The restoration of the San Lorenzo Mártir church in Altos, one in every of Paraguay’s oldest and most vital non secular heritage websites, has been formally accomplished after a phased venture that lasted almost eight years. Positioned 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 non secular and neighborhood capabilities.
Designated a Nationwide Cultural Heritage Web site in 2017, the church’s authentic 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 picket 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 facet altarpieces, she tells The Artwork Newspaper, was accomplished in an earlier part.
“Throughout work on the doorways and home windows, non secular 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 one of the crucial vital examples of Paraguayan colonial Baroque. Shortly after the work started, Myrian Mármol (Butlerov’s predecessor) warned of the important situation of the church and its altarpiece. Chatting with the native press, Mármol described the altarpiece as “in a state of disrepair and fully eaten away by termites”, including that her workforce had arrived simply in time, because the 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 towards termites and moisture, two of the primary threats to picket heritage within the area. The hassle, which took three years, made it attainable to consolidate the construction and get better a part of its authentic 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 non secular photos 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 picket doorways, facet entrances and home windows, whose authentic 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 therapies, skilled craftspeople added wooden grafts the place obligatory to switch lacking or broken sections.
The San Lorenzo Mártir church was constructed within the sixteenth century and rebuilt after the Paraguayan Struggle (1864-70), a battle that profoundly reworked the nation and affected a lot of its historic buildings. The church’s conservation is a part of a broader effort to recognise Paraguay’s colonial non secular 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 tasks within the area, together with the deliberate work on the Virgen de las Mercedes church,” a spokesperson for MOPC mentioned in an announcement, anticipating the continuation of its heritage work within the space.
