They have had to spend ten days since the controversial restoration of the Virgen de la Esperanza Macarena in Seville, so that the brotherhood of which this image is the title that should have been the first step in the protocol of acting to address an intervention of the dimension, both artistic and devotional, of the size that is icon of the Holy Week of Seville: put it in the hands of the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage (Iaph).
This institution has not yet been used dependent on the Ministry of Culture of the Junta de Andalucía, which is a national and international reference in the generation of innovative knowledge in heritage and has a very accredited prestige in the realization of reports and diagnoses in the field of protection and intervention of cultural goods. This is what they will do with the Virgin of the Macarena during the next 24 hours: the logical diagnostic tests “and the technical scientific analysis that allow to deepen the current state of conservation of the Virgin,” explains the brotherhood in a statement, after the concatenation of errors made in what, all experts coincide, was a hurried and erroneous intervention in charge of the restorer Francisco Arquillo and Grant up to two subsequent occasions, causing the protest of faithful and fans of Sevillian size.
In this way, the Virgin of the Macarena has left her basilica again, where she remained exposed to the cult, in the early hours of this Wednesday, July 2, with total discretion and taking advantage of the impassive night hours in the streets of the city, to be transferred to the headquarters of the IAPH on the island of the Cartuja. There has been deposited to be subjected to various tests on Wednesday in order to determine what its status is before submitting it to a subsequent restoration “in depth”. The Governing Board of the Brotherhood of the Macarena thus intends to “accelerate the obtaining of the results of said tests to celebrate the extraordinary council at the earliest possible date according to the calls of calls established in the rules of the Brotherhood,” adds the statement. The date initially scheduled is that of Tuesday, July 29.
After the opacity with which the restoration of Arquillo on June 21 was described and criticized, held in just five days at the request of the Brotherhood, the Governing Board of this institution intends to carry out a transparency exercise with the celebration of this extraordinary council. In this meeting they will offer “all the information and conclusions from the technical scientific rigor”, to raise the brothers “the intervention proposal advised by the experts based on these results, and offer them all the appropriate and necessary explanations to inform and clarify the events that occurred around the actions on the image of Mary Most Holy of hope,” the statement concludes.
Among the most prominent works of the IAPH with images of the Holy Week in Seville, the intervention in 2010 of the Virgen de la Estrella, another emblem of the city that leaves in procession every Sunday of Palm from the Triana neighborhood. The studies, from the most absolute scientific rigor, even allowed the hypothesis of their authorship by Luisa Roldán.
In this context, last May the exhibition was closed at the headquarters of the institution The revealed imagewhich for three months has visible for the general public the processes and work protocols of the IAPH, with the exposure for the first time of more than 40 radiographs made to many other images previously devotional to its restoration. These X -ray images, some real size, are fundamental in that diagnostic work prior to the intervention and provide information as relevant as hidden or added elements or on the construction process by the sculptor. It will undoubtedly be one of the techniques that are projected on the Virgen de la Macarena, as already carried out on others very relevant to the Andalusian Baroque, such as the Christ of Forgiveness, of Juan de Mesa; that of the Expiration, by Marcos Cabrera; that of Providence, from Montes de Oca, or that of health and good trip, anonymous size of the seventeenth.