VATICAN CITY — Persuaded by spiteful advisers that a headstrong young Florentine sculptor was overdue for comeuppance, Pope Julius II dragooned him into painting the vaulted ceiling of a new chapel at the Vatican.
Michelangelo Buonarroti reluctantly began the gigantic task on May 10, 1508. It was a punishment--and a challenge. Refusing assistance, he worked alone, by lantern light, standing with his head forced back at angles that soon damaged his eyesight.
What would become one of the world's longest-running and most breathtaking displays of genius debuted on All Saints Day, Nov. 1, 1512. The Book of Genesis, in nine vibrant panels, had sprung to spectacular life across the 68-foot-high ceiling. In 1535, by then in his 60s, Michelangelo reluctantly returned to the Sistine Chapel to paint 391 figures on the wall behind the altar in "The Last Judgment."
The results are history, and to these paramount works of art the Vatican is adding a codicil, with controversy, this spring.
After five years of painstaking, computer-aided restoration, the Sistine Chapel ceiling is complete and on show to visitors at the Vatican Museum. Expect big crowds: One day last summer, 19,000 visitors jostled to see the chapel even as restorers labored on scaffolds above them.
Now, new scaffolding is up in the chapel where the College of Cardinals elects Popes, and Tuesday restoration begins on the stormy "Last Judgment."
Restoring the huge work will take about four years. It will be financed, like the rest of an in-stages chapel cleaning that has already consumed a decade, by a Japanese television network, NTV. In all, NTV will pay about $4.2 million in exchange for three years of exclusive pictures of the results after each stage of the cleaning.
To celebrate one of the century's most ambitious art restorations, the Vatican has mounted an explanatory exhibition, entitled "Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel: Technique, Restoration and Myth."
The exhibition includes a selection of Michelangelo's preparatory drawings for the chapel, a model of his scaffolding and a replica of how a segment of the ceiling looked as he prepared to paint it, with figures deliberately distorted atop so they would look lifelike from below. Videos and photographs explain the cleaning and restorative techniques and graphically describe the difficult art of fresco painting that Michelangelo learned, and mastered, high above the chapel.
