Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 20, 1990 TAG: 9005170137
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL KIMMELMAN THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: ROME LENGTH: Long
The newly revealed ceiling looks overwhelmingly beautiful.
Early in April, several dozen art historians, conservators and scientists from around the world were invited to Rome by the Vatican to celebrate the results and to discuss strategy for the next, and in several ways more complex, phase of the restoration: the cleaning of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" on the altar wall of the chapel.
That effort, which has already begun, is expected to last four years and to produce results at least as dramatic as the cleaned ceiling. It seems that the predominant color underneath the now blackened surface of the "Last Judgment" is a brilliant blue.
The public scrutiny that has accompanied the restoration so far is heartening testimony to the enduring significance of monuments like the Sistine.
But the nature of the scrutiny has at times been alarming.
A handful of critics of the project have managed to keep debate alive by focusing on technical matters that have been easily misinterpreted: questions have been raised about the characteristics of the solvent, called AB-57, used to wipe away grime, and whether glazes and small details were mistakenly removed by the restorers.
Repeatedly over the last 10 years, these questions have been addressed not only by the Vatican but also by independent experts.
Far from the controversial project that the news media have led the public to believe it is, the restoration of the ceiling has met with extraordinary and international approval among scholars and conservators.
But this is not to say the project has been without problems considerably farther-reaching than discussions about AB-57; the pity is that these problems have so far been overshadowed by smaller debates.
Far and away the most significant issue to have been ignored is the quality of the environment within the chapel. As many as 19,000 people a day trudge through the Sistine, bringing in dirt and humidity that can harm the frescoes and eventually undermine the painstaking restoration.
Years ago, the Vatican accommodated visitors by installing heating in the floor of the Sistine, further altering the precarious atmosphere in the 132-foot-long chapel. The heating is no longer used, but the chapel has apparently become even more of a tourist attraction - and thus a financial boon to the Vatican - since the restoration began.
The overriding question raised by the restoration, one that relates to the care of all monuments, is whether the monetary interests of the church and the public's freedom to visit the chapel will be tempered so the paintings can be preserved for future generations.
The Vatican has talked about climate controls but it has yet to take any serious action.
Another troubling issue involves the commercial sponsorship of the Sistine project. Other restoration campaigns in Italy, like the work on Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" in Milan, have been helped by flexible and accommodating corporate and government sponsors.
The Vatican accepted an offer from Nippon Television to pay for the project, in return for which the Japanese company was granted temporary control over Sistine photographs.
One of the benefits has been that absolutely every aspect of the restoration is now on film. Nippon, however, has made access to photographs difficult and expensive. Critics of the project have had reason to complain about this.
Moreover, the only volume yet published by the Vatican concerning the restoration did not contain the pictures necessary to address critics' concerns. The Vatican may wonder why debate over the ceiling continues, but it has itself, and Nippon, partly to blame.
These problems should not obscure, however, the accomplishments of the restorers.
The Sistine is no longer illuminated by the artificial lights that distorted the colors and modeling of the painted figures on the ceiling and lunettes, but by natural light, as Michelangelo assumed it would be.
The colors are not garish, as they appeared to some observers when the restoration was half-completed and floodlamps accentuated the shocking difference between clean and unclean, making the cleaned section appear flat and cartoonlike, as if shadows had been wiped away.
The shadows are still there. And the high-key colors now make perfect sense: Michelangelo used them so that the complicated painted scenes on the ceiling could be more easily deciphered without artificial light from the floor, some 60 feet below.
The importance of the restoration can hardly be overstated.
If it is too much to say that there was a history of Renaissance art before the project and another history that must now be written, it is true that Michelangelo will no longer be perceived as he has been since the third quarter of the 16th century, when the recently completed frescoes began to deteriorate.
The Michelangelo whose seemingly somber palette inspired generations of painters and historians has emerged as a different artist. The new Michelangelo may inspire future painters and historians in different ways from the old one, and it is no surprise that many people, who grew up with a powerful sense of the ceiling as it was, have had difficulty accepting the restoration.
After all, the history of restoration on the Sistine has been a history of responses to what each century assumed to be the true Michelangelo.
Restorers in previous centuries, who had none of the benefits of chemical and computer analysis that assist today's conservators, took it for granted that Michelangelo was a painter of dark images and they added what they believed were complementary shadows, highlights and other details where they thought these details had been lost.
This, in turn, reinforced an idea about Michelangelo that affected future restorers, and so the cycle of restoration proceeded.
Every generation of restorers, in other words, believes it understands the original intent of the artist.
That is also true of the current restoration.
The Vatican team's rinsing away of grime is a representation of late 20th-century ideals no less than, say, Annibale Mazzuoli's application of darkening glues to the ceiling was a reflection of early 18th-century taste.
Like the many other restoration projects that are under way today throughout Italy and elsewhere, the cleaning of the Sistine is a manifestation of contemporary society's particular faith in science and technology.
More to the point, it exemplifies a distinctly post-modern obsession with reviving the past.
The restoration has done nothing to undo the perception of Michelangelo as master of heroic figures and complex architectural forms. But the colors that have emerged from beneath the layers of grime and previous restorations underscore the significance of his role as a transitional figure between Renaissance artists like Masaccio and Ghirlandaio and Mannerists like Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino.
Michelangelo's use of vivid color in his painting at the Uffizi in Florence known as the "Doni Tondo" no longer seems like an isolated event.
The palette that Rosso used in his "Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro" of 1524 at the Uffizi, or his "Deposition" of 1521 at the Pinacoteca in Volterra, reveals itself to be as much a homage to Michelangelo's use of color as to his treatment of the figure.
Most of all, the ceiling now relates in terms of color much more sensibly to the 15th-century frescoes that run across three walls of the Sistine and to which Michelangelo must have been sensitive.
Critics of the Sistine restoration have repeatedly mentioned that no contemporaries of Michelangelo commented on the color of the ceiling, as proof that it could not have been as bizarre as these critics say it now appears.
But the reverse is more likely the case: Michelangelo's contemporaries probably said nothing because the palette was not remarkably unusual for the period.
As for the idea that glazes and painted details have been removed, the critics have never made a strong case, and to look at the completed ceiling is to feel even more strongly that they are wrong.
The ceiling was completed by Michelangelo in two campaigns; elaborate scaffolding was erected for each campaign, and there exists day-by-day documentation of the events that occurred.
The critics cite a reference by a contemporary biographer of Michelangelo, Ascanio Condivi, that the artist was unable to apply "l'ultima mano" - which these critics are alone in translating as a final unifying coat or veil of glue, like a varnish - to the second half of the ceiling before the pope ordered that the scaffolding be taken down.
They contend this reference is evidence that a veil of glue was supposed to cover the entire ceiling and that it has been removed by the restorers.
But to assume the translation is correct means that Michelangelo did not apply this veil to the second half, and it is inconceivable that scaffolding was subsequently erected so that he could do so. Such an elaborate construction project would have been documented.
The critics seem to be proposing, in other words, that as much as half the ceiling was, in the end, not covered by this glue, a suggestion that implies a bizarre spectacle, like a partly varnished chair, with some of the ceiling left brightly colored and some of it painted over by the veil.
Contemporaries of Michelangelo could not have failed to comment on this, if it had been the case.
The restorers have concluded that Michelangelo worked almost exclusively in true fresco, or with water-based pigments on wet plaster.
Secco passages, or passages the artist applied to dry plaster, have been discovered, however, and they have not been touched by the Vatican team. Although critics point to the fact that such details as the pupils of eyes have occasionally been removed, the evidence is that the pupils were added by previous restorers.
In the end, even if a few mistakes turn out to have been made, these must not overshadow the general quality of the project. The Sistine ceiling may no longer look the way some people think Michelangelo should look, but that says more about the expectations of those people than about the results of this extraordinary restoration.
by CNB