Stylistic Revelations and the Restoration of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling
Nearly 500 years after Michelangelo Buonarroti last lifted the tip of his brush from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, it can be said with certainty that our understanding of the artist’s style has been increased by the Vatican’s most recent restoration. But does the result display with any accuracy Michelangelo’s original intent, or does it more closely represent the insidious intrusion of modern artistic taste upon the past? Though more than two decades have passed since the Vatican declared its hi-tech project a success, this question remains debatable.
The restoration’s greatest stylistic revelation has also been the source of its greatest controversy. Painted for Pope Julius II between 1508 and 1512, the ceiling had been obscured for centuries by accumulations of dirt, smoke, candle wax, water damage, and old repairs. And according to Vatican records, misguided attempts to redefine and brighten the frescoes had led earlier restorers to overpaint parts of Michelangelo’s original work, and to apply layers of animal glue that had darkened with time.1 After analysis revealed that bits of pigment were pulling away from the ceiling’s surface, the Vatican set to work on the largest and most controversial art restoration project in history. In 1980, buoyed by funding from Japan’s Nippon Television, the Vatican began uncovering what nobody had expected: bright, bold colors.2
In 1990, British art critic Waldemar Januszczak enthusiastically observed Michelangelo’s “outrageous color.”3 More pessimistically, writer Eric Scigliano has described the frescoes’ new look as “Michelangelo on Prozac.”4 But the Sistine project’s most vociferous critic has been the American Michelangelo expert James Beck, professor of Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture at Columbia University.5 Beck argues that Michelangelo, in considering himself a sculptor primarily concerned with form, is said to have condemned as “simpletons” those who would nurture a taste for bright colors.6 Despising those “poor artists [who] cloak their poor technique with ... colour [sic],”7Beck maintains that Michelangelo strove to achieve a monochromatic effect in an effort to simulate sculpture.
Hoping to create a dark, brooding, enigmatic array to match his own melancholy temperament, the artist veiled the entire ceiling with a unifying layer of glue and applied extensive chiaroscuro retouches. In the process of cleaning and repairing the ceiling, the Vatican’s restorers have inadvertently removed Michelangelo’s own so-called finishing touch, or l’ultima mano. According to Beck, what has been done to the frescoes is a “violation of [Michelangelo’s] intention.”8 The Vatican, Beck insists, has made the “fatal mistake”9 of misinterpreting the Italian expression l’ultima mano to mean merely “touch-ups.” Evidence to support this argument centers around Beck’s construal of what Michelangelo’s sixteenth-century biographers, Ascanio Condivi and Giorgio Vasari, meant by their use of the phrase. According to Beck, these occurrences should be interpreted as “final coat” or “final layer.”10
Based on this reading, Beck extrapolates further action that he believes must have been taken by Michelangelo sometime after the ceiling had been completed a buon fresco (painted in wet plaster) and the scaffold had been removed. Certainly after some unrecorded interval — but long enough for a layer of soot to collect — the artist reconstructed his scaffold in order to finish the ceiling to his satisfaction. After applying two or three coats of hot glue to prepare the surface for a secco painting (painting in dry plaster), Michelangelo bestowed his previously drawn figures with a heightened sense of gravity by modeling deep shadows in tempera.11
To illustrate his theory, Beck obtained photographs from the Vatican that show various post-restoration figures from Michelangelo’s ceiling. Though all appear somewhat flattened when compared to images of their pre-restoration counterparts, the most dramatic changes can be seen in the figure of the Prophet Jonah (see Fig. 1). Jonah, looking particularly abused, has apparently lost all of the subtleties of Michelangelo’s shading after a thorough scrubbing by overzealous restorers. Recoiling in horror, American muralist Frank Mason called the sight “unbearable,” believing along with Beck that the figure’s tonal range and features of its anatomy have been irrevocably destroyed.12
The implication of Beck’s position is clear: that the restoration team acted incompetently and with unnecessary haste. But Beck goes further, accusing a tourist-hungry Vatican of authorizing the cleaning in an attempt to “re-present a masterpiece from another century according to the standards of our own transitory time.”13 In pandering to the taste of a public accustomed to the instant gratification of McDonald’s, the graphic quality of Disney cartoons, and the bright color palette of Matisse and Mondrian, the Vatican has re-created Michelangelo in the image of the lowest common denominator.
Harsh criticism such as this, leveled against the Vatican by Beck and other opponents, has been so completely rejected by the majority of experts that condemnation has sometimes degenerated into open ridicule. Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, professor of fine arts at New York University, has discarded Beck’s theory as “the wild [cry] of some ferocious mutant of Chicken Little.”14 In addition, Brandt summarized the majority of experts’ conclusions: the “dazzling chromatic display”15 that had recently been uncovered does indeed represent what Michelangelo intended. Explaining away Beck’s photographs as distorted reproductions, Brandt described his indignation as mere “culture shock.” The critics, she argued, were nursing a betrayal of their lifelong experience and mourning their commitment to a Michelangelo who no longer exists.16
But what of “l’ultima mano,” Michelangelo’s a secco overpainting and layers of hot glue? The late Michelangelo expert Frederick Hartt of the University of Virginia accused Beck of projecting his own twentieth-century translation of the phrase “backward over the Renaissance.”17 Citing five Italian dictionaries and the opinion of an eminent Italian language scholar, Hartt demonstrated that both Condivi and Vasari could only have meant “touch-ups.” Moreover, both biographers reported that the impatience of the pontiff forced Michelangelo to work quickly and under pressure. And though His Holiness had wanted the artist to add ornamentation in gold and ultramarine after the scaffold had been removed and the ceiling had been shown to the public, he successfully dodged the request. “Michelangelo,” wrote Vasari, “lacked the patience to rebuild the scaffolding, and so the ceiling stayed as it was.”18
Hartt believed that Michelangelo just didn’t have time to perform “Operation Glue,”19 and even if he did, he never would have been so careless as to neglect to wash off the intervening layer of soot.20 Hartt also reminded Beck that the glue had been applied to the ceiling over later repairs in an uneven and patchy fashion, leaving whole areas of fresco untouched.21 But Michelangelo would have also been aware that animal glue darkens, and he knew that its use would completely corrupt his colors within the span of twenty years.22 Hartt was therefore convinced that the Vatican’s restoration had revealed the subtle, sensitive, and imaginative work of an “influential colorist.” “What used to look like a Yorkshire moor in November,” he wrote of the scenery surrounding Adam, “is now shown to be a splendid landscape.”23
Still, few would disagree with Beck that Michelangelo the sculptor concerned himself more with design than with color. Indeed, the artist expressed his especial contempt for those who worked in oils, the domain of the “lazy” artist.24 Accordingly, Michelangelo completed few paintings and, prior to his efforton the Sistine, could boast of no commissions in fresco. Even so, evidence uncovered during the ceiling’s restoration has provided insight into how the artist ingeniously adapted his sculptural style to the demands of an unfamiliar medium.
Vasari claimed that Michelangelo had sufficient motivation “to aim very high for the sake of his own reputation.”25 The artist’s contemporaries, jealous of his supremacy in sculpture but seeing his “deficiency” in painting and color, were eager to distract him from working in marble. Hoping to drive him despairing from Rome, rival artists apparently convinced Pope Julius to compel him to paint the ceiling. Though Michelangelo only accepted the challenge reluctantly, he wisely sought advice from friends and experienced frescoists from Florence. And there is little doubt that he drew upon early training he received in the workshop of his esteemed teacher, Florentine painter and master frescoist Domenico Ghirlandaio.
According to Sistine restorer Gianluigi Colalluci, the cleaned ceiling vindicates Michelangelo’s reputation as a rigorous craftsman who upheld the “purest Florentine tradition.” Following the technique in which he was trained, Michelangelo painted almost exclusively abuon fresco.26 To be sure, a secco retouching had been called “a weak and cowardly thing” by Vasari,27 especially to the extent postulated by Beck. And Michelangelo was anything but timid: the cleaning of the lunettes has shown that he possessed a sculptor’s boldness, completing each in just three giornate,or days’ work,28 and painting so furiously that hog’s bristles from his brush were found adhering to Roboam, one of Christ’s ancestors.29
Since the cleaning, evidence of the sculptor’s hand can be seen everywhere. Noted examples include the exquisite heads of the Ancestors Zorobabel, Abiud, and Eliachim. Indeed, the late Fabrizio Mancinelli, director of the Vatican’s restoration team, saw in these countenances brushstrokes echoing the marks of Michelangelo’s chisel.30 But Mancinelli conceded that much of the artist’s work on the ceiling amounted to little more than a sketch. Judging by his time constraints and the speed with which he worked — and the 60-foot distance from which the ceiling would be viewed — Mancinelli hypothesized that Michelangelo deliberately left large areas unfinished. Though many of the details had been carefully completed, the ceiling, like so much of Michelangelo’s work, remains non finito.
Mancinelli likened the spontaneity of Michelangelo’s method to Impressionism,31 with the monumental Ancestors resembling “polychrome sculptures.” Instead of painting in chiaroscuro as Beck would have it, he brandished “planes of light” to articulate his figures and endow his frescoes with a “scupturesque” quality.32 Painting in “changeant hues,”33 or cangiantismo, Michelangelo used a technique whereby various colors are laid one atop another in sequence to create a shimmering, dimensional effect.34 Admittedly, this “new” Michelangelo appeals more directly to twentieth- and twenty-first century tastes than it would have to the artist’s contemporaries. But Temple University’s Marcia Hall believes that he also reflects a more authentic Renaissance, the “joyous and celebratory” spirit of humanist optimism that occurred in Rome during the papacy of Julius II.35
Several scholars have used the “new” colorito to revise the map of Michelangelo’s figural firmament. Hall identifies three Neoplatonic tiers of uniquely-colored denizens — Ancestors, Seers, and Genesis — each bearing hues corresponding to its relative remoteness from or affinity with God.36 Januszcak urges a reorientation away from the near-touch between Adam and his Maker and back to the ceiling’s most brilliant object and “true epicenter,” the golden sun created by God on the third day.37 And historian Ross King discerns more pedestrian purposes for Michelangelo’s colors: his reputation at stake, thrown into competition with the “splendid” masterpieces on the walls below, Michelangelo would not be outdone.38 Whatever the artist’s views about colors and the fools who used them, records indicate that he ordered only the best Florentine pigments.39
Would Michelangelo, then, really have covered this triomphe d’art with shadows and glue? If a conclusive answer to this disputation exists, no consensus has arisen among scholars thus far. And some, like British historian Paul Johnson, would give the question only minor consideration. Discrediting the supremacy of Michelangelo’s genius, Johnson regards the entire ceiling as an “overambitious failure.”40 But if, as the eighteenth-century scholar Sir Joshua Reynolds believed, Michelangelo instead spoke the “language of the gods,”41 then a comprehensive understanding of the artist’s intention shall forever remain the special province of the Divinity.
Indeed, the idea that one can categorically fix the signification of Michelangelo’s work upon the ceiling 442 years after his death is to founder in philosophical quicksand. The reality of the past is irretrievable, gone along with its self-contained total truth. All that remains is history: analysis and debate. But Michelangelo’s intent and his style need not completely coincide insofar as the word “style” can be broadly defined, and it is in this broader sense — despite his ultimate intention — that progress in our understanding has surely been made.
NOTES
1.Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, “Twenty-Five Questions About Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling.” Apollo, Vol. 126, Dec. 1987, 394.
2. Waldemar Januszczak, Sayonara, Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Restored and Repackaged. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1990, 43.
3. Ibid.
4. Eric Scigliano, “Inglorious Restorations.” (Harper’s, Vol. 311, No. 1863, 1 Aug. 2005, 61) [database on-line]; Available from ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
5. Beck is the founder of the watchdog organization ArtWatch International, Inc.
6. James Beck and Michael Daley, Art Restoration:The Culture, the Business, and the Scandal. (Norton Paperback edition 1996). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993, 84.
7. Ibid.
8. Nova: Saving the Sistine Chapel: The Controversial Restoration of Michelangelo’s Masterpiece. Written and produced bySusanne Simpson. 60 min. WGBH Educational Foundation, 1988, videocassette.
9. James Beck, “The Final Layer: ‘L’ultima mano’ on Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling.” Art Bulletin, LXX, 1988, 503.
10. Ibid., 502.
11. Ibid., 503.
12. Beck and Daley, Art Restoration, 85.
13. Ibid., 102.
14. Brandt, “Twenty-Five Questions,” 392.
15. Ibid., 399.
16. Ibid., 400.
17. Frederick Hartt, “‘L’ultima mano’ on the Sistine Ceiling.” Art Bulletin,LXXI, 1989, 508.
18. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists Volume I. A selection translated by George Bull. (Original work published 1568). New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1987, 353.
19. Hartt, “‘L’ultima mano,’” 508
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 509.
23. Ibid., 11.
24. Joseph Manca, “Michelangelo as Painter: A Historiographic Perspective.” Artibus et Historiae,Vol. 16, No. 31, 1995, 117.
25. Vasari, Lives of the Artists Volume I, 351.
26. Gianluigi Colalucci, “Michel-Angelo’s Colours Rediscovered.” The Sistine Chapel: The Art, the History, and the Restoration. Edited by Massimo Giacometti. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1986, 261.
27. Ibid., 261.
28. Ibid.
29. Fabrizio Mancinelli, “Michelangelo at Work.” The Sistine Chapel: The Art, the History, and the Restoration. Edited by Massimo Giacometti. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1986, 258.
30. Ibid., 238.
31. Ibid., 236.
32. Ibid., 253.
33. Manca, “Michelangelo as Painter,” 118.
34. Marcia B. Hall, Rizzoli Art Series: Michelangelo: The Sistine Ceiling Restored, ed. Norma Broude. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1993. 8.
35. Ibid., 9.
36. Ibid., 8.
37. Januszczak, Sayonara, Michelangelo, 158.
38. Ross King, Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling. New York: Walker and Company, 2003, 122.
39. Ibid., 124.
40.Bruce Cole, “A Conversation with Paul Johnson.” (Life Through Art’s Prism,2005) [database on-line]; Available from ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
41. Januszczak, Sayonara, Michelangelo, 158.
WORKS CITED
Beck, James and Michael Daley. Art Restoration: The Culture, the Business, and the Scandal. (Norton Paperback edition 1996). New York: W. W. Norton &Company, 1993.
Beck, James. “The Final Layer: ‘L’ultima mano’ on Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling.” Art Bulletin, LXX, 1988, 502–503.
Colalucci, Gianluigi. “Michel-Angelo’s Colours Rediscovered.” The Sistine Chapel: The Art, the History, and the Restoration. Edited by Massimo Giacometti. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1986.
Cole, Bruce. “A Conversation with Paul Johnson.” Life Through Art’s Prism, 2005. Database on-line. Available from ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
Hall, Marcia B. Rizzoli Art Series: Michelangelo: The Sistine Ceiling Restored, ed. Norma Broude. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1993.
Hartt, Frederick. “‘L’ultima mano’ on the Sistine Ceiling.” Art Bulletin,LXXI, 1989, 508–509.
Januszczak, Waldemar. Sayonara, Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Restored and Repackaged. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1990.
King, Ross. Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling. New York: Walker and Company, 2003.
Manca, Joseph. “Michelangelo as Painter: A Historiographic Perspective.” Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 16, No.31, 1995, 111–123.
Mancinelli, Fabrizio. “Michelangelo at Work.” The Sistine Chapel: The Art, the History, and the Restoration. Edited by Massimo Giacometti. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1986.
Nova: Saving the Sistine Chapel: The Controversial Restoration of Michelangelo’s Masterpiece. Written and produced by Susanne Simpson. 60 min. WGBH Educational Foundation, 1988, videocassette.
Scigliano, Eric. “Inglorious Restorations.” Harper’s, Vol. 311, No. 1863, 1 Aug. 2005, 61. Database on-line. Available from ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Artists: Volume I. A selection translated by George Bull. (Original work published 1568). New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1987.
Weil-Garris Brandt, Kathleen. “Twenty-Five Questions About Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling.” Apollo, Vol. 126, Dec. 1987, 392–400.
The restoration’s greatest stylistic revelation has also been the source of its greatest controversy. Painted for Pope Julius II between 1508 and 1512, the ceiling had been obscured for centuries by accumulations of dirt, smoke, candle wax, water damage, and old repairs. And according to Vatican records, misguided attempts to redefine and brighten the frescoes had led earlier restorers to overpaint parts of Michelangelo’s original work, and to apply layers of animal glue that had darkened with time.1 After analysis revealed that bits of pigment were pulling away from the ceiling’s surface, the Vatican set to work on the largest and most controversial art restoration project in history. In 1980, buoyed by funding from Japan’s Nippon Television, the Vatican began uncovering what nobody had expected: bright, bold colors.2
In 1990, British art critic Waldemar Januszczak enthusiastically observed Michelangelo’s “outrageous color.”3 More pessimistically, writer Eric Scigliano has described the frescoes’ new look as “Michelangelo on Prozac.”4 But the Sistine project’s most vociferous critic has been the American Michelangelo expert James Beck, professor of Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture at Columbia University.5 Beck argues that Michelangelo, in considering himself a sculptor primarily concerned with form, is said to have condemned as “simpletons” those who would nurture a taste for bright colors.6 Despising those “poor artists [who] cloak their poor technique with ... colour [sic],”7Beck maintains that Michelangelo strove to achieve a monochromatic effect in an effort to simulate sculpture.
Hoping to create a dark, brooding, enigmatic array to match his own melancholy temperament, the artist veiled the entire ceiling with a unifying layer of glue and applied extensive chiaroscuro retouches. In the process of cleaning and repairing the ceiling, the Vatican’s restorers have inadvertently removed Michelangelo’s own so-called finishing touch, or l’ultima mano. According to Beck, what has been done to the frescoes is a “violation of [Michelangelo’s] intention.”8 The Vatican, Beck insists, has made the “fatal mistake”9 of misinterpreting the Italian expression l’ultima mano to mean merely “touch-ups.” Evidence to support this argument centers around Beck’s construal of what Michelangelo’s sixteenth-century biographers, Ascanio Condivi and Giorgio Vasari, meant by their use of the phrase. According to Beck, these occurrences should be interpreted as “final coat” or “final layer.”10
Based on this reading, Beck extrapolates further action that he believes must have been taken by Michelangelo sometime after the ceiling had been completed a buon fresco (painted in wet plaster) and the scaffold had been removed. Certainly after some unrecorded interval — but long enough for a layer of soot to collect — the artist reconstructed his scaffold in order to finish the ceiling to his satisfaction. After applying two or three coats of hot glue to prepare the surface for a secco painting (painting in dry plaster), Michelangelo bestowed his previously drawn figures with a heightened sense of gravity by modeling deep shadows in tempera.11
To illustrate his theory, Beck obtained photographs from the Vatican that show various post-restoration figures from Michelangelo’s ceiling. Though all appear somewhat flattened when compared to images of their pre-restoration counterparts, the most dramatic changes can be seen in the figure of the Prophet Jonah (see Fig. 1). Jonah, looking particularly abused, has apparently lost all of the subtleties of Michelangelo’s shading after a thorough scrubbing by overzealous restorers. Recoiling in horror, American muralist Frank Mason called the sight “unbearable,” believing along with Beck that the figure’s tonal range and features of its anatomy have been irrevocably destroyed.12
The implication of Beck’s position is clear: that the restoration team acted incompetently and with unnecessary haste. But Beck goes further, accusing a tourist-hungry Vatican of authorizing the cleaning in an attempt to “re-present a masterpiece from another century according to the standards of our own transitory time.”13 In pandering to the taste of a public accustomed to the instant gratification of McDonald’s, the graphic quality of Disney cartoons, and the bright color palette of Matisse and Mondrian, the Vatican has re-created Michelangelo in the image of the lowest common denominator.
Harsh criticism such as this, leveled against the Vatican by Beck and other opponents, has been so completely rejected by the majority of experts that condemnation has sometimes degenerated into open ridicule. Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, professor of fine arts at New York University, has discarded Beck’s theory as “the wild [cry] of some ferocious mutant of Chicken Little.”14 In addition, Brandt summarized the majority of experts’ conclusions: the “dazzling chromatic display”15 that had recently been uncovered does indeed represent what Michelangelo intended. Explaining away Beck’s photographs as distorted reproductions, Brandt described his indignation as mere “culture shock.” The critics, she argued, were nursing a betrayal of their lifelong experience and mourning their commitment to a Michelangelo who no longer exists.16
But what of “l’ultima mano,” Michelangelo’s a secco overpainting and layers of hot glue? The late Michelangelo expert Frederick Hartt of the University of Virginia accused Beck of projecting his own twentieth-century translation of the phrase “backward over the Renaissance.”17 Citing five Italian dictionaries and the opinion of an eminent Italian language scholar, Hartt demonstrated that both Condivi and Vasari could only have meant “touch-ups.” Moreover, both biographers reported that the impatience of the pontiff forced Michelangelo to work quickly and under pressure. And though His Holiness had wanted the artist to add ornamentation in gold and ultramarine after the scaffold had been removed and the ceiling had been shown to the public, he successfully dodged the request. “Michelangelo,” wrote Vasari, “lacked the patience to rebuild the scaffolding, and so the ceiling stayed as it was.”18
Hartt believed that Michelangelo just didn’t have time to perform “Operation Glue,”19 and even if he did, he never would have been so careless as to neglect to wash off the intervening layer of soot.20 Hartt also reminded Beck that the glue had been applied to the ceiling over later repairs in an uneven and patchy fashion, leaving whole areas of fresco untouched.21 But Michelangelo would have also been aware that animal glue darkens, and he knew that its use would completely corrupt his colors within the span of twenty years.22 Hartt was therefore convinced that the Vatican’s restoration had revealed the subtle, sensitive, and imaginative work of an “influential colorist.” “What used to look like a Yorkshire moor in November,” he wrote of the scenery surrounding Adam, “is now shown to be a splendid landscape.”23
Still, few would disagree with Beck that Michelangelo the sculptor concerned himself more with design than with color. Indeed, the artist expressed his especial contempt for those who worked in oils, the domain of the “lazy” artist.24 Accordingly, Michelangelo completed few paintings and, prior to his efforton the Sistine, could boast of no commissions in fresco. Even so, evidence uncovered during the ceiling’s restoration has provided insight into how the artist ingeniously adapted his sculptural style to the demands of an unfamiliar medium.
Vasari claimed that Michelangelo had sufficient motivation “to aim very high for the sake of his own reputation.”25 The artist’s contemporaries, jealous of his supremacy in sculpture but seeing his “deficiency” in painting and color, were eager to distract him from working in marble. Hoping to drive him despairing from Rome, rival artists apparently convinced Pope Julius to compel him to paint the ceiling. Though Michelangelo only accepted the challenge reluctantly, he wisely sought advice from friends and experienced frescoists from Florence. And there is little doubt that he drew upon early training he received in the workshop of his esteemed teacher, Florentine painter and master frescoist Domenico Ghirlandaio.
According to Sistine restorer Gianluigi Colalluci, the cleaned ceiling vindicates Michelangelo’s reputation as a rigorous craftsman who upheld the “purest Florentine tradition.” Following the technique in which he was trained, Michelangelo painted almost exclusively abuon fresco.26 To be sure, a secco retouching had been called “a weak and cowardly thing” by Vasari,27 especially to the extent postulated by Beck. And Michelangelo was anything but timid: the cleaning of the lunettes has shown that he possessed a sculptor’s boldness, completing each in just three giornate,or days’ work,28 and painting so furiously that hog’s bristles from his brush were found adhering to Roboam, one of Christ’s ancestors.29
Since the cleaning, evidence of the sculptor’s hand can be seen everywhere. Noted examples include the exquisite heads of the Ancestors Zorobabel, Abiud, and Eliachim. Indeed, the late Fabrizio Mancinelli, director of the Vatican’s restoration team, saw in these countenances brushstrokes echoing the marks of Michelangelo’s chisel.30 But Mancinelli conceded that much of the artist’s work on the ceiling amounted to little more than a sketch. Judging by his time constraints and the speed with which he worked — and the 60-foot distance from which the ceiling would be viewed — Mancinelli hypothesized that Michelangelo deliberately left large areas unfinished. Though many of the details had been carefully completed, the ceiling, like so much of Michelangelo’s work, remains non finito.
Mancinelli likened the spontaneity of Michelangelo’s method to Impressionism,31 with the monumental Ancestors resembling “polychrome sculptures.” Instead of painting in chiaroscuro as Beck would have it, he brandished “planes of light” to articulate his figures and endow his frescoes with a “scupturesque” quality.32 Painting in “changeant hues,”33 or cangiantismo, Michelangelo used a technique whereby various colors are laid one atop another in sequence to create a shimmering, dimensional effect.34 Admittedly, this “new” Michelangelo appeals more directly to twentieth- and twenty-first century tastes than it would have to the artist’s contemporaries. But Temple University’s Marcia Hall believes that he also reflects a more authentic Renaissance, the “joyous and celebratory” spirit of humanist optimism that occurred in Rome during the papacy of Julius II.35
Several scholars have used the “new” colorito to revise the map of Michelangelo’s figural firmament. Hall identifies three Neoplatonic tiers of uniquely-colored denizens — Ancestors, Seers, and Genesis — each bearing hues corresponding to its relative remoteness from or affinity with God.36 Januszcak urges a reorientation away from the near-touch between Adam and his Maker and back to the ceiling’s most brilliant object and “true epicenter,” the golden sun created by God on the third day.37 And historian Ross King discerns more pedestrian purposes for Michelangelo’s colors: his reputation at stake, thrown into competition with the “splendid” masterpieces on the walls below, Michelangelo would not be outdone.38 Whatever the artist’s views about colors and the fools who used them, records indicate that he ordered only the best Florentine pigments.39
Would Michelangelo, then, really have covered this triomphe d’art with shadows and glue? If a conclusive answer to this disputation exists, no consensus has arisen among scholars thus far. And some, like British historian Paul Johnson, would give the question only minor consideration. Discrediting the supremacy of Michelangelo’s genius, Johnson regards the entire ceiling as an “overambitious failure.”40 But if, as the eighteenth-century scholar Sir Joshua Reynolds believed, Michelangelo instead spoke the “language of the gods,”41 then a comprehensive understanding of the artist’s intention shall forever remain the special province of the Divinity.
Indeed, the idea that one can categorically fix the signification of Michelangelo’s work upon the ceiling 442 years after his death is to founder in philosophical quicksand. The reality of the past is irretrievable, gone along with its self-contained total truth. All that remains is history: analysis and debate. But Michelangelo’s intent and his style need not completely coincide insofar as the word “style” can be broadly defined, and it is in this broader sense — despite his ultimate intention — that progress in our understanding has surely been made.
NOTES
1.Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, “Twenty-Five Questions About Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling.” Apollo, Vol. 126, Dec. 1987, 394.
2. Waldemar Januszczak, Sayonara, Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Restored and Repackaged. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1990, 43.
3. Ibid.
4. Eric Scigliano, “Inglorious Restorations.” (Harper’s, Vol. 311, No. 1863, 1 Aug. 2005, 61) [database on-line]; Available from ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
5. Beck is the founder of the watchdog organization ArtWatch International, Inc.
6. James Beck and Michael Daley, Art Restoration:The Culture, the Business, and the Scandal. (Norton Paperback edition 1996). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993, 84.
7. Ibid.
8. Nova: Saving the Sistine Chapel: The Controversial Restoration of Michelangelo’s Masterpiece. Written and produced bySusanne Simpson. 60 min. WGBH Educational Foundation, 1988, videocassette.
9. James Beck, “The Final Layer: ‘L’ultima mano’ on Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling.” Art Bulletin, LXX, 1988, 503.
10. Ibid., 502.
11. Ibid., 503.
12. Beck and Daley, Art Restoration, 85.
13. Ibid., 102.
14. Brandt, “Twenty-Five Questions,” 392.
15. Ibid., 399.
16. Ibid., 400.
17. Frederick Hartt, “‘L’ultima mano’ on the Sistine Ceiling.” Art Bulletin,LXXI, 1989, 508.
18. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists Volume I. A selection translated by George Bull. (Original work published 1568). New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1987, 353.
19. Hartt, “‘L’ultima mano,’” 508
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 509.
23. Ibid., 11.
24. Joseph Manca, “Michelangelo as Painter: A Historiographic Perspective.” Artibus et Historiae,Vol. 16, No. 31, 1995, 117.
25. Vasari, Lives of the Artists Volume I, 351.
26. Gianluigi Colalucci, “Michel-Angelo’s Colours Rediscovered.” The Sistine Chapel: The Art, the History, and the Restoration. Edited by Massimo Giacometti. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1986, 261.
27. Ibid., 261.
28. Ibid.
29. Fabrizio Mancinelli, “Michelangelo at Work.” The Sistine Chapel: The Art, the History, and the Restoration. Edited by Massimo Giacometti. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1986, 258.
30. Ibid., 238.
31. Ibid., 236.
32. Ibid., 253.
33. Manca, “Michelangelo as Painter,” 118.
34. Marcia B. Hall, Rizzoli Art Series: Michelangelo: The Sistine Ceiling Restored, ed. Norma Broude. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1993. 8.
35. Ibid., 9.
36. Ibid., 8.
37. Januszczak, Sayonara, Michelangelo, 158.
38. Ross King, Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling. New York: Walker and Company, 2003, 122.
39. Ibid., 124.
40.Bruce Cole, “A Conversation with Paul Johnson.” (Life Through Art’s Prism,2005) [database on-line]; Available from ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
41. Januszczak, Sayonara, Michelangelo, 158.
WORKS CITED
Beck, James and Michael Daley. Art Restoration: The Culture, the Business, and the Scandal. (Norton Paperback edition 1996). New York: W. W. Norton &Company, 1993.
Beck, James. “The Final Layer: ‘L’ultima mano’ on Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling.” Art Bulletin, LXX, 1988, 502–503.
Colalucci, Gianluigi. “Michel-Angelo’s Colours Rediscovered.” The Sistine Chapel: The Art, the History, and the Restoration. Edited by Massimo Giacometti. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1986.
Cole, Bruce. “A Conversation with Paul Johnson.” Life Through Art’s Prism, 2005. Database on-line. Available from ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
Hall, Marcia B. Rizzoli Art Series: Michelangelo: The Sistine Ceiling Restored, ed. Norma Broude. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1993.
Hartt, Frederick. “‘L’ultima mano’ on the Sistine Ceiling.” Art Bulletin,LXXI, 1989, 508–509.
Januszczak, Waldemar. Sayonara, Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Restored and Repackaged. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1990.
King, Ross. Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling. New York: Walker and Company, 2003.
Manca, Joseph. “Michelangelo as Painter: A Historiographic Perspective.” Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 16, No.31, 1995, 111–123.
Mancinelli, Fabrizio. “Michelangelo at Work.” The Sistine Chapel: The Art, the History, and the Restoration. Edited by Massimo Giacometti. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1986.
Nova: Saving the Sistine Chapel: The Controversial Restoration of Michelangelo’s Masterpiece. Written and produced by Susanne Simpson. 60 min. WGBH Educational Foundation, 1988, videocassette.
Scigliano, Eric. “Inglorious Restorations.” Harper’s, Vol. 311, No. 1863, 1 Aug. 2005, 61. Database on-line. Available from ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Artists: Volume I. A selection translated by George Bull. (Original work published 1568). New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1987.
Weil-Garris Brandt, Kathleen. “Twenty-Five Questions About Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling.” Apollo, Vol. 126, Dec. 1987, 392–400.
posted by Michael K at 12:56 am
0 comments
