12 The retable of the former Dominican church of St Nicholas paintings on the main storey survived in more sheltered conditions and were thus in a better condition, while the paintings in the upper register now only reveal individual paint fragments on the exposed wooden panel. This desolate condition and the island’s parish desire for a dignified liturgical function for the retable prompted a concept involving a considerable amount of reconstruction of the ornaments, mouldings, polychromy, and gilding, while the fragmentary paintings of the upper register were only consolidated. There, a calming “archaeological retouching” renders the lost depictions at least vaguely recognisable. One of the main achievements of the rescue operation was the retable’s reassembly on a new wooden support frame, in which the individual storey segments are now supported separately and no longer rest directly on top of one another. Following its restoration and reconstruction, the retable can once again be admired in all its magnificence. The rescued work, however, suffers from the heterogeneity of its appearance, resulting from the contrast between the extensive reconstruction and new gilding of the ornamentation on the one hand and the fragmentary condition of the upper panel paintings on the other. This approach of extensive reconstruction was not pursued for any of the retables discussed below.11
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