They found them in the choir loft of the church, where it had been difficult to get there for years because the staircase was no longer there. Don Vito Buffa, rector of the church of SS. Pietro and Paolo in via XI Maggio in Marsala, near the municipal library, glimpsed the hand of a statue and, with the help of an installer, they managed to climb into the choir and thus were discovered. Yesterday afternoon the two statues of Saints Peter and Paul were presented to the city after a careful conservative restoration carried out by Gaetano Alagna from Marsala. The two valuable works, made of poplar wood hollowed out inside, date back to the 16th century. That of Saint Peter was the first to be made, it seems, in the early 1500s. The Saint was sculpted with a long cope. Of this remains a painting on the back that Alagna restored.
“No part has been integrated – explains Alagna – only the keys in the hands of St. Peter have been added and the sword in one hand to St. Paul.”. The statue of Saint Paul, however, was created shortly after that of Saint Peter, presumably around the mid-16th century. “The two works are neither signed nor dated – explains the historian Maurizio Vitella – but, through the comparative method, we can hypothesize that that of San Pietro was commissioned from the Matinati workshop in Messina, while that of San Paolo is likely to be by western area very close to the language of the Lo Cascio workshop”. At the presentation of the restoration in the church-rectory there was the vice Prefect Luciano Zanta Platamone, the rector of the church Don Vito Buffa, the priests Don Marco Renda, Don Vincenzo Greco, Don Mariano Narciso and the Bishop Emeritus of Ragusa Monsignor Carmelo Cuttitta. Holy mass is celebrated in the rectory church every morning at 7.30 am (on Sundays, in the summer period, at 8 am).
