Church Pieta Memorial ~ statue repair

Broken Pieta statue - an old repair utililsing a wooden floor board can be clearly seen.

Broken Pieta figures

This Pieta memorial statue (thought to be acquired for the church of St. Marie around the year 1900), had been dropped and broken into several pieces. It is about 40 inches high, and about as wide. The breakage happened when it was moved to make room for a Christmas tree.

The statue had been repainted and repaired around 1970 when re-ordering of the church was under way. The results of the repaint upset parishioners; particularly the ugly paintwork on the faces. One parishioner told us " its came back with a face that would keep the children away from the fire!." (referring to the days when people had coal fires in their homes of course.)

The statue belongs to a now de-consecrated church, with the building being shared by agreement with a local business as I understood. At its closure, parishioners found they just couldn't let go of the building which had been the hub of their lives for nigh on two centuries. A place where their children had been baptised, couples joined in matrimony and also where they had said their last goodbyes to loved ones.

What's afoot?

broken foot from base of statue

The large breaks in the statue helped us to see what had passed for repairs 50 years ago, and what problems they created for us. A thick white coating over the original had filled in details which gave form to the faces. Sadly, this was irremovable. A random plank of wood had been used to support the reverse. Repairs were added without much thought for making the piece look finished. The original colours were easy to see along the broken fragments, and rather different to the bright yellows and blues of the 1970 repainting which had replaced them.

We started to re-build the pieta statue from the base up. Locating the correct position of the head, we did a dummy run as to where everything should fit, and began working to repair the figure back to original as near as possible. The statue now weighs a little more than it used to; because the figure required strengthening where the original cast was weak and the walls too thin. Specifically where an old floor board had once been inserted into the reverse of the statue. (see initial photo above.)

The parishioner who was financing the repairs, remembered that the statue originally had three stars on Mary's mantle. We added those to the final repainting.

See more images of this restoration on Instagram

The finished Pieta - Restored, Rebuilt, Repaired and Re-painted.