BOSTON, MA (WFRV) — Some Wisconsin tourists stumbled upon some history during a recent fall colors tour in New England.
While visiting the Old North Church in Boston, they learned firsthand from painting restorer Gian Franco Pocobene about the recently revealed angel paintings that had been covered for more than two centuries.
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Congregant John Gibbs is believed to have handpainted the angels, as he did much of the artwork, between 1727 and the 1730s. His series of angels in the sanctuary’s balcony arches were covered with white paint during a renovation in 1912.
“This is a very significant church,” he explained. “Paul Revere hung the lanterns to warn everyone the British would be attacking. The other important thing is that the church was decorated in a very different way in the 1720s and 30s. What you see now has no resemblance to what it was originally.”
Gibbs would have done the work on scaffolding, but it is far less sturdy than today.
“He was up there with his oil paints and his brushes and pigments and painting away. What’s really exciting is that after two and half centuries, we’re revealing something that’s been buried this whole time.”
He calls it a great discovery that will reveal if the faces are the same or individual.
The project is to uncover 4 of the 16 angel paintings.
“Because it’s so time-consuming, we can’t do all of them. It would take years to do that. After we’ve uncovered four of them, we’re taking high-resolution images, and we’ll make replicas of them on canvas and adhere them to the spaces where they belong.”
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Local 5 News was fortunate to visit the church during a “New England Fall Foliage” tour with a couple dozen viewers from Northeast Wisconsin.
For more information on the trip, click here. For more information on Old North Church, click here.
