Following the 14-month-long conservation and restoration work, the ancient wall paintings and oil paintings of St. Aloysius Chapel will be thrown open to public viewing on Saturday. The renovated Aloyseum — the old museum of St. Aloysius College — will also be opened the same day.
The wall paintings and oil paintings of the chapel were done by Italian Jesuit and painter Antonio Moscheni in 1899. The rare Fresco wall paintings — where art is set with cement paster — is of 600 square meters. The oil paintings are on the roof, 46-ft high, in the chapel and also on the side walls.
These paintings were first restored by Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) Conservation Institute between 1991 and 1994. The second restoration work was taken up by INTACH Conservation Institute team headed by Principal Director Nilabh Sinha in November 2017. It completed the work on December 18, 2018.
Talking to reporters here on Thursday, Dionysius Vaz, Rector, St. Aloysius Institutions, said that the paintings in the chapel were carefully studied and restored in the original form. The team of experts also plugged the seepage of water from the roof that had partly damaged some paintings. As many as 12 persons, including two from Mangaluru, were involved in the restoration work. The restoration work was completed at a cost of ₹ 1.5 crore. Mr. Sinha and that Silvana Rizzi, the great grand niece of Antonio Moscheni, will attend the event on Saturday, he said.
Museum
The renovated museum has come up on the ground floor of Mangalore Jesuit Educational Society’s building, which is opposite the chapel.
Among the collections displayed in the eight large show cases include neolithic stone axe, pieces of Berlin wall and a piece of rock from the Arctic. Among the other articles displayed in the museum include De Dion Bouton car of P.F.V. Saldanha, a pioneer in coffee curing. This car was the first to run on the city’s roads in 1906.
A wooden statue of Lady of Rosary from Ullal Church, which was supposedly brought from Portugal, the old granite post of the college to which horses were tied, a rare big prayer book, palm leaf manuscripts, old radios, gramophones, rare currencies and stamps are also on display.
Fr. Vaz said that it was proposed to have a portable audio visual guide for artefacts. They intend to make the museum user-friendly and turn it into a place for presentation of local culture and heritage.