Thomas Russo Sculpture Restoration

Drury art professor honored for work to restore 12th century sculpture

A Drury University professor's work in England led to a special project that helped preserve a particular example of 12th century architecture and bring recognition to the scholar.

Thomas Russo, a professor of art history, was honored earlier this month for his efforts to catalogue 12th century sculpture in the county of Lincolnshire in England, as well as his preservation efforts, at the House of Lords, of the largely ceremonial upper house of the U.K. Parliament, in London.

"I was very honored...," Russo said. "It was a thrilling moment for me in terms of being in the U.K. Parliament, in the House of Lords from an architectural historian's point of view, but to be there, there's a grandeur of place. ... It was a nice feeling."

Drury University is supportive of Russo's work in England and is glad about his recognition.

"I think it's a powerful indication of the quality of his work as a teacher scholar," said Charles Taylor, vice president for academic affairs at Drury. "His contributions to the cathedral will have profound benefits for our students."

History Of Project

Russo's involvement with Lincoln Cathedral can be traced back to 1991 when he was a doctoral student at Indiana University in Bloomington.

He wanted to write his doctoral thesis on the 12th century sculpture in England and contacted George Zarnecki, then deputy director of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

Zarnecki was the force behind the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland, whose goal is to photograph and record all the surviving Romanesque sculpture from the 1066-1200 period for the purpose of preservation.

Russo got involved with the project and asked to take on the county of Lincolnshire: He would document all the 12th century sculpture in the county.

"I was the naive American," Russo said. "I didn't know Lincoln is the second largest county in England."

Located in the East Midlands of England, the county is 55 miles wide and 72 miles long. Through the years, Russo visited 300 churches there, some of which were so remote he crossed sheep fields and cow pastures to reach them.

Many churches are small, but there is one grand piece of architecture -- Lincoln Cathedral in the county seat of Lincolnshire.

And it has something Russo is keen on: the cathedral has a frieze, or a band of relief sculpture, that is dated from 1145.

"It's the only 12th century relief on a cathedral that is left in the country," Russo said. "It's extremely rare and valuable."

The frieze was falling apart, and Russo's expertise came to the rescue.

The church decided to protect the frieze by removing them from the building and recreating the sculpture, and it asked Russo to help its master sculptor figure out what missing portions of the frieze might have looked like.

To do so, Russo examined the sculpture work and manuscripts from the same period.

"It was a comparative process," said Russo, who worked on this project in the summers of 1995 and 1996.

The work to conserve the frieze's north run, which is about 3.4 feet tall and 24.3 feet long, began in 1987 and finished 14 years later, Russo said.

In 2000, Russo returned to England on a sabbatical, when he was the speaker for an annual lecture to raise funds for the cathedral's medieval library.

Drawing on his research, Russo talked about the 12th century sculpture in the county, and it attracted the largest audience to date in this lecture series.

"Art has a general appeal," said Russo, explaining the popularity of the lecture.