Tas-Salvatur: a multi-disciplinary conservation-restoration project

The Malta Centre for Restoration (MCR), in collaboration with the Cottonera Rehabilitation Committee and Kalkara council, will be organising a half-day seminar on the Salvatur project at MCR's premises in Bighi, Kalkara, on Saturday at 9 a.m.

In 2001 Dr Ray Bondin of the Cottonera Rehabilitation Project approached the MCR to carry out the conservation-restoration of Tas-Salvatur church in Kalkara.

The MCR set up the Salvatur Project Steering Committee chaired by Architect Norbert Gatt, a member of MCR's board of governors. This directed the efforts of a multi-disciplinary team composed of members from the MCR's Documentation Division, the Diagnostic Science Laboratories, the Ceramics, Glass, Metals and Stone Conservation Department and the Paintings and Polychrome Sculpture Conservation Department, co-ordinated by the MCR's Conservation and Restoration Project Management Office in collaboration with other professionals from other parastatal entities and Public service Departments.

Vocational Heritage Skill Craftsmen (MCAST in collaboration with MCR) were also involved in the conservation-restoration project of the church.

The project included an art historical, a technical and a scientific study. Students from the MCR and MCAST were also involved because of the didactic nature of the project. This experience offered them the opportunity of carrying out hands-on treatments under the guidance of their lecturers and qualified instructors.

The origins of the church of the Transfiguration of Our Saviour in Kalkara, also referred to as Tas-Salvatur, have somehow been lost. It is certain that the benefice of Tas-Salvatur predates 1436.

Various sources speak about the demolition and the reconstruction of the church. In 1670, the Bailiff, Fra Giovanni Bichi, nephew of Pope Alexander VII, decided to build a country villa on the peninsula in front of the church. On his death during the plague of 1676 Bichi was buried in the church.

In 1681 the church was demolished again and sources state that it was rebuilt from its foundations on the design of Lorenzo Gafà. The work was done at the expense of the knight Mario Bichi, who also erected a stone monument on the wall inside the church, with an epitaph underneath it, in memory of his uncle, Fra Giovanni Bichi, buried there.

Under British rule Villa Bighi and its surroundings, including the church of Tas-Salvatur, were handed over to the Royal Navy. Until the building of the new parish church, the church served as the parish church of Kalkara. After 1944 the church was left in a state of neglect. In recent times, it was being used as a store for Kalkara feast decorations. Later, a trench was dug across the breadth of the chapel and the entrance was barred with stone blocks, thus making it inaccessible.

Today Tas-Salvatur stands no longer in its original setting but it is surrounded by housing estates. In spite of this, a part of the wall originally enclosing Villa Bighi's grounds is still found joining part of the church. The church is now undergoing an intensive conservation and restoration treatment.

The MCR's Documentation Division was responsible for the creation of a computerised three-dimensional model of both the church and the "Madonna and Child" stone statue, which used to stand in the niche on the church exterior. Laser scanners were used to scan the church exterior and interior.

The Documentation Division also compiled a report which includes all the research work and interventions carried out. A copy of this as well as a CD with the laser scans can be found at the MCR's library.

Before actually starting the necessary treatments, MCR's Diagnostic Science Laboratories collaborated with the multi-disciplinary team so as to select and carry out the sampling of various areas of both the church and the statue. Structural analysis was carried out by conservation architects from MCR's Architectural Conservation Department.

The first intervention within the project focused on the cupola and was carried out by the Vocational Heritage Skill Craftsmen. This was followed by interventions on the altar and the effigy which have recently been concluded by the MCR's Paintings and Polychrome Sculpture Conservation Department.

The seminar being held on Saturday will be opened by Youth and the Arts Minister Jesmond Mugliett and will be addressed by various speakers involved in the project.

More images of the Salvatur project are available in the section on the Architectural Conservation Department within the pages dedicated to MCR's Conservation Intervention Division on www.mcr.edu.mt