Meticulous restoration in Boston’s oldest church removed seven layers of white paint and brought back 20 colonial angels painted in the 18th century, revealing preserved details in the arches of a temple linked to Paul Revere and the beginning of the American Revolution.
A restoration carried out on the internal arches of the Old North Church, the oldest preserved religious building in Boston, revealed 20 colonial angels that remained hidden under successive layers of white paint for over a century.
Painted by John Gibbs around 1730, the figures reappeared during meticulous work conducted on scaffolding, a few meters above the galleries of the temple associated with Paul Revere and the events leading up to the American Revolution.
Seven layers of paint covered the colonial angels
According to the Associated Press, conservators Gianfranco Pocobene and Corrine Long needed to remove seven layers of paint without affecting the original surface, combining preliminary tests, controlled application of solvent gel, and high-precision manual movements.
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After the product softened the accumulated coatings, plastic scrapers and cotton swabs were used to remove each section, allowing faces, wings, colors, and different positions to gradually reappear in the arches of the galleries.
Although they form a continuous decorative sequence, the angels have their own characteristics, without the rigid repetition of a single model, as expressions, inclinations, gestures, and distinct details create visual movement around the church’s interior.
Covered during a renovation carried out in 1912, the paintings disappeared behind a more austere and predominantly white appearance, which altered the colorful environment known by the first attendees and kept the colonial decoration out of public view for several generations.
Historical records indicated the existence of the paintings
The existence of the images, however, had not been completely erased from historical records, as documents preserved by the church included a contract related to the work of John Gibbs, an artist linked to the congregation and responsible for the ornamentation of the arches.
Only after an analysis of the layers of paint, completed in 2017, did researchers confirm that the angels remained under the white covering, although the actual state of the works remained unknown until the start of direct removal.
Before advancing over larger areas, the team tested how long the gel could remain in contact with each surface and which instruments would remove the later paint without stripping the original material produced in the 18th century.
Once exposed, the paintings received gentle cleaning and an insulating layer of varnish, a resource that separated the historical sections from the touch-ups applied to areas with losses, cracks, blisters, wear, or adhesion problems on the plaster.
Conservation required different care in each area
As not all areas presented the same state of conservation, the restorers needed to first stabilize the weakened points, preventing the removal of the white layers from causing new detachments or enlarging existing damage on the surface.
In other regions, details and colors remained sufficiently preserved to reveal the skill employed in the decoration, especially in the faces, wings, and ornamental elements that accompany the figures along the galleries of the church.
Besides the angels, the composition includes decorative garlands positioned between the figures, some painted on wooden boards incorporated into the frame, while the main characters appear directly on the plaster of the temple’s internal arches.
This combination increased the complexity of the work, because wood, plaster, paint, and varnish react differently to solvent, moisture, and tool contact, requiring constant adjustments during each stage of the local intervention.
Recovered colors changed the interior of the Old North Church
By restoring sandy and bluish-green tones to the arches, the restoration profoundly altered the visual reading of the Old North Church as a whole, whose interior had been dominated for decades by predominantly white walls and architectural elements.
The recovery brought the space closer to its original colonial ornamentation, allowing visitors to observe an appearance closer to that known by the first attendees, before the early 20th-century renovation completely hid the figures.
Built to serve the Anglican community of Boston, the church held its first service in 1723 and went through religious, urban, and political changes while continuing to function as a place of worship and a historical reference for the city.
Despite preserving closed pews, galleries, organ, and tower linked to different phases of the building, it was an action that occurred in the belfry in 1775 that transformed the temple into a national symbol of the United States and an international historical reference.
Lanterns connected the church to the story of Paul Revere
On the night British troops left Boston for Concord, two lanterns were displayed in the tower as a coded signal that the soldiers would cross the Charles River, alerting the organized colonial network in the region.
Paul Revere, who had worked as the church’s bell ringer in his teens, participated in the warning system that mobilized messengers before the confrontations at Lexington and Concord, considered the first battles of the United States’ War of Independence.
The association with Revere transformed the Old North Church into one of the most well-known stops on the Freedom Trail, a historical route in Boston that includes sites related to the country’s political formation, independence, and public memory.
For a long time, the narrative of the lanterns captured much of the public’s attention, while the artistic and social aspects of the building remained less visible, a scenario that began to change with the recovery of the hidden paintings in the arches.
The 1912 renovation erased the colonial decoration
John Gibbs produced the figures when the church was still in its early years of operation, distributing the angels as part of the architecture itself, in dialogue with the rhythm of the galleries and other ornamental elements.
When they were painted white at the beginning of the 20th century, the images were not physically removed, a circumstance that allowed their survival under the new covering, although it also erased their presence from the temple’s daily life for 113 years.
The choice to hide the decoration reflected an attempt to align the interior with a simpler religious aesthetic, linked to the region’s Puritan churches, and different from the Anglican tradition of the congregation that built the building.
Initially, the project planned to expose only part of the set, as removing all accumulated layers required time, precision, and cost control, but tests showed that the team could proceed without exceeding the planned budget.
All 20 angels returned to the church’s arches
During the intervention, scaffolding occupied different sections of the church and was temporarily removed to allow services and activities, while the last stage reached the figures near the organ, where cracks and losses required slower treatment.
Even in the most compromised areas, central parts, such as faces and expressions, remained recognizable, allowing all 20 angels to be presented again in the arches surrounding the internal galleries of the historic sanctuary before visitors.
How many other historical paintings might still be preserved under layers of paint in churches, palaces, and old buildings, waiting for a careful restoration to reveal forgotten details without destroying the original materials that have survived for centuries?
