PHOTOS: Vatican to unveil restored baldacchino in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 27

The Vatican has announced that the completed restorations on the soaring baldacchino over the central altar of St. Peter’s Basilica designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini will be unveiled on Oct. 27, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA Vatican City, Oct 9, 2024 / 14:35 pm (CNA). The Vatican has announced that the completed restorations on the soaring baldacchino over the central altar of St. Peter’s Basilica designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini will be unveiled on Oct. 27.Journalists donned hard hats on Tuesday to get a sneak peek of the nearly finished restorations, climbing the scaffolding all the way to the top of the 94-foot-tall canopy.Journalists tour the newly restored baldacchino at St. Peter's Basilica, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNAThe lofty vantage point revealed how the baldacchino’s intricately decorated Baroque angels, cherubs, bees, and golden laurel branches — formerly darkened by centuries of dust and grime — have now been restored to their bright gilded glory.While the cherubs holding the St. Peter’s keys and the papal tiara at the top of the structure may appear as small details from the ground 94 feet below, up close the chubby cherubs are actually colossal in size, standing nearly as tall as a full-grown adult.A cherubic figure adorns the baldacchino at St. Peter's Basilica, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. Credit: Courtney Mares/CNAPope Urban VIII commissioned Bernini in 1624 to design and build the enormous canopy over the Papal Altar of the Confession, located directly over the tomb of St. Peter the Apostle. The  construction took Bernini nine years with considerable help from his architectural rival, Francesco Borromini.The public will be able to see the 400-year-old twisting bronze columns of the large canopy for the first time since the restoration when Pope Francis presides over the closing Mass for the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 27.At that time, the scaffolding that has surrounded the central altar for the past eight months will finally be removed.Scaffolding surrounds the baldacchino at St. Peter's Basilica, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNACardinal Mauro Gambetti, the archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, said the restorations manifest “the beauty and glory that the Church should reflect.” He added that revealing the restorations at the Mass is an opportunity to “announce hope as we walk toward a Jubilee of hope.”An art restorer’s perspectiveGiorgio Capriotti is one of the Vatican Museums’ art restorers who meticulously worked on these details on the massive canopy.Capriotti said that despite more than a century since the last restoration, the restorers found that the baldacchino is in overall good shape. He explained that his task was largely removing the materials, like oil, waxes, and resins, that art restorers had used that unintentionally altered the hue of the historic gold leaf on the baldacchino.In some places the baldacchino’s gold leaf became “dark and then almost black” because of oxidation due to the humidity, pollution, and dust in the air.“So we had to remove these substances using solvents … area by area,” Capriotti said.“Now we will see it as it was when it was built between 1624 and 1635,” he added.Giorgio Capriotti is one of the Vatican Museums’ art restorers who meticulously worked on these details on the massive canopy. Credit: Courtney Mares/CNAWhile working atop the canopy, Capriotti and the other restorationists found objects left by the artists and workers who preceded them from past centuries, including old coins, small drawings, and even a 17th-century shopping list, a collection of items he described as almost “a small museum of cultural anthropology.”“Everything will be archived and studied and set aside as a testimony of the life, the real life of generations of restorers who have followed one another,” Capriotti said.Restorers also found places where previous workers had signed their names, including signatures from 1685 and 1725.A signature of a 19th-century worker is seen on the baldacchino at St. Peter's Basilica, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. Credit: Courtney Mares/CNAAfter visiting St. Peter’s Basilica in 1873, novelist Henry James described his encounter with the baldacchino: “You have only to stroll and stroll and gaze and gaze; to watch the glorious altar-canopy lift its bronze architecture, its colossal embroidered contortions, like a temple within a temple, and feel yourself, at the bottom of the abysmal shaft of the dome dwindle to a crawling dot.”The Knights of Columbus funded the baldacchino restoration, which was originally estimated to cost 700,000 euro (about $768,000).“It’s Bernini’s baldacchino … It’s a singular masterpiece of sacred art — one which is instantly recognizable and impressive,” Patrick Kelly, the head of the Knights of Columbus, said at a press conference when the restoration was first announced.“But, if that weren’t enough, this project also fits very well with our mission and with our history of service