Maine's hidden 'Sistine Chapel' inspires artists with 70-year-old frescoes

SOLON, Maine — From the outside, it looks like any other New England church building: a boxy, white structure with a single steeple surrounded by an old stone wall, set against rolling hills and pine forest.

Inside, though, the South Solon Meeting House has a secret unknown even to some who drive through the tiny Maine town every day. The interior of the building is covered in 70-year-old fresco murals that encourage some in the state's art community to describe it as ''Maine's Sistine Chapel.''

The murals were painted by artists in the 1950s and, while they have long been appreciated by visitors, the recent creation of a website dedicated to them by students at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, has generated new interest in the paintings.

Véronique Plesch, a Colby professor of art, hopes the building inspires more appreciation of frescoes.

''I fell in love with the place, because I have studies frescoes all my life,'' said Plesch, who is a member of the board of the historical society that cares for the meeting house. She added that the paintings should stay in public places and not be in private institutions.

The meeting house was built in 1842 and hosted church services until the 1940s, though there were periods of closure, such as times of war. A decade later, Margaret Day Blake found the building in a state of disuse and the former student at the nearby Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture put out a call for young artists to paint frescoes under the school's supervision in 1951.

The artists were given creative freedom and told there would be no limits to subject matter, but that Biblical scenes would ''offer rich and suitable'' imagery. The interior was covered in such scenes from 1952 to 1956 and the walls remain adorned with frescoes, including one that references Leonardo da Vinci's ''The Last Supper."

Another fresco depicts the binding of Isaac, in which a hooded Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son on God's orders. The Great Flood is depicted as it was by Michelangelo at the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican.

Two of the 13 artists — Sigmund Abeles of New York City and Sidney Hurwitz of Newton, Massachusetts — both in their 90s, are still living. Both spoke fondly about their time at the meeting house.

''We would go out there and paint and then take a lunch break in the cemetery behind the building. It was a very idyllic time,'' Hurwitz said. ''I very much enjoyed it.''

Today, the meeting house, which is open to the public without locks on its doors, serves as a community gathering and performance space. Many of its old features, including box pews made for smaller people of a different time, are still intact.

Abeles recalled painting the scene of Jacob wrestling with the angel from the Book of Genesis.

''It's a very, very special place, and it was a unique experience" to work on the frescoes, Abeles said.

On a recent Sunday morning, Plesch gave a lecture at the meeting house before a group of members of the Maine Art Education Association as part of the group's spring conference. Long ago, attendants of the building might have been preparing for an Easter service, but on this day it was full of teachers fascinated by the frescoes.

Suzanne Goulet, an art teacher at a nearby high school, said she was previously aware of the frescoes and confessed she had peeked into the windows of the old building, adding that it's great the paintings are still inspiring art lovers decades later.

''The inspiration is that we bring it back to our students,'' Goulet said.