Reporting of Federici Studies Center
Frescoes relating to the First Crusade have been restored in a 19th-century hospital in Jerusalem's Old City. Memories of the Crusaders in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, including the tombs of the Latin Kings, they were instead destroyed by Greek schismatics, during the restorations that followed the devastating fire of 1808
Restoration of the Crusader frescoes at the St. Louis
JERUSALEM – Just outside the ramparts of the Old City of Jerusalem, at the hospital in St. Louis, the restoration of frescoes has been partially completed, depicting knights, coats of arms and names of the leaders of the First Crusade such as Tancredi d'Altavilla and Goffredo di Buglione, they open a window on the history of the Crusaders in Jerusalem.
The hospital of St. Louis, built by the French count Marie Paul Amédée de Piellat between 1879 and the 1896 and entitled to King Louis IX of France, it was built in the place where Tancred's army held the Holy City under siege during the First Crusade.
It was Count Piellat himself, artist around you, to paint the entire wall frescoes of the hospital unit for terminally ill patients. The high wall 5 meters depicts crusader knights in armor and coats of arms of the families of French knights, their names and genealogy.
«The frescoes recall the spirituality of that period of French history in this country and testify to the families whose descendants still find their roots on this wall today», said Mrs. Marie-Josèphe Tournon, French restorer who carried out the renovation.
In December 2017, it was the Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher of France who contacted Mrs Tournon, known for having worked on many restoration projects in France and the Holy Land, to begin the process of repairing the frescoes of this unit. In a week, Ms. Tournon renewed the coats of arms and crusader names along two-fifths of the wall. «To repaint I used the most recent process, more reliable and reversible, which is called aquazol, a product that restoration teams use for churches in Paris", Ms. Tournon emphasized.
A section of the wall, difficult to repair, it was a landscape of Jerusalem. «The view of Jerusalem was complicated», said Mrs. Tournon, «because it required the removal of the later overpaintings applied to the original painting and the reconstruction, through coverage with aquazol, of the background of the scene based on old documents with acrylic paints on a dry coating».
The restoration work has yet to be completed and safe scaffolding is now required to work across the entire height of the building 5 meters.
In May 2014, following the explosion of a water pipe in one of the warehouses adjacent to the hospital church, the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition, who run the hospital, they discovered the wall frescoes hidden under the plaster and paint. Afterwards, The Israeli government's office for the Conservation of Antiquities was summoned and helped the sisters clean and stabilize the frescoes.
