Though he has looked that way for years, the Jesus on a centuries-old wooden crucifix in downtown's St. Augustine Cathedral is not in fact brown and greenish-gray.
Art conservators Tim Lewis and Matilde Rubio, who began a painstaking process of cleaning and restoring the pine and poplar Pamplona Crucifix in November, are uncovering eye-catching hues of red, gold, silver and blue.
"Sometimes you look at these projects and think, what are we supposed to do?" Lewis said. "But then the colors start to come through."
Weeks of restoration have revealed the original color of Jesus' loincloth as indigo, trimmed with red and silver. And his hair is gold leaf and brown.
They've found some other surprises in the once-dingy statue, too.
In Jesus' backside, they discovered a small hole leading to what was apparently at one time a comfy, dark home to a small critter, likely either a bat or a mouse.
People are also reading…
The conservators' work - eight hours a day, five days a week - could yield more discoveries. They don't expect the restoration to be complete until late March or early April.
"He'll look a lot better," Lewis said last week as he worked under bright light to level out hardened paste used to fill holes in the statue's torso.
"More elegant," added Rubio, as she rubbed layers of drab, brown paint off Jesus' head, revealing shiny gold.
She stressed that the goal is not to spiff up the statue as a beautiful Christ of the 21st century.
"We want something that looks as old as it is," she said.
The pair will not add any color to the loincloth other than to fill in gaps where the paint has faded away. So when they find a color that matches, they'll also need to find a way to match the dirt and age in the original.
"There's a trick to that. It's hard to explain, but it's something you learn as you go along."
The statue has been in St. Augustine since the mid-1920s. A Spanish artist living in Tucson had acquired it at an auction in Pamplona and donated it to then-Tucson Bishop Daniel Gercke. Historians have placed the statue at about 600 to 800 years old. Rubio estimates it's likely from the 1300s, as her research indicates the indigo color on the loincloth wasn't available in Europe until that time.
The restoration isn't all about appearance. Lewis and Rubio are treating and repairing the statue's termite-damaged wood.
"It's about making the whole thing healthy - not just the surface," Rubio said.
Rubio and Lewis are a husband-and-wife team who do art conservation work around the world. They have been working on interior restoration at Mission San Xavier del Bac on and off since 1992.
The restoration of the Pamplona Crucifix is separate from an interior renovation of St. Augustine that's being completed with funds raised in a diocesan capital campaign.
The statue restoration is being paid for with private donations, and $20,000 has been raised so far, Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas wrote in a recent weekly memo to parishioners.
Contact reporter Stephanie Innes at 573-4134 or sinnes@azstarnet.com. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/stephanieinnes
101 homes to be built on NW Tucson corner
