Straddling the scaffolding high up in a historic Boston church, murals conservator Gianfranco Pocobene is working to uncover eight angels that were hidden under layers of paint for more than a century.
The painted angels — with round childlike faces and wings — once were among the defining features of Old North Church when they were painted around 1730. But officials at the church, a seminal location of the Revolutionary War, painted over the angels in 1912 with thick coats of white paint, part of an austere renovation that restorationists are trying to reverse.
