Thematic file

Post-Restoration, in Heaven and on Earth

text: Irina POPESCU-CRIVEANU

"The last Vulcan will complete its post-restoration flights at the end of 2013", I find out after my friend Kazi asks me (this summer) to write something on this topic and, like any man, I start (winter) wondering what he meant by that.
I take here the whole text of the news from five years ago, the only answer to the query - on the Internet - of the term "post-restoration" - news taken from a site that, of course, I had no idea about until now, but whose name I like: Resboiu. Romanian Military Portal.
Here goes:
"Vulcan XH558 operated by Vulcan to the Sky [has] made more than 60 appearances at events, including appearing at the Queen's Jubilee, and is estimated to have been seen in flight by more than ten million people since 2007. At the end of next season the post-refurbishment life of XH558 (s.n.) will sadly come to an end, at which point Dr. Robert Pleming, CEO of the owner company, said:
"We are sure you are aware that all Vulcans have a finite safe flying life and that XH558 is already well beyond the hours flown by any other aircraft of her type."
Pleming detailed some of the pitfalls: wing modifications - £200,000, plus the need for replacement engines that are somewhat less used - but which are difficult to find and restore, rebuilding a wheel... which would cost about £70,000 if the design engineers could be found:

"It is therefore with great sadness that we have told XH558's supporters that we are planning for next year to be the last opportunity anyone will have, anywhere in the world, to see a Vulcan in the air."

"I'd like to thank everyone who by the end of 2013 will have contributed to achieving six fantastic years of Vulcan displays since the restoration; it's a remarkable achievement that many people said would be impossible. With the passionate and generous support of the British people, we returned an all-British icon to the sky and brought the excitement of engineering and aviation to new generations" - ^Pleming1 added.

The above story summarizes, in a nutshell, all the terms of the problem posed by Kazi: public recognition of the value, the financial effort, the long-term futility or, rather, the impossibility of greatly extending the life of the restored thing in use. For a while, anything is possible - with a few minimal interventions, new generations "benefit" from it. What happens then? The cycle is closed. No more is possible. The investment would be too great, so great as to make any attempt futile, and even if, by some miracle, such sums could be found, there would be no one to do the work. Technique and art have long since been lost. What are we left with? Regret, announced in text - the obituary is also an ephemeral restoration.

How long can the life of a thing be prolonged and how does it behave in the period of survival?

If we think of the sofa in the house, how long can we find materials and upholstery. Until we can afford the repairs. Our couch, for example, has aged. Still, the cushions are plush, the springs are solid, it looks civilized. We keep it like this until we find good materials and a restorer who will take care of it, although its artistic (or historical) value does not justify such an effort. It already costs more to repair it than to buy a new one. Sure, we have tried, but there are no more zegras (Seegras) and no more fluff to buy (and with the câlats the business is becoming unbearable). There don't seem to be any good upholsterers either. It's more difficult today than it was ten years ago, when Mr. Voichin rebuilt it. Mr. Ghica used to take care of all our things, but he died. I can't remember the first upholsterer, Mr. Beck, but my father says he's buried in the cemetery on Giurgiului. Mr. Voichin died too. I'll wait. Only the sofa comes from Mira, and my mother sat on it, and - after all - a world of feelings (living memory) fits in it, so I'm stubborn and I'll rebuild it and, for a while, I'll feel proud to have preserved the shell of something that bears so much, known to us and to a few close to us. I almost forgot, during the Revolution Sandu himself slept on it for a few days (or weeks?), and the memory of the other life, in which he was our friend, is - somehow - also linked to this sofa. If I throw it away, I will be left, I think, with only his after-image and I would be sorry (already historical memory?). But I suspect that Ionica will judge the matter differently: he never knew my mother, he didn't know Sandu and, apart from the fact that he contributed greatly to her degradation, he doesn't have much to do with this sofa. Although I'll tell him one thing or another, he'll probably throw it away quickly. All I hope is to see him renovate it with a sofa that is still in good condition and that, in time, will also become a sort of historical monument, with the (shall I say identity?) part that brings it pretty close to the notion of monument.
Next to it, some armchairs. Older, better. In their case there is (still) no question of replacing them, is there not, it's just that their value (for history, for art and for the history of art) is greater than in the case of the sofa. The balance of investment is, as yet, assured; lucky us. Then, the armchairs are smaller - they can be kept more easily as a keepsake - so, for them, I have the hope of another generation in the family.
To these simple terms, of airplanes and sofas, the problem of houses and cities can be reduced.

In the "Ceauș David" slum in Bucharest there was a first church, probably made of wood, built around 1700 by Ceauș David Corbea, a Sp Spaniard, who later joined the staff of Constantin Brâncoveanu and disappeared on the mission where Tsar Peter the Great had sent him. Great diplomat, not to say spy. From the church of David the Ceausescu's first pomelnice are preserved, and thus we can find out to whom the Ceausescu was grateful and who came assiduously to church. The function was necessary in this northern corner of the city, and then, pious foundations are necessary in any case and to anyone, so that half a century after the first church was mentioned, the logophast Mihail Băbeanu built - in the slum that kept the name of the first founder - another church, the Church of the Icoanei. Then he became a monk and built a second church, Hagiului.
What happened to the first, after the death of the Ceausescu and the probable flight of his family to Russia, is unknown. Perhaps it was sold, like other wooden churches, and sits quietly in an unknown corner of the village, perhaps it was dismantled and the wood was used for other purposes, or perhaps - neglected - it was worn out.

caption><img src= In the meantime, the church of Babean had sprung up in the neighborhood, shortly before 1740; it was also made of wood. It may or may not have had the same shell as the first one, but it no longer belonged to the Caesar except in place and in name, bearing in it the faith of the new family of founders. It did not live long either, a few decades, until the founder's grandson rebuilt it out of the wall, between 1784 and 1786, on the same site. The second church of the Băbenilors carries the first one in its arms, the two churches become one, the act of restoration - rectitoririi - being also a memorial act. The new church is a monument to the Lord, an act of saving the soul of its faithful founder and, at the same time, a monument to the first Banban and his first church.
The new church is also restored, as the Baob family did not leave it for two centuries and prefaced it for as long as they were allowed. Without the direct involvement of the founders, it has lost some of its substance, but it preserves their memory and the tradition of its descent from the lineage of David the Caesar, even if the fact is not certain. Its uninterrupted use since 1740 makes the Church of the Iconica still a place of continuity; the church's prefacing adds layers of value that endure, even blurring the former.
With the masonry damaged and the spires collapsed after the earthquake of 1838, it was minimally reinforced in the following years. In 1866, in the expenditure budget necessary for the rebuilding of the church, sums were recorded for "... the construction of two towers which are demolished to form the shape of the church in the likeness of the ark of the church", which - however - was not realized, the church being transformed in 1872 by Alexandru Orăscu, who introduced a single spire in place of the two, demolished, over the porch. In 1889, after extensive work, the church was finally "restored and repainted again", "being put on the rank of the first churches in the capital". Later, the short spire above the pronaos was demolished (probably in 1927), the vault covering the space being rebuilt in straw thatch at a lower level than the ^original2.
At the end of the 1930s, the Historical Monuments Commission came into the picture; with it came the problem of restoring the 18th-century painting, which had not been completed until the 1940 earthquake, when the church "suffered very serious damage". The restoration was followed by lengthy discussions - with Horia Teodoru in the leading role - in which the issue of dismantling the Pantocrator's spire (for structural reasons) and the scientific restoration of the church, with the restoration of the vaults of the pronaos, etc., were raised. In 1942, the contractor carried out the work without the supervision of the Commission's delegates, departing from its position on certain points, the most important point being his refusal to dismantle the large spire.
The parish, rebuked by the Commission, assumes the continuation of the works. Horia Teodoru sets the major restoration options in perspective; finally, in August 1948, the Parish announces its intention to initiate the restoration of the church: 'This time, the church finds itself in the happy prospect that a great benefactor will restore at his own expense - almost entirely - the church painting'; it never got around to it. New memoirs of the Commission follow one after the other, ending with a report by the same Horia Teodoru in October 1948, that is, almost 70 years ago, when the Historical Monuments Commission was losing its status as a decision-making body in the field of the evidence and protection of historical ^monuments3. The story of the following years is well known, and the fate of the (anonymous) benefactor is easy to guess.
The restoration of the 18th-century painting was initiated more than half a century later, in 2010, but without any restoration work on the masonry elements. The restoration of the Icona Church according to the program established by Horia Teodoru in the 1940s is still waiting for better times because, in the meantime, in our homeland, restoration has also fallen into oblivion. Because it is onerous, because there are no longer the craftsmen of yesteryear, because there is no one who wants to restore it properly.

caption><img src= We remain in the same courtyard of the Church of the Icona, where - next to the church - there have been, since 1740, chapels for "poor women, more chosen or nuns", built by Mihail Băbeanu and chapels for the "sick and sickly who would seek the help of the Holy Icon", built by his nephew, Panait. The poor women's hospice for poor women - especially priestesses and nuns - lasted until the beginning of the 20th century; their life was similar to monastic life. Hospital functions had a parallel existence during the same period, and today they are lost. Social housing has persisted to the present day, with some of the church buildings accommodating needy people, and a nursing home operates in a building constructed on land sold by the church; the land is part of the former church cemetery. The tradition of the school next to the church, attested here in 1783, is continued by the school built by Ion ^Mincu on the land across the road4.
The monastic life near the Church of Icoanei was strengthened with the construction, in 1834, by the dormitory keeper Mihalache Darvari, of a new church on a piece of land ceded by Băbeni, part of the same old cemetery. The settlement of the Darvari family, related to Băbenii, functioned as a hermitage of nuns between 1835 and 1864, when - after the ban on monasteries in the city - the nuns were moved to Pasărea, then as a hermitage of the monks of the Romanian Prodromul hermitage on Mount Athos, between 1869 and 1959, when it was again abolished, and the church became a branch of the Icoanei parish; the hermitage was reopened in 1996. The church, known as "Cimitirul Icoana", was rebuilt in 1933-1934 by the architect Gheorghe Simotta.
In 1902, following the collapse of the wall of the hermitage on the Peace Street (today the Darvari Hermitage), the town hall issued the "authorization" for the enclosure "with wooden latticework, painted with oil paint, and with the bulumacii and the pews inside". The "Cimitirul Icoana" Epitropy declares, however, that it will build "all" brick walls, "in order to preserve the hermitage aspect of the mithrach"^5.
In the same courtyard of the church built houses the archpriest Neophytus Hierapoleos, "from the Cambanis niam after the island of Andros" and probably came here from the monastery of St. Sava, in connection with the epitropy of St. Sepulchre in the Romanian country. The abbess of the hermitage founded by the Darvari family was ordained to live in his "big" houses, which he left to the church after his death (in 1847). After 1864, however, when the hermitage was abandoned by the nuns, the houses were occupied by tenants of the church; by the end of the century, her personality was already confused with that of Metropolitan Neophytus II Geanoglu and his testamentary dispositions were forgotten. The archbishop's tomb is in the courtyard and can still be read. It has not been cared for, a sign that it has lost its purpose, and the building has been converted into a parish house, also renovated in places.
Another historical layer overlaps the church. The grave of General Ioan Odobescu (18793-1857), who was portrayed in the history of the communist period as the man who stifled the 1848 Revolution, is in front of the church. The revolutionary Marin Serghiescu and Nicolae Balcescu's parents, among others, are buried next to it in the cemetery.

The General's tomb was restored in 1939, with the approval of the Historical Monuments Commission, by the contractor Zaharia Giovanni from Bucharest, "according to a cost estimate drawn up by Mr. Architect Balș and under his supervision, at the expense of the General's heir, Mr. C. Odobescu, lawyer in Bucharest"^6.
A pious thought of some contemporaries recently led them to paint the helmet and medallions (in tone).
*
The hermitage-like appearance of the Mitoch remains despite ^recent interventions7. The appearance of the baptistery of the Benedictines at Icoana is not similar to that of the ark, but it could become so as long as the church survives.
It could, therefore, be restored in a new form, similar to the old one, which will in turn become old and could, after a while, be transformed with the cheap materials of the future day or with the more expensive ones. It could be 'remade anew', given another carved face and - perhaps - another ark. Until the new benefactor appears, however, the church must preserve its history - its reputation.

NOTES
1. http://www.resboiu.ro/ultimul-vulcan-isi-va-termina-zborurile-post-restaurare-la-finalul-lui-2013/
2. Various documents relating to the Church of the Icona. See Irina Popescu-Criveanu, Horia Moldovan, Biserica Icoanei, București: Editura Cuvântul Vieții a Mitropoliei Munteniei și Dobrogei, 2013.
3. Arhiva Institutului Național al Patrimoniului (INP), fond CMI, dos. 79 (1922-1948), Icoana Church - Bucharest.
4. Irina Popescu-Criveanu, Horia Moldovan, ibid.
5. ANDMB, PMB Technic fund, file 6/1901. The priests of the Icoana Church and the neighbors opposed the rebuilding of the massive wall, asking for a [European] fence, a request that was not granted.
6. Arhiva INP, loc. cit., f. 10 and 11 (based on the report of the archivist Horia Teodoru).
7. In 2000, the belfry was demolished and rebuilt in a new location; part of the wall facing the street and the parish house (later parish house) were demolished and the parish houses and a chapel were built (projects by architect Nicolae Vlădescu).