ROME, Feb 3 — Three decades after its last restoration, a deep cleaning has begun of Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement, the Italian master’s spectacular fresco in the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican said yesterday.
Scaffolding is going up in front of the 180-square-metre artwork, a depiction of God’s final judgement of humanity painted between 1536 and 1541, at the start of a project expected to take three months.
Experts have been cleaning and conserving parts of the chapel at night for years, but the Last Judgement needs more intense work, the Vatican said.
Chief restorer Paolo Violini said the fresco — centred around the figure of Christ — was covered by “a widespread whiteish haze”.
This was “caused by the deposition of microparticles of foreign substances carried by air movements, which over time has diminished the ‘chiaroscuro’ (light-dark) contrasts and rendered uniform the original colours”, he said in the Vatican statement.
The statement added that the clean-up “will allow the removal of these deposits and therefore the recovery of the chromatic and luminous quality intended by Michelangelo, fully restoring the work’s formal and expressive complexity”.
The 15th-century chapel, located inside the Apostolic Palace, will remain open throughout the restoration works.
As well as being a place of worship and tourism, the Sistine Chapel is the central location of the conclave, the secret gathering of Catholic cardinals to choose a new pope. — AFP
