As 2024 draws to a close, so does one of Canning Liturgical Arts’ prized historical projects. Housed in Catholic University of America’s campus, the Priory of the Immaculate Conception in the Dominican House of Studies is a gem of Washington DC. The whole building is in a Gothic style, but the interior has undergone a series of renovations and edits in its 110-year lifetime. Canning was invited to assess the historic conditions of both the main mural in the sanctuary and the series of seventeen murals depicting the life of St. Dominic and our task was a familiar one: analyze the conditions of every mural and, if possible, reveal the historic paint scheme of the room. But we did not expect the wealth of historical information within the paint and pages of records, illuminating the greater philosophy and community behind the Priory that would inspire conservation of the artwork and further embellishments to it.
Background:
When approaching a conservation project, an understanding of both the physical conditions and the philosophical impetus behind the building is crucial. Without an understanding of both, a faithful conservation, restoration, or even report of findings cannot be achieved. With this principle in mind, the Canning team began analyzing historical reports on the building conditions from 1954 and a proposal for conservation in 1996, piecing together the building’s timeline. Groundbreaking of the Chapel began in 1903 and by 1907 it was fully complete, save for a few furniture pieces that were added later, such as the canvas murals in 1910 and the choir screen in 1948. A 1954 thesis on the building elaborates that, from the start, the desire of everyone helping with the project was that “the new world may profit by the experience of the old” and that the Chapel would reflect the Dominican Order’s values and history dating back to the 13th century. In the thesis, the chapel was described as an “expression of Dominican life in art,” and these sentiments have persisted as Fr. Gregory Schnakenberg, OP affirms:
“It would be hard to overstate the role the chapel plays in the life and prayers of the friars at the Dominican House of Studies. As a house of formation for men training for the priesthood, the chapel serves as the primary place where our friars learn to pray and encounter the Lord in the Eucharist and the liturgy of the hours. The artwork, which celebrates the life of St. Dominic and Dominican saints, provides inspiration for those becoming Dominican priests and also reminds us of the many graces God has given the Order. Above all, however, the high altar draws our focus to Christ and his sacrifice, with the scenes of the Rosary and Our Lady helping us to meditate upon the mysteries of Christ.”
The Dominican community is contemplative, necessitating a chapel that encourages quiet prayer and deep reflection. So, despite its location on a busy street in the nation’s capital and with the reverent atmosphere and intricate decoration, the Chapel truly feels like crossing a threshold in time into a medieval European monastery. According to Fr. Schnakenberg, “Most of the artwork was completed in Belgium before being installed in our Chapel. For this reason, the Chapel definitely has an “old world” feel to it. And, of course, the Dominican Order itself is over 800 years old, not to mention the liturgical prayers and chants that we sing in the Chapel that have still older origins.” With a space so precious to the old and the young, the Canning team was excited to share in the restoration effort.
The original construction featured warm tones and a careful attention to detail as one report states that: “Great care and solicitude went into the erection of this Priory. It resembles in structure the greater monasteries of Europe which were built on a quadrangular plan encompassed by a cloister. The ground floor is devoted to the centers of community life – chapel, refectory, library. The simple, yet stately design conforms to the spirit of the Order.” The interior consists of a narrow nave and tall hammer-beam ceiling, inspired by the chapter room-turned-dining hall of Cambridge University, that invites you through a choir screen, between solid oak stalls, and into a sanctuary three steps above the nave, per the Roman Catholic tradition. The chapel balances enclosed and open spaces well, as a visitor feels quite secure in the wooden nave seats under the dark ceiling but can easily gaze into a wide and glittering sanctuary, complete with an intricate carved wooden reredos that nearly reaches the ceiling. Seventeen delicate canvas murals around the nave, inspired by Fra Angelico and cement pasted below the stained-glass windows, all depict the life of the founder of the Dominican Order, St. Dominic, from before birth to his death. The style of these murals and the Latin inscriptions in medieval uncial script below contribute to the medieval atmosphere of the space and provide more objects of devout contemplation.
Historic photos of the sanctuary and two of the seventeen St. Dominic murals.
The largest artwork and the focus of Canning’s work was the sanctuary wall mural depicting Mary, the mother of God, giving St. Dominic the Rosary surrounded by notable men and women from the Dominican Order. This expansive piece is on multiple pieces of canvas and involves a tripartite design: the first, uppermost register showing Mary, St. Dominic, and the host of figures; and, separated by a gilded inscription, the second register which features an elaborate pattern surrounding portraits of saints in quatrefoils, bordered on the bottom by a third register with a wide decorative pattern.
Unfortunately, the interior walls had been painted multiple times between the 1950’s and 1960’s, covering the russet walls in white, while the lower two registers of the sanctuary had their elaborate patterns removed in favor of a solid russet color. The likely desire was to brighten the room and simplify it, but the result was a heavy contrast between the much darker wood and dirty-looking white walls, hardly honoring the old-world origins of the space and the beautiful tradition that built it.
Canning’s Work:
Working with such a historic space and dedicated stewards, Canning’s team was excited to take on the project. The mural assessment and limited historic paint analysis took place in 2023 where, in the lower registers of the sanctuary, we discovered decades of soot, varnish, then even more soot hiding the original colors and decoration beneath: a solid wall of russet red with a diaper pattern of flowers and cross motifs overlaid. This pattern served as a background for the individual paintings of saints enclosed in quatrefoils and was also found in the panels below the seventeen murals of St. Dominic.
Company principal, David Riccio, conducting a paint reveal and the final result showing the historic patterns.
We found that the seventeen paintings of the life of St. Dominic and the supporting panels below them were not original to the space; rather, they were created and applied into the lower portion of each window reveal, since additions were made to the building that blocked the windows in 1910. These murals posed a conservation challenge: in the 1950’s, the murals were varnished heavily with polyurethane that had cross linked in many areas, chemically bonding to the art, and would not be easily removed. But, through a laborious process spanning months of softening the varnish with solvents and using surgical scalpels to mechanically remove the varnish, each mural was properly conserved, cleaned, in-painted and varnished. Such efforts will keep the murals protected until the next round of conservation and cleaning, hopefully no sooner than 100 years.
A cleaned section of one of the St. Dominic murals, revealing how much old varnish and grime was covering the original colors.
The towering Gothic reredos made of hand-carved oak had a significant buildup dark brown finishes and grime which made the delicate figures and details near impossible to make out, as well as many areas of damage. Once the wood was stripped, these were repaired and the whole piece was waxed and stained. The gold leaf garments on each figure were retouched and the exposed areas of skin were returned to their originally painted flesh tones. The combination of shellac and wax is a traditional method to make the wood’s grain, highlights, and recesses pop, rather than reducing the beautiful character to a dark and monolithic tower of oak.
As for the sanctuary mural, the untouched uppermost register was cleaned and conserved while the lower registers’ original design was confirmed. The Dominican community agreed upon a few edits to the whole piece. First, to avoid an overly feminine color palette, we went with a green background on the lower register to extend the mural down in a cohesive way. Second, noticing that the truss above the large mural showed the plaster wall behind, we extended the mural’s star pattern through the truss openings to avoid an abrupt stop in the artwork. Finally, an arcade was added to recreate the third register, reinforcing the reredos panels and extending the reredos architecture throughout the wall. Utilizing and adapting those motifs, we then adapted the grid pattern of the quatrefoils and square combination above and incorporated it into the third register. The whole piece was then in-painted, varnished with a UV stable conservation varnish that protects but also saturates the colors, returning them to their original vibrancy.
The completed sanctuary wall and restored reredos.
By understanding the purpose of the space, the original design, and the philosophical impetus behind the artwork we can build upon the precepts of modern design in our own post-modern era. Company principal David Riccio described the project as an “opportunity to look on the history of the decoration and maintain the principles from the period but embellish it further,” in the same spirit that “the new world may profit by the experience of the old.” Nonetheless, by ensuring every action taken was reversible, we can simultaneously appreciate the past and look to a promising future where the Priory of the Immaculate Conception still captures timeless faith in its beauty. Despite more restorative work remaining, many visitors feel as though “they are now seeing the true beauty of the Chapel for the first time.”
