XVIII century painting was “opened” for parishioners in Uzhgorod (PHOTOS)

Uzhgorod Greek Catholic Exaltation of the Cross Cathedral is the main temple of the regional center of Transcarpathia and the seat of Mukachevo bishops.

It has been under restoration since 2011. This year (in about two months), as the restorer of the research sector of Lviv National Academy of Arts Vasyl Karpiv told a correspondent of Uzhgorod.in, they plan to complete the work. Currently, they are working on the restoration of the sacristy of the main temple (above the paintings of the sanctuary).

Vasyl Karpiv said:

 "Before restoration, we knew that there was something under the top layer of painting, but did not know what exactly it was. Then specialists of Lviv National Academy of Arts (involved in the development of the project documentation), together with the Transcarpathian art historian Mykhailo Pryimych did some research. We restorers, in turn, did tests, chemical and biological research. We removed the top layer of painting.

We found XVIII century painting there.Now our goal is to preserve the author and show the image that was painted many years ago.When we just started to remove the soot, there was very strong distortion of painting, because of that colors were far from original. Another difficult aspect of the restoration was water dripping on the image through the old roof. It caused ​​the destruction of the basis, the ink layer is painted on. In some places it even washed out the painting.We did ​​the reconstruction of lost parts. Now we are bringing the image to the exposition condition and in a few months we plan to complete the work."