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by DAN BARRY
THIS painting had adorned their kitchen for a quarter-century. Eating their meals, cleaning their dishes, waiting for their next emergency call, they would look up and find quiet validation. It said to them: This is what you do.
The oil painting, seven feet high and more than five feet wide, depicts firefighters rescuing people from a city building consumed by fire. To the left, one firefighter swings a crowbar-like device called a Halligan to break through a wall. Up above, another aims a hose's spray from the precarious top of a ladder. And front and center, several firefighters carry out an injured comrade.
That resonated most with the firefighters gazing up. They were members of the elite Rescue Company One in Manhattan. They jump into rivers, jackhammer through walls, do anything to save lives. Above all, they rescue other firefighters. And the painting caught it just right.
A fledgling artist named Jeannette Capriano had painted the scene and donated it to Rescue One back in 1976. She was living in the Bronx at the time, and had been angered by the city's decision to reduce the number of firefighters on a truck. She considered firefighting a vocation, and she wanted to honor firefighters with her art.
She spent some time at the company's firehouse on West 43rd Street, interviewing firefighters and researching the culture, before taking brush to canvas. When she was done, she dedicated the painting to Rescue One in the lower left-hand corner, signed her name - J. E. Capriano - and called her work "Reverence for Life."
The painting dominated the kitchen, where firefighters spent much of their down time. It was there when they answered calls, and there when they returned, covered in soot. It was there before their firehouse was heavily damaged in a fire in 1985, and there when a new firehouse opened in 1988. It was there when they rushed out on Sept. 11, and there as they wept over the deaths of 11 Rescue One colleagues.
Year after year it was there, soaking up the smoke from the stove, the nicotine from the cigarettes, the exhaust from the fire truck, until the heroic images faded behind a black shroud of grime.
After Sept. 11, other firefighters were assigned to replenish Rescue One, including Mike Schunk. He had been content at Ladder Company 44 in the South Bronx, but he decided to accept a standing offer to join the rescue company. "I felt compelled to go there and fill the void," he says.
As a new member of a firehouse in grief's grip, Firefighter Schunk showed his respect by trying to be helpful, not intrusive. He knew the culture; his father and grandfather were also firefighters. After some time, he mentioned that the painting in the kitchen looked tired, and asked whether anyone would mind if he tried to have it cleaned.
Sure, Mike, sure, they said. That would be great.
Firefighter Schunk sought help from New York University's Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts. The center typically restores the paintings of the old masters - Giampietrino of the 16th century, or Bicci di Lorenzo of the 15th century - and not those of little-known artists from the Bronx. Ms. Capriano, who now lives in upstate New York, agrees that she is not an old master, but adds, "I'm 74, so I guess I'm getting there."
Firefighter Schunk's request struck a chord with Michele Marincola, the center's chairwoman. She dispatched two conservators, Dianne Modestini and Nica Gutman, to the firehouse to consider "Reverence for Life."
"It was just - just black," Ms. Modestini recalls. "You could barely make out the scene."
The Conservation Center decided to take on the project. In January, the members of Rescue One made a wooden case for the painting, and Firefighter Schunk carried it to the center in his pickup truck.
The two conservators and four graduate assistants began to clean the painting. Using cotton swabs dipped in a mild solution of triammonium citrate, they gently applied cleanser to canvas, using circular, overlapping motions.
"Black sooty stuff came off," Ms. Modestini recalls. "All black."
Months passed, as the conservators juggled several projects, including the firehouse painting. "Reverence for Life" was so filthy that the first application of cleanser didn't do. They cleaned it again. And again.
Like concerned relatives, firefighters from Rescue One occasionally visited the center to check on the painting's condition. Its absence from the firehouse was palpable, says Firefighter Schunk. "The wall was very bare."
The firefighters told the conservators that they would like to have the painting back for the third anniversary of Sept. 11. Ms. Gutman reduced the buckling in the canvas, applied a light coat of varnish, and reframed the artwork. Then, a few days before the anniversary, she called Rescue One to say: Your painting's ready.
"Reverence for Life" is back on the firehouse's kitchen wall, looming over a dining room table on which the names of 11 lost firefighters have been inscribed, like place settings for people who have stepped away for a moment. Their comrades and successors often look to the artwork as they eat, or talk, or rest. Maybe one of the people being saved, that bearded man in bare feet, is Jesus, they wonder, and maybe not.
Either way, the veil of black soot has been lifted, the painting's vitality restored. The fire burns brighter.
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