They were expecting to uncover a painting in the dome of the central entrance hall of the historic Marius Dufresne residence.

They weren't expecting what they found.

A team of five conservators responsible for the $1-million restoration of the artworks in the mansion in east-end Montreal has uncovered a mural they didn't know was there.

Historic photographs reveal that the dome, about three metres in diameter, was originally decorated with the sexy image of a woman on a garland swing.

Speculation has it that this may have been the work of a Belgian artist, Alfred Faniel.

The girl and her swing were considered to be erotic in the late 1940s, when the Holy Cross Fathers bought the property. So the priests might have had her and other objectionable works painted over with a blue sky and generic clouds.

Now, all of the paintings in the building are being restored to their original condition by the city of Montreal.

Two months ago, one of the conservators, Klara Zöld, was delighted to see a hand emerge as multi layers of overpaint were removed from the painting.

"It was pure magic. We were very excited. We thought we had found what we were looking for under the paint," Zöld said.

She's an art history student who came to Canada 11 years ago from Transylvania, Romania.

The initial excitement turned to chagrin, and then to frustration when the conservators tried to match what they had found with the image they had of the woman on a garland swing.

"First, the position of the hand didn't make any sense. We checked it from every angle, and the hand didn't match the hand we expected to see," Zöld said.

"The second clue that something was amiss was when we started to uncover the hair. The hair was all wrong, too. It didn't belong to the woman on the swing."

About 25 per cent of the mysterious painting has so far been uncovered. What appears is a bare-breasted nymph and a voluptuous winged angel in flowing pastel robes.

Because of the composition, vibrant colour and subject matter, Anita Henry, the chief painting conservator in charge of the project, believes it is an original work painted at least 70 years years ago by Guido Nincheri, sometimes referred to as Montreal's Michelangelo.

Nincheri spent 18 years working on the interior decoration of the Château Dufresne, doing different allegorical works in each room.

It will take about six weeks before the precise and delicate operation is finished, and before the whole scene is apparent.

If it is a Nincheri - and there is no reason to believe it isn't - the painting would be worth between $30,000 and $40,000.

"It is difficult to appraise. Nincheri was not an easel painter, he was a mural painter," said Henry, who was also responsible for the recent restoration of the First World War memorial paintings in the Senate on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

So what happened to the girl on a garland swing?

Henry doesn't know.

"We're going to do an analysis, and take samples," she said.

"If you look closely, there is a double layer of canvas glued to the dome. Maybe the family changed their minds and didn't want it on the ceiling anymore.

''Maybe the work was damaged beyond reasonable repair. So they had Nincheri paint another one. There may be another one under the one we are working on now," she said.

ahustak@thegazette.canwest.com

Nincheri: Portrait of the Artist

Born: Sept. 29, 1885, Prato, Italy.

1901: Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.

1914: Arrives in Montreal with his wife, Giulia, and works as an interior decorator doing movie theatres, restaurants, and stage set designs.

1919: Contracted by brothers Marius and Oscar Dufresne to decorate the interior of their sumptuous duplex in Maisonneuve, today known as the Château Dufresne.

1921: Contracted to decorate the church of St. Viateur in Outremont.

1925: Executes the magnificent windows for the cathedral in Trois Rivières.

1927: Contracted to decorate the apse of the Italian parish church, Madonna della Difesa. He later is asked to revise his original design to include a portrait of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in the mural. The portrait commemorates a 1929 accord, universally applauded, that settled a dispute between the Vatican and Italy over the papal states.

1928: Completes the interior of what is considered his masterwork, St. Léon de Westmount.

1933: Pope Pius XI invests Nincheri in the order of St. Sylvester in recognition of the 28 churches the artist decorated, and the 175 stained-glass windows he had designed by that point.

1939: World War II begins. Mussolini allies himself with Adolf Hitler.

June 10, 1940: Italy declares war on Britain and France.

Aug. 6, 1940: Nincheri is arrested by the RCMP as he works on a fresco in a church in Baie Comeau. He is detained under the War Measures Act as a Fascist sympathizer for his portrait of Mussolini and interned for three months at Petawawa.

1941: He quits Canada and moves to Rhode Island.

1941: A sympathetic bishop in Vancouver hires Nincheri to do windows for Holy Rosary Cathedral.

1945: He produces windows for St. Joseph's Cathedral in Edmonton.

1953: He does work for the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Ottawa.

1955: He designs the windows for Newfoundland's House of Assembly.

1972: Knighted by the Italian Republic.

March 1, 1973: Nincheri dies in Providence, R.I.

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