A spiritual renewal

Fifty-five years to the day after its first unveiling, officials of Forest Lawn Glendale will again unveil “The Crucifixion” painting on Good Friday, following a 10-month, painstaking restoration process.

The massive oil painting, which measures 195 feet long by 45 feet tall, is the work of Polish artist Jan Styka.

In the early 1900s, Styka was commissioned by Polish pianist and freedom activist Ignace Paderewski to paint the portrayal of Jesus at his crucifixion.

Styka brought the painting, which is divided into eight canvases, to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904, but was unable to display it because of its size, said Alison Bruesehoff, museum executive director for Forest Lawn.

He had to leave it behind because he couldn’t pay the duty to take it back to Poland, she said. Styka, who died in 1925, never saw the painting again.

The work was stored in several warehouses until Forest Lawn founder and art collector Hubert Eaton and his colleagues found it at the Chicago Civic Opera Company in 1943. Forest Lawn purchased it and constructed a building for it at the end of World War II. The Hall of The Crucifixion was dedicated on Good Friday in 1951 and the painting was unveiled, Bruesehoff said.

The original dedication was accompanied with live singing and instrumentation, so Forest Lawn officials wanted to recreate the program, Bruesehoff said.

Its second coming out party will include a moving musical program, with live performances by the Masters College Orchestra and Chorale of Santa Clarita, and live narration. “The live program is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she said. “You rarely get to see a live musical performance accompanied by such a magnificent painting.”

This unveiling ceremony ties in well with the 100th celebration of Forest Lawn, she said. The cemetery organization began in the city of Tropico, which later became Glendale. Forest Lawn has grown to six memorial parks.

“Last year, in honor of our upcoming centennial, we had ‘The Crucifixion’ painting conserved and restored and during our centennial year, since we are honoring the past, we decided to have a grand opening to show the conserved painting to the public for the first time,” Bruesehoff said.

The painting was starting to show cracks and loss of paint, and had accumulated dust and dirt from the environment, she said.

After accepting bids from restoration companies, Forest Lawn employed ConservArt Associates Inc. of Culver City to perform the work.

“It is the largest oil painting on canvas we have ever worked on,” ConservArt Vice President Susanne Friend said. “We cleaned it, and filled thousands of missing paint losses.”

Ten people worked on the painting’s restoration, she said, but mostly it was a core of four people.

It was Friend’s responsibility to make sure the painting’s final appearance looked as if the restoration had only been done by one person, she said.

“I love a challenge,” she said. “To me this painting represented a challenge, not so much from the conservation point of view, because what needed to be done was straightforward, but to have the final appearance be uniform as if one person and not 10 did the conservation.”

While up on the scaffolding looking down at this seemingly unending canvas, the task was daunting, she said.

“There were days I awoke and I would just have a mixed sense of excitement and horror thinking about the scale of painting and what I was going to have to do,” she said. “It was fun, but daunting.”

Accompanying the painting will be an exhibit of photographs of the construction of the Hall of the Crucifixion and famous people who have visited the exhibit over the years such as Pope John Paul II and former President Richard M. Nixon, museum exhibit designer/curator Joan Adan said.

Some of the photographs are of a restoration in the 1960s and the recent restoration, she said.

“It helps the public understand what lengths museums and other institutions go through in order to present, preserve and protect artwork that is available for the public’s viewing,” she said.

FYI

WHAT: Unveiling of “The Crucifixion” painting

WHERE: Hall of the Crucifixion ? Resurrection, Forest Lawn Glendale, 1712 S. Glendale Ave., Glendale

WHEN: 6 p.m. Good Friday, April 14