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| Architectural stone conservator Ivan Myjer closely inspects the statues of St. Dominic, St. Joseph and St. Francis with Father David Garcia, missions' director.
Carol Baass Sowa | Today's Catholic |
By Carol Baass Sowa
Today's Catholic
SAN ANTONIO • As a brisk April wind sends clouds racing across the bright blue sky over Mission San José, Father David Garcia, director of the Old Spanish Missions, peers intently over the rail of a lift basket poised some 45 feet in the air at what the man beside him is pointing out on the mission’s intricately carved facade.
The man is Ivan Myjer, the architectural stone conservator who heads Massachusetts-based Building & Monument Conservation, specializing in traditional stone buildings, notably stone sculpture and monuments. He and Miroslav Maler, a master stone mason/sculptor and transplanted Czech from New York, have been brought in to survey what can be done to save and restore the deteriorating stone artwork that adorns the centuries-old mission church, founded by Father Antonio Margil de Jesús in 1720 and completed in 1782.
Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo, is known as “The Queen of the Missions” for its rank as the largest and most beautiful of the five San Antonio missions built along the San Antonio River. Surrounding its massive carved wooden doors, lush floral elements in stone curve behind and around statues of St. Joseph, St. Anne, St. Joachim, St. Anthony, St. Dominic, St. Francis of Assisi and Our Lady of Guadalupe, along with a profusion of angelic cherubs.
“This is one of the finest carvings that exists in all of Colonial North America,” says Myjer of San José’s ornate façade, adding he has never seen this level of three-dimensional expression and use of negative space in stone — executed in six levels, he notes in awe.
It is because the stone found in this area is so pliable, explains Maler, that the master stone carvers here, Spaniards who came up from Mexico, went “really wild” in their decorative details, surpassing even the elaborate Baroque stone carving found in Europe, where the native stone limited them. “They went here and they did carving like they would do with wood,” he says. Myjer adds the strokes are more reminiscent of a woodcarving chisel.
Even more remarkable, the delicately limned statues are not separate pieces set in place, but were carved, still attached, out of the huge stone blocks behind them that form the wall surrounding the doorway. The stone was probably quarried in what is now the Sunken Gardens and San Antonio Zoo.
Maler explains the artisans would have chiseled out rough versions of the statues at the quarry site, with large sections left attached between the statue and the stone until after it was transported by cart to the mission. Here, the supporting portions were removed and the finer details of the statues completed.
Back down to earth on the mission grounds, following his bird’s eye view of the façade, Father Garcia notes earlier repairs were done in 1948. “They were the best they could do at the time,” he says, “but so poorly done that we’ll probably have to be removing a significant amount of that work that was done in order to be able to really bring back the original.” The cracks pointed out to him during his aerial inspection worry him. “If we let them go for a few more years,” he says, “they could become dangerous and we could lose more of the façade.”
Eyeball to eyeball with the weather-worn statues, one can easily see the difference between the original carved stone and the newer cement replications, the latter being strikingly white in contrast. An original floral detail on the right displays the delicate quality found in the mission’s famous Rose Window by the sacristy, while the duplicate cement replacement on the left is so lacking in detail it might have been picked up as a mass-produced decorative plaque at Home Depot.
Viewed up close, the cement replacement cherub to the right of St. Joseph glaringly sports a large brass pin in the center of his forehead, attaching him to the wall. His delicate original wings, however, surpass the not-so-defined newer ones of the young angel to the left. And St. Joseph’s face, upon closer examination, has a decidedly modern, minimalist style when compared with the subtleties found in those of St. Dominic and St. Francis who flank him. (St. Francis’ face, by the way, is presently being held from slipping away by monofilament wire and reversible adhesive, a temporary on-the-spot repair Myjer deemed necessary on an earlier inspection of the façade.)
At this point in time, some of the replacement work itself is failing, and Myjer notes the repair materials used in the past are actually detrimental to the stone they are affixed to. Directly under the balcony, a section of stone containing what he calls “some of the most beautiful pieces of free-form carving” is separating into layers and gradually being blown away in the wind. Structural movement has also caused portions of the stone blocks and their carvings to shift noticeably.
“What we’re doing,” Myjer says, “is documenting all the conditions. We’re mapping out all the prior repairs. We’re noting what’s original, what’s later. And we are tracking every one of these repairs with cement.” After this they will come up with a strategy for replacing, repairing and stabilizing this unique stone treasure.
Restoration architect Carolyn Peterson of Ford, Powell and Carson notes she has been working with the missions since 1965. “I spent my entire professional career involved with the missions one way or the other,” she says. About five years ago she did an assessment of missions Concepción, San Juan, Espada and San José, documenting their condition and setting up a series of priorities for their restoration. The restoration of the façade was one of her top priorities for San José.
The idea behind the assessment was to have an overall, long-term view of preserving the missions, rather than doing things just on an emergency basis. “They need continuous attention,” she says, “and it’s better to work in a systematic way than wait for a disaster.”
All involved hope they will soon be able to move forward with restoration and preservation efforts, but much depends on raising the necessary funds, which the current Las Misiones Campaign is seeking to accomplish. “Five years from now, it could be a bigger problem,” Myjer notes of the deterioration.
“We cannot afford to do a partial job or something that is not going to be good quality,” adds Father Garcia of the work that must be done to preserve this “Queen of the Missions” for future generations.