The General Directorate of Cultural Heritage of the Government of the Canary Islands is financing the restoration of the sculptures of San José and the Child belonging to the Church of San Marcial del Rubicón, declared an Asset of Cultural Interest in 1985. The conservation and restoration work carried out by the sculpture specialist Salomé Figueroa is due to the "poor state of conservation of the pieces".
The carving, made of polychrome and gilded wood, is an 18th-century work that represents the image of San José with the Child in a walking attitude, although its authorship is unknown, at least for the moment. In this sense, this intervention is opening a new line of research about the author of the image, since although at first it has been associated with Fray Marcos Gil, the director of the project does not contemplate a relationship between this work of art and others by the same sculptor.
As the technique of this free-standing statue has been discovered, at the level of constructive technique and anatomical morphology, Figueroa differs with the first option on its authorship. After reviewing and analyzing different works by Marcos Gil such as the piece of San Vicente Ferrer from the Museo Sacro of the Villa de Teguise, “neither the shapes of the faces, the anatomical details” such as the hands, “the shape of the fingers, how the finish and the nails are made, which is a very identifying piece of information of an author, does not correspond to Marcos Gil", continues the restorer, adding that “it is an opportunity to open that line of research on the artists who worked here in Lanzarote”.
In a visit to the workshop located next to the hermitage of San Marcial, in Femés, the general director of Cultural Heritage, Nona Perera, highlighted that “the interventions in the movable heritage serve to conserve and also to protect in this case images of religious content”, but also “to better document the pieces that in this case have many possibilities of being a work manufactured on the island of Lanzarote”. It is “a unique case for now, and given the exceptionality of the data, the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage is determined to follow that line of research to learn more about these two images”, Perera advances.
The way of construction of the structures has greatly conditioned the restoration process, the fixing and consolidation of strata. In fact, the sculptures presented tremendous dirt and large uprisings with risks of loss of polychromy. As a curious fact, in the novel Mararía by the Canarian writer Rafael Arozarena, it is mentioned that the priest tells Marcial to refresh the sculptures with egg white, since this substance was formerly used as a varnish to give them shine. This sum of refreshments “what has caused has been a very compact crust of a brownish tone, very oxidized, very dark, which was much stronger than the original paint”, assures Salomé Figueroa. “That has resulted in the paint being very thin, with which all the layers that were on top were much stronger, and there has had to be a lot of management, a lot of care, many preliminary cleaning tests to find the most appropriate method to preserve the original paint”, she concludes.
Of both images, the sculpture of the Saint, who holds the flowered rod in his left hand and in his right has the gesture of taking the hand of the Child Jesus, is the one that presented a more delicate state of conservation. The holes of large woodworms and the finishes of the volume itself were not cleaned on the back of the statue, they were simply filled with sawdust. As it is a sculpture made from pieces of glued wood, boards, that is, the resource of the woods that were in Lanzarote, very hard and not very porous, this sawdust filling immediately came off taking with it the polychromy, the gold and the preparation.
"The actions carried out on the carving of San José and El Niño are justified based on their state of conservation, historical evolution, characteristics, their location, etc.", explain from Heritage. When the treatment that seeks to restore their initial strength is finished, not only is this heritage valued, but through guidelines with the necessary measures for the preventive maintenance of the images (environmental conditions, maintenance, lighting, etc.) work is done on their future conservation. For the restorer, “at the moment you work on a work, there is information, there is a very discreet but very important addition which is that society visualizes, makes it closer, and recognizes more and makes more its the heritage of all of us”.