The Celestial Sphere in Geneva – Part II

The Celestial Sphere in Geneva

Part II

In May 2019, the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry was invited to the UN Palace in Geneva for a preliminary visit to Paul Manship’s “Celestial Sphere” Monument located in the park in front of the Palace. Marinelli was accompanied by Carlo Lanaro, owner of Lanaro Steel Technology, specialized in the production of stainless steel and mechanical machinery.

In September 2019 Marinelli with Lanaro was invited to the interview that the UN Commission in charge of following the restoration of the monument asked to have in Geneva, where the previous works carried out by both companies and the restoration proposals of the ” Celestial Sphere ”. The Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry would make the restoration of bronze sculptures, Lanaro Seel Technology the execution of a new stainless steel skeleton to replace the original iron one, and in the realization of the astronomical rotating mechanisms of the Sphere.

In February 2020 the restoration of Paul Manship’s “Celestial Sphere” in the park of the United Nations Palace in Geneva was entrusted to the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry of Florence with Lanaro as subcontractor for the steel parts and mechanical structures.

From the historical photos of the UN it has been confirmed that originally the skeleton of the sphere to which the lost-wax and then gilded bronze sculptures were attached was made of iron.

Our work began in Geneva with the dismantling of the Sphere from its base.

The sphere was then transported to the foundry with a special frame created to house it during the “exceptional transport” (given the sphere’s measurements); and here all the bronze sculptures have been carefully disassembled and detached.

After having studied the state of conservation and the best type to use, the surfaces of the bronzes were brought back to their primitive state, eliminating the remains of gilding and the underlying old bolus.

After we proceeded with the restoration of the damage suffered by the sculptures over the years.

The parts of the sculptures that were not gilded were then patinated, as the sculptor Paul Manship had wanted.

New coats of bole were applied: yellow and red, to make all parts of the sculptures with a brilliant gilding, as requested by the UN officials.

And the long work of gold leaf gilding of the bronze sculptures began with the ancient system called “a missione”.

At the same time Lanaro Steel technology and its engineers calculated and executed all the projects necessary for the construction of the stainless steel structure and the mechanisms for the astronomical rotation of the “Celstial Sphere”.

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Assisi, St. Mary of the Angels

Assisi, St. Mary of the Angels

Los Angeles, St. Francis and the Porziuncola in Assisi

Thirty years after the death of St. Benedict (547), author of the famous Rule (the oldest manuscript codex of the Rule, dated 810, Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland),

it was built in 576, between the woods at the foot of Assisi, an oratory of the Benedictine monks of the convent of Monte Subasio. In the ‘200 was a place of prayer and meditation for St. Francis, who restored it: it is the famous “Porziuncola”, where Francis also died in 1226.

Pope Pius V in 1569 began the construction of a large basilica, designed by architect Galeazzo Alessi, around the Porziuncola which constantly attracted crowds of faithful, both for San Francesco and for the indulgences that Pope Honorius III at the beginning of the ‘200 he had established to whom visited it.

Following heavy damage caused by the earthquake of 1832 the basilica was restored and was endowed with a new facade.

The façade seems to have had no peace: in the 20th century it was rebuilt according to a design by the architect Luigi Paoletti and completed in 1930.

On that occasion the monumental Golden Madonna, was placed on top of the façade commissioned at the sculptor Guglielmo Colasanti,

and cast in lost wax at the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry in Florence.

Los Angeles

On 31 July 1769 the Spanish adventurer Gaspar de Portola, together with Serra and Crespi, two Franciscan friars, discovered a river in Southern California, which baptized Rio de Nuestra Seniora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncola of Assisi, because the day after, the first of August, the Feast of the Forgiveness was celebrated in Assisi (the one established by Pope Honorius III). In 1781, Mexican colonists founded a village near the river, also called El Pueblo de Nuestra Seniora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncola, now closed in the Olvera Street district of the Los Angeles megalopolis. In 1847, California became American and in 1850 the village, with the shortened name of Los Angeles, became a Municipality, still remaining a small frontier country,

until, in 1892, the discovery of oil made it “explode” in a few decades.

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