San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Alamo might have had a colorful exterior.
Pigment flakes suggest the churchwas brightly painted
The neutral facade of the Alamo church, the most recognized building in Texas, may have at one time been painted in vivid colors by Native Americans and Spanish artisans, even though the limestone structure was never fully completed as designed.
“We have already discovered visible pigment fragments on the ornament stone aswell as flat surfaces,” said Alamo Conservator Pamela Jary Rosser, who began harvesting flakes of pigment this week. “Collecting these samples will help us get a better understanding of the various pigment layers on the west facade of the church.”
Conservation experts who have studied the indigenous mission communities, including the Mission San Antonio de Valero, have long known the exterior of other stone mission churches in San Antonio were once decorated with painted patterns and murals that faded over time.
It’s possible the Alamo church facade, nowa backdrop for countless snapshots and selfies taken by visitors and locals alike, also was adorned in colorful shades of blue, red, yellow and green created from plants, berries and other sources found in nature.
Conservation professionals already have documented frescoes that have been verified inside the church sacristy, which had a stone roof and was used as a worship space by the mission Indians.
A chemical analysis of the pigments used in those frescoes, appearing as tiny fragments or only visible with an ultraviolet lamp, found a variety of colors likely once visible to the human eye, according to the Alamo website.
“Yellow ochre, charcoal, red ochre, vermilion, green earth, copper green, and copper leaf pigmentswere found andwere mixed with calcium carbonate and milk from either a goat or cow,” the website states.
Rosser, who has performed conservation
work on the Alamo’s mission-era church and Convento/ Barrack for the past 20 years, hopes the latest project will reveal insight into any decorative exterior painting of the church, as was common during the 18th century.
“The main facades of Mission Concepción and Mission San José were decoratively painted during the mission era; so it is possible that the Alamo Church facade was also decoratively painted,” Rosser said.
The pigment extraction process should take four to six weeks to complete. Each sample will be tested to determine the “paint chronology” and whether any of the pigment fragments date back to the 1700s mission era, Alamo officials said.
Rosser, using an electric lift to access pigments for extraction, has been conducting the work during the day. The work is not affecting visitors. Because of the pandemic, visitors who want to go inside the church must obtain a free timed ticket on the Alamo website, thealamo.org. The church is open daily, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; the grounds and gift shop are open an hour longer, to 5:30 p.m.
The mission de Valero, San Antonio’s first mission site, was originally founded along San Pedro Creek in 1718. It moved twice, and was re-established at a third site in 1724, where it is today, as the first permanent mission site in the village that became San Antonio.
The mission was secularized in 1793 and converted in the early 1800s into a fort known as El Álamo, named for a Spanish cavalry force stationed there fromAlamo de Parras in Mexico.
In 1836, the church, still roofless except for the sacristy, where women and children found refuge, functioned as a cannon station during the famed early morning battle.
In recent years, the city’s Office of Historic Preservation, using modern projection technology, has recreated the original 1700s appearance of the colorful churches at Mission Concepción and Mission San José through its “Restored by Light” event as part of the annual World Heritage Festival.