The restoration of the gilded and polychrome wooden statue of the Immaculate Conception, kept in the church of San Bartolomeo a Lingua, on the island of Salina, revealed that the sculpture is not nineteenth-century, as previously believed, but dates back to the late 16th or early 17th century. The conservative intervention, carried out by the restorer Franco Fazzio, brought to light a work of extraordinary artistic quality, hidden under at least four layers of repainting and plaster applied over the centuries. A discovery destined to rewrite the history of one of the most representative works of the Aeolian artistic heritage.
Burnished gold and the estofado technique
The transformations had profoundly altered the original appearance of the statue, leading to an incorrect chronological attribution. The removal of the overlaps has restored the refined decoration of the robe, embellished with burnished gold and azurite motifs, created with theestofadodeveloped in Spain and subsequently spread to Sicily.
The new dating gives the statue a significant historical and cultural value, placing it among the oldest depictions of the Immaculate present in the Aeolian archipelago, in an era in which the Marian cult was still in the early stages of its iconographic diffusion.