors, decorative particulars and patterns lengthy obscured by time started to reappear.
The method introduced the altarpiece again into focus as a piece formed by Franciscan custom, colonial Baroque aesthetics and the craftsmanship of native workshops traditionally related to woodcarving.
The church’s lately restored historic altarpiece Courtesy Ministry of Public Works and Communications
Throughout that first part, work additionally centered on the predella and the higher part of the altarpiece, the place the photographs of the saints Joseph, Lawrence and Roch are situated alongside the Assumption of Mary. A second part addressed the wall niches that maintain spiritual pictures in addition to the pulpit, extending the venture to different liturgical and historic parts contained in the church.
The ultimate part, which started in 2024, centered on the church’s wood doorways, aspect entrances and home windows, whose unique surfaces had been coated for many years by successive layers of paint. Earlier than the conservation work started, specialists carried out photographic documentation, technical assessments and scientific analyses to determine repainting, cracks, structural injury and infestations. After the conservation remedies, professional craftspeople added wooden grafts the place crucial to exchange lacking or broken sections.
The San Lorenzo Mártir church was constructed within the sixteenth century and rebuilt after the Paraguayan Warfare (1864-70), a battle that profoundly remodeled the nation and affected lots of its historic buildings. The church’s conservation is a part of a broader effort to recognise Paraguay’s colonial spiritual heritage, notably church buildings that protect altarpieces, carvings, adobe partitions and woodwork linked to the earliest experiences of evangelisation and colonial settlement.
“The intervention reaffirms the historic worth of Altos because the birthplace of Paraguayan woodcarving and units a precedent for future restoration initiatives within the area, together with the deliberate work on the Virgen de las Mercedes church,” a spokesperson for MOPC mentioned in a press release, anticipating the continuation of its heritage work within the space.
