Altar to Look Good as Gold : Artists Delicately Reface 350-Year-Old Retablo at Mission San Juan

Two artists, wearing surgical gloves, began the painstaking work Thursday of refacing the altar in Orange County’s oldest chapel.

They laid the tissue-thin, gold-looking bronze leaves onto sticky varnish and used a brush to press them into the many twisting grooves of the 350-year-old, hand-hewn tribute to God at Mission San Juan Capistrano. The gloves prevented oils in their hands from tarnishing the new metal.

“It’s starting to look beautiful!” said Federico Diego Ogly, the “production director” of the team. He clasped his hands in admiration as he inspected the tall, ornate altar from the pews where the congregation and tourists will view the restoration.

The altar was originally gilt with precious gold leaf but has grown tawdry from years of cleaning, weathering and botched cosmetic attempts with gold paint.

Mission Administrator Jerry Miller said a longtime parish family anonymously donated $10,000 to pay for the intricate work that will brighten the retablo --church terminology for the tall carved wall behind the tabernacle in the small sanctuary.

During the renovation, which is expected to be completed late next week, signs will be posted in the chapel explaining what is going on and the public will be invited to watch the once-in-a-century event--although viewers may have to peek through scaffolding. Students from the mission’s elementary school will also be brought to the chapel on field trips.

Miller said the mission hopes to raise enough money to reface the remainder of the altar. He said that the priceless retablo, adorned with more than 50 angel faces, is exceptional for its intricacy and antiquity in Orange County, where churches are new and usually plain.

In the central niche of the retablo stands the statue of San Juan Capistrano, the mission’s patron saint, with a red Crusader’s banner in his hand. Father Junipero Serra founded the mission.

Miller said it is the largest and most elaborate altar within California’s 22-mission system.

Made in Barcelona, Spain, the cherrywood retablo was donated by the Los Angeles Archdiocese to the Serra Chapel in 1922. At that time, the mission was being renovated by Father John O’Sullivan, following an era during which it had fallen out of church hands and sustained vandalism. The original main altar of the chapel, completed in 1778, disappeared.

The gift of the retablo , while gratefully accepted, turned into a logistic nightmare. It arrived at the mission in 396 pieces in 10 boxes with no directions on how they should be put together. “It took a couple of months to figure out where all the pieces fit,” Miller said.

After the retablo was assembled in the main courtyard, it turned out to be 18 1/2 feet wide and 22 1/2 feet high--too high for it to fit in the chapel.

O’Sullivan solved that problem by adding adobe bricks to the walls that raised the chapel’s roof at the altar-end of the nave. He also installed a narrow window that illuminated the altar.

Alberto Ozzimo, the other member of the artistic pair undertaking the altar’s restoration, said in time much of the gold chipped off, revealing the clay backing, and someone coated it with gold paint that tarnished.

Ozzimo and Ogly, who applied gold leafing on churches in France, Italy and Spain, estimated they they will use 6,000 sheets of imported bronze leaf to reface the chapel’s retablo .

They said pure gold leaf is rarely used in the United States because of cost; thus the bronze.

Miller said one contractor quoted $150,000 to reface the retablo in gold, which church officials considered exorbitant. “When the bronze leaf gets a final coating, it will have the appearance of old mellow gold,” he said.

Ozzimo said he and his partner, who operate their business in Hollywood, took the gilding job at a discounted rate for the opportunity to work on the altar, which he called “very rare, very special.”