THE RESTORERS

Text by Francisco Cámara Riess / Photos by José A. Granados

How long would it take you to put together a one-thousand-piece picture puzzle? A week, maybe two? Now, imagine this puzzle has been buried for 1,200 years, it has lost part of its original color, and its pieces are scattered—jumbled together with hundreds of pieces belonging to another puzzle—over a 25-square-foot, rubble-strewn area.

    Marcia Valle and Alfonso Cruz, a couple of young Mexican restorers, took seven months to overcome this challenge. The result is an impressive 3.4-meter-tall stucco relief depicting an ancient ruler from the Maya city of Palenque. Its artwork is so refined and the restoration job so exact, that the relief served as a centerpiece for an exhibit entitled Time in Spirals. New Discoveries of the Maya Culture, mounted in the Museum of the Palenque Archaeological Site from June to September 1999.

    Marcia and Alfonso spend hours studying stucco, stone and pottery pieces in a restoration studio belonging to the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (National Anthropology and History Institute) of Palenque, sponsored in part by the Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute (PARI) of San Francisco. When MUNDO MAYA visited Palenque in the summer of 1999, the largest ongoing restoration project was of precisely this relief.

    The panel, discovered by PARI staff in Temple XIX, is impressive: An enormous headdress shaped like an open beak envelopes the figure, which appears in profile, giving the impression that the ruler, identified as Ahkal Mo' Nab, is emerging from the bird's beak.

    Although the original piece measured 3.4 meters in height, only a little over 1.1 meters of it was recovered in good condition; the rest lay scattered in bits and pieces amid rubble. Marcia and Alfonso identified and gathered the shards together, separating and organizing the materials in order to reconstruct the panel. A fantastic accomplishment!

    Restoration involved using totally reversible pastes and solvents, to differentiate the original piece from later additions. Fragments were placed in a sandbox, which served as a simple device to support and protect the extremely delicate stucco. Once all the pieces were properly identified and placed, they were glued together using special adhesive and reinforcing material.

    All recovered fragments were prepared in a humidifier to acclimatize them to the workshop's environment. If this had not been done, the relief might have cracked, broken apart, peeled or faded.

    According to Alfonso, a sudden change in temperature and humidity could cause the pieces—that have been buried for thousands of years—to crumble in a matter of days.

    Marcia and Alfonso's efforts and dedication were rewarded just two days after the relief was completely restored. The two explained the details of their work during the Third Round Table Discussion of Palenque, held between June 27 and July 1, 1999, an event attended by the most renowned Maya scholars in the world. There, the artists received a standing ovation for the magnificent results of their work and in recognition of the thousands of hours spent assembling the most beautiful picture puzzle in the history of Palenque.