The Saint Aloysius Gonzaga Project

A little while ago my wife, who works as a campus minister, at the college here in town received a donation of a very beat up statue of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga.  My wife and I have decided to take up the challenge of restoring this statue.  Let me share with you the challenge we are facing:

Meet St. Alyosius:  I suspect that this statue was purchased as a blank and that someone painted him by hand.  I am unable to find any images of him in this color, furthermore, these colors are not the usual color for this type of Catholic dress.

The top of his head is full of paint chips.  Notice that his tonsure is painted correctly.

His hands have been mangled.  In most of his artwork he is depicted adoring a crucifix.  It is clear that someone cut the crucifix from his hands in this statue.  

   

There is a sick call crucifix hanging on a wall nearby where I took this photo.  I slipped that into his hands so that I could get an idea what it would have looked like.

I was told that this statue was an outdoor statue.  Looking at the back of this statue I think I have a good idea how it was mounted:

In searching images of St. Alyosius I have manage to find statues that are close to this one to give me an idea of what I want it to look like.  This is the best one that I have found:

So you see what I mean about a challenge.  I also have zero experience in this kind of thing.  My wife if very good at painting ceramics so that should help a lot.  The first step, however, will be to find a place where we can start working on him.  I am toying with the idea of using one of the spare rooms in our house to work with him on, or maybe our garage.

I have a bit more research to do, but I plan on keeping a running update of our progress here.

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