Sonya Tatiana J. Fraj and Christina Varvi
Founded by the Franciscan order in 1771, Mission San Gabriel Arcángel was the fourth of what would become 21 Spanish missions in California. Built by enslaved Tongva native peoples, the mission was one of the finest along the coast and referred to as the “Godmother of the Pueblo of Los Angeles.” Among the Mission’s most important decorative features was its painted wooden reredos, a decorative altarpiece that occupies the back wall of the sanctuary. Added in the early 19th century, the gilded and marbled reredos also contains six ¾ life size sculptures situated on two registers of niches: Saints Gabriel, Francis, and Anthony (top); and Saints Joachim and Dominic, and the Holy Virgin Mary (bottom). As is common for California Missions, the reredos was restored and partially repainted several times in the past. A major restoration campaign was undertaken in the early 1990s, resulting in significant alteration of the original color scheme.
In July 2020, a fire set by an arsonist nearly destroyed the sanctuary. RLA Conservation was brought in to salvage and conserve the reredos and all decorative artworks in the building, including soot-covered objects in an adjacent museum. Damage was extreme both because of the soot and the vast amounts of water used to put out the fire. Though it was not charred beyond repair; the extreme heat of the fire coated all portions of the upper reredos and its sculptures with thick oily by-products of scorching that required the use of solvent gels to properly remove without impacting the underlying layers.
As conservators removed the soot, we found that past interventions, done in acrylic paint, had completely burned. Below these layers, we found original colors that were significantly different than those added in the 1990s. We learned, through our work, that the reredos is a collage of different parts that had been assembled together for this building. The cleaning process also revealed information about the sculptures that allowed us to identify which ones had been made for the reredos and which were adapted for this church.
This presentation will demonstrate how a devastating fire that nearly destroyed a sacred building presented the Mission with an opportunity to remove layers of inconsistent historical additions to its most important decorative artifact, and to piece together the history of its fabrication.