Renovators recently washing an arch high up on the ceiling of St. Mary’s Basilica in Minneapolis were left stunned when a sheen of gold suddenly began to gleam from beneath a paint layer.
Below the dull, tannish mauve, gold stencil work—hidden perhaps since the previous cleaning in the 1950s—was found to cover the arch and nearby panels, delighting everyone involved in the process, and continuing a famous trend of religious buildings holding hidden secrets.
The oldest basilica in the US, St. Mary’s was finished in 1914. The beautiful cathedral is undergoing its second renovation since then—a $50 million project that has a hard deadline of Easter Sunday next year.
Getting a move on, workers had to erect 15 floors of scaffolding to reach the beautiful ceiling of the nave. In the section just before the altar, while washing a broad arch, workers discovered that the whole archway had been decorated with gold stenciling yet covered up for unknown reasons.
Speaking in an exclusive for the CBS affiliate WCCO, project leader Johan van Parys, the basilica’s managing director of ministries and the director of liturgy and sacred art, said that there was no record of the artwork.
“We don’t know why the stenciling that was originally here was covered over with flat paint. So whether it was an aesthetic choice or financial reason, all the stencil was covered up,” he said. “When we came to this arch we had no idea we’d discover this.”
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Medallion panels set in the corners of the ornate ceiling design array contained another secrets, ultramarine blue fields with gold fleur-de-lis designs.
“It was a supremely emotional moment because that which had been hidden for 75 years now could be revealed again,” van Parys said. “The people from 1914 who came here for the first Mass, this is what they saw—and that is what we will see again.”
WATCH the story below from WCCO
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