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The Mayor presented the study which has identified the remains of the great sculptor Francisco Salzillo (22/05/2009)

Along with the sculptor remains found by his brother Patrick, in charge of stew and carvings embody

A committee will now proceed to the preparation of various events to honor the memory of the more universal Murcia

The study team was able to identify remains and Quevedo, Juan de Mena and Santo Domingo de Silos

The Mayor of Murcia, Miguel Ángel Cámara, has starred this morning one of the most important events in the history of the city.

This is the presentation of the results of an extensive research work has identified the remains of the sculptor Francisco Salzillo and Alcaraz (1707-1783), the most universal Murcia.

Have appeared along with the Mayor Councillor for Culture, Fátima Barnuevo, and Jesus Belmonte, chancellor of the Diocese of Cartagena.

House explained that this study has been completed by a team of 9 scientists from the School of Legal Medicine of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), under the direction of Professor José Antonio Sánchez Sánchez.

The study involved the Forensic Anthropology Laboratory and the Laboratory of Forensic Genetics and Population Genetics, Department of Toxicology and Health Law, Faculty of Medicine, UCM.

Legal Medical School houses a wealth of experience in the exhumation of remains and anthropological study of historical and church, among them research conducted at the Royal Pantheon of San Isidoro de León, the remains of Francisco Quevedo, the Marquis of Santillana, Juan de Mena, the Count of Orgaz or Santo Domingo de Silos, among many others.

On the other hand, the institution enjoys the best anthropological collection in Spain and one of the best in the world, the result of studies conducted in multiple burial of all historical periods.

A complex study

The works that have identified the remains of Salzillo began in October 2007, when the Mayor of Murcia, Miguel Ángel Cámara Botía commissioned studies the research team through Murcia Program was dedicated to the recovery of historical heritage of the city.

During the first phase all the remains were exhumed from existing ossuary in the Capuchin Convent of the Mothers of Murcia, and proceeded to a preliminary identification.

It was then established in the ossuary were the remains of an estimated 30 people.

Among them, it was estimated that there were only eight men, allowing a crackdown.

The Bishop of Cartagena, Juan Antonio Reig Pla, then authorized the transfer of remains to the Forensic Anthropology Laboratory of the School of Legal Medicine of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

There were in custody in the Judicial Archives of the School of Legal Medicine.

In the laboratory, we proceeded to cleaning and preparing the remains for study and addressed the identification, ie trying to establish the remains that correspond to each of the individuals.

During this first phase also conducted a rigorous study of the journey Salzillo's remains had been in the last two hundred years since its burial in the former convent of the Capuchin until his transfer to the new.

Thus, it was found that even during the looting suffered by the convent in the Civil War, the bones in the crypt of the monastery were preserved, hidden in the cemetery of Jesus.

And there he spent four decades in the family vault Tuero Hilla.

The next step was the dispatch of 25 samples of 8 individuals in the Population Genetics Laboratory, Department of Toxicology and Health Law, under the Faculty of Medicine, University Complutense of Madrid, to study the genetic profile (DNA ) in order to establish the possible degree of kinship between them.

At the same time, is done by the researchers involved in the project database in which the remains are noted under each of the individual.

Completion of the database is performed a check of all and definitively establishing the identification of remains.

Depending on the results of anthropometric study done before establishing sex, age, height and gross individual characteristics.

The Forensic Anthropology Laboratory conducted the research basis of the morphometric characteristics and radiological studies to enable determination of sex and age with a high degree of reliability.

During the course of the investigation it was determined that three of the eight individuals had at the time of his death aged between 30 and 40 years, scientists say, could relate to the identity of Joseph Salzillo, brother of the sculptor who died at the age of 34 years and was buried in the Capuchin convent.

The scientists then focused their studies on those residues that corresponded with individuals who died around the age of 75 years, who had a sculptor when he died.

This group was also his brother Patrick.

Salzillo Patrick was born in 1722 in Murcia and died in 1800, being chaplain to the Convent of the Capuchins, where he was buried according to his death certificate.

Some authors claim that Patrick was responsible for stewing and embody some of the pieces of the great sculptor.

The study notes that "physically impossible for the forensic anthropological study to separate the remains of Francis of Patrick, but if you can set for anthropometric characteristics that correspond to two different individuals."

One of the crucial evidence to clarify whether it could be Salzillo and his brother was to establish the date of death of both.

For this process was studied by UV fluorescence of these fossils.

The results confirmed that both radicals have an approximate age of 200 years, a figure that coincides with the known date of death of both brothers and the annotations made by the Capuchin Sisters.

Thus, excluding the remains of younger people, using DNA tests to determine the maternal line of some of them, and taking into account the age of death, it is possible to identify the remains of Salzillo that from now, they will rest next to his brother in the Capuchin convent.

The Mayor has announced that it appointed a committee to organize various initiatives in connection with the sensational discovery, including the issue of the official report and a ceremony to honor the memory of the sculptor.

Source: Ayuntamiento de Murcia

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