Guidelines for Conservation and Restoration of Historic Polychrome Plasterwork: the Church of St María la Blanca in Seville, Spain

ABSTRACT

Carrying out an intervention for the conservation and restoration of architectural heritage, focused on the preservation of decorative elements such as polychromed plasterwork, implies following a methodology to study the materials and techniques used in each case to establish an intervention proposal according to the circumstances. This work offers some methodological guidelines necessary to approach the conservation of plasterwork and its polychromies, applied in a recent case study according to the criteria established by the 14th General Assembly of ICOMOS in 2003, the Law 14/2007 of Andalusian Historical Heritage, the Law 16/1985 of the Spanish Historical Heritage, and indications contained in the ECCO Guidelines. The novelty of the paper is that it presents the conservation decisions on a real case from the beginning until the end — showing the entire process and validating the proposed methodology — by using current restoration techniques and digital tools for the reconstruction of plasterwork.

KEYWORDS:

• Plasterwork
• polychrome
• heritage
• anomalies
• material characterization

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the contributions and work developed by Dédalo, Bienes Culturales S.L., Artelan Restauración S.L., AGORA SL and the management team that carried out the restoration of the church of STMLB.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

All authors had full access to all the data and assume responsibility for the integrity and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Notes

1 DECRETO 186/1995, of July 25, 1995.

2 New Management Plan, Resolution of the Ministry of Public Works of the Junta de Andalucía of 19 July 2006 and published in BOJA No. 174 of 7 September 2006.

3 Law 14/2007, of 26 November, on the Historical Heritage of Andalusia.

4 Law 16/1985, of 25 June, on Spanish Historical Heritage.

5 Document promoted by the European Confederation of Conservative-Restorers Organizations and approved by its General Assembly. Brussels, 1 March 2002.

6 Whenever the protection arrangement is chosen, it will end with the removal of this protection and the elimination of the remains of the adhesive.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for the financing received from the VI PPIT-2021-I.3 from the University of Seville.