LIFE: THE SISTINE CHAPEL

ROME, Italy - It’s not an exaggeration to say that a visit to the Sistine Chapel is a moving experience. Of all the museums at the Vatican, it is the most popular. About 25,000 people a day, five million people a year, visit the Chapel.

Entrance to the Sistine Chapel

First time visitors may be a little surprised by its size. It’s comparatively small, but when you look up for your first glimpse of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, all thoughts of size are forgotten.

At first, all you see is a jumble of color, after all the famous ceiling is 60 feet above your head. But then, after a second or two, the images start to come into focus. What you are looking at is 1,200 square feet of more than 300 individual figures, and over 150 separate pictorial works that come together to tell a story.

 Michelangelo

The chapel was originally called the Cappella Magna, and was renamed Cappella Sistina in 1480 after Pope Sixtus IV had it restored. In 1482, the Pope called together a team of Renaissance painters, including Sandro Botticelli, to create a series of frescos showing the Life of Moses and the Life of Christ. Above the frescoes they painted a set of papal portraits, and the ceiling was painted a brilliant blue, with a sprinkling of yellow stars.

Twenty-four years later, when there was a new pope, Julius lI, the ceiling cracked. Julius had it repaired, but then he decided to have it repainted, and he chose Michelangelo for the job. The Pope wanted to do away with the blue ceiling with yellow stars, and decorate it with the figures of the 12 apostles. In the middle section he wanted a design. He didn’t know what that design would be, however, he was sure he would figure it out by the time Michelangelo finished working on the apostles.

Portion of Sistine Chapel Ceiling

Michelangelo was furious. He was furious at being summoned, furious because he was a sculptor, not a painter and furious with the Pope’s suggestion to paint 12 apostles. It was a pathetic choice, he said, dull, ordinary and above all unworthy of the space.

In the end he knew he couldn’t turn down God’s representative on earth, after all it was the Pope’s private chapel, but he could insist on deciding what he would paint. He chose the Old Testament as his theme, and divided the space into sections. He planned to begin with three panels on the Creation.

 God Creating the Sun and the Moon

This was a risky choice because it meant painting the figure of God. No one had ever dared to paint God before, He had always been shown as a hand reaching through the clouds. As God has neither form or gender nor age, it was impossible to imagine how the artist was going to do this. It is also impossible to know how the he decided on the image of God, but it was Michelangelo who decided that God would have a muscular figure, long white hair and a white beard.

The artist knew he couldn’t show six full days of the Creation in three images, so he decided it was better to show the great events and leave the part about the fish, birds and animals to the viewer’s imagination. As he had to paint the story backwards, he began with God bringing order out of chaos, separating light from darkness

God Reaching Out to Adam

In the last image, he shows the first stages of creation: God separating the seas from the earth, and land from the sky, preparing the world for its final purpose, the creation of man. As God reaches out one life-giving finger to Adam, who is still half asleep, slowly lifts one drooping finger. It is enough. He will soon become fully alive both in mind and spirit.

It had taken Michelangelo four years to complete the ceiling and he thought his work was finished. But in 1535, a full 25 years later, much to his surprise, a new Pope, Pope Clement VII summoned him to return to the Sistine Chapel. He couldn’t imagine why.

The Prophet Jeremiah

Michelangelo was sixty years old, suffering with arthritis and not anxious to spend his last years clinging to a scaffold 50 feet in the air. The story that he had painted the ceiling of the Chapel lying down was simply a myth, but there was no denying the fact that it had been hard work. It turned out what the Pope wanted was for him to paint the Resurrection above the altar of the Chapel.

The trouble was that there already were frescoes behind the altar, and Michelangelo did not want to disturb them. He tried to negotiate his way out of the project, but history repeated itself as it often does, and in the end he gave in. As before, he did insist that the Pope agree to let him paint what he wanted in that space, and he wanted the Last Judgment.

The Last Judgment

It took five and a half years to complete the Last Judgment, but when a tired, and work weary Michelangelo stepped away for the last time, what he saw is what we see today, a Sistine Chapel transformed, a masterpiece that will live forever.

Copyright © 2016, Phyllis Macchioni

Photos: Holy See Press Office

LIFE: Sprucing Up the Sistine Chapel - Coincidence or ??

CHIAVARI, Italy – It might have been coincidence or maybe Pope Benedict knew the Sistine Chapel would soon be in the public eye again, but an order went out for the Sistine Chapel to be cleaned – all of it. It’s a project that involves more than calling in an ordinary cleaning crew with buckets and mops and putting them to work. Cleaning one of the greatest art treasures of all time is slightly more complicated than that.

 

 Antonio Paolucci, Director of the Vatican Museums

Thanks to modern technology, reaching the ceiling of the Chapel may be a little easier these days, but no less daunting than when Pope Julius II commissioned Michaelangel to paint the chapel ceiling in 1508. Michangelo and his assistants carried out the work with the help of a system of wooden scaffolds that had to be taken down, moved and reassembled as the work progressed. Today, a type of ‘cherry picker’ called a ‘spider’ has replaced the wooden scaffolds.  It’s four legs anchor securely to the floor as restorers and cleaners, armed with soft cloths, vacuum cleaners and brushes are lifted the 15 meters (about 50 feet) in the air bringing them face to face with Michaelangelo’s lunettes.

And that is how the dusting and cleaning of the Sistine Chapel’s two thousand five hundred square feet of painted surfaces began. It involved a dozen restorers of the Vatican Museums and two interns who later admitted how difficult it was to focus on just a few square inches of painting at a time and ignore where they were and the wonderfulness of the heavenly masterpiece of Michaelangelo around them.

The 'Spider'

Working only at night, the project took almost a month to complete, twenty nights to be exact. Historians have often wondered how long the first cleaning of the Chapel took, and how it was done. They do know that it was carried out by farm worker Francesco Amadori, who had been hired by the Farnese pope Paul III on 26 October 1543, which was exactly two years to the day that Michaelangelo had put the finishing touches to the Last Judgment.

One of Amador’s secrets was revealed in 1625, when gilder Simone Laghi was brought in to do some touch-up work in the Chapel. That is when he discovered that Amadori had carried out his assignment using a soft linen cloth and slightly moistened pieces of soft, crust-less bread.  

 

Cleaning Inch by Inch

Almost three hundred years and several botched restorations later, a painter, Francesco Podesti, was brought in to supervise a complete cleaning of the Sistine Chapel.  Podesti recommended that the frescoes be delicately cleaned using feather brushes, and if needed, soft wool, as they would not damage the colors, which during the intervening 300 years had been repeatedly covered with layers of linseed and walnut oil that had become as hard as enamel. The habit of covering the frescoes with oil, which began in an attempt to brighten the colors that had become dull by the dirt and smoke of the candles, was now replaced with the belief that a thorough cleaning was enough to preserve the frescoes without any other intervention.

The Chapel’s latest cleaning was a little more scientific in its scope. In addition to cleaning the walls, the crew also examine the consistency of the colors before them using a special ultra-violet lamp called a Wood’s lamp. This allowed them to see the extent of past restorations, touch-ups and over-painting that has been done. They also collected dust samples which were then sent to various scientific laboratories to be analyzed.

 

Cleaning the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

It was slow, tedious, back breaking work but no one complained. They all knew it was an honor and a privilege to be part of the team and everyone took their responsibilities very seriously. Their nights in the Sistine Chapel will be the fodder for many a story during their lifetimes, to be told over and over again, including the part about the party they threw for themselves when the cleaning of the hand of God that touches Adam infusing him with the breath of life was finished.

At the stroke of midnight, on the twentieth day, they took off their coveralls for the very last time, the ‘spider’ was closed and put away, and the Chapel emptied. Footsteps echoed along the deserted galleries of the Vatican Museums as the guards turned out the lights, closed the door and delivered the keys to the Sistine Chapel to the Clavigeri, the keepers of the keys.

 

 The Newly Cleaned Masterpiece

The Sistine Chapel was now ready to host the conclave to elect a new pope that would take place here less than two months later.

. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmNbecu1V6I  a PBS  video on Pope Leo X, the Medici pope who commissioned the painting of the Sistine Chapel. 

ON THE ROAD: Savory Savona

This is another in a series of monthly travel articles inspired by a New York Times article on 31 places to see in 2010. All of the towns on my list are in Italy, most are small, rich in history and art and for the most part off the beaten track which, for me, makes them all the more interesting.

SAVONA, Italy - Savona isn’t your typical Italian Riviera hotspot. It’s an old, serious, seafaring kind of place, not glamorous, not slick and not particularly tourist friendly either.

Savona Harbor

A few years ago you wouldn’t have given this town of 78,000 inhabitants a second glance as you sped along to, or from, the south of France. But things are different now. Savona has become a major kick off point for Costa Cruises, which means thousands of people are passing through town every week. It doesn't make the town any more glamourous, but then again Vicki, my eight year old sidekick and I are not looking for anything glamorous. We are on a mission. Her plan is to take photographs of what we see today and then write about them in a journal. My plan is to keep this curious little person out of trouble and sneak in a few photos myself.

Cathedral of Savona

Daniele, Vicki’s father, gives us a ride into town and drops us off near Piazza Sixtus IV. Before we head for Vicki’s favorite Savona site, the Pancaldo tower, I want to see the nearby Baroque Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta. It takes a little convincing to get Vicki to go in, but in the end she’s a pretty good sport about it, and she even manages to generate a little interest in the Renaissance wooden choir. But when I suggest visiting the Sistine chapel next door, she digs in her heels. The fact that two popes were born in nearby Albissola, Sixtus IV (1471-1484) and Julius II (1503-1513), and that it was Pope Sixtus IV who commissioned both Sistine Chapels, the one in Rome and the one next to the Cathedral in Savona, means nothing to her. It is not a battle I’m going to win.
We head back to Savona’s main street, Via Paleocapa, a long, 18th century porticoed street that runs from the harbor right through the heart of town. Along the way Vicki is taking pictures of everything that catches her eye, the tall look-out towers in the historic center, the soaring cactus that decorate the fronts of buildings, the miniature bronze cast of the town so the blind can see what the town looks like, the many boats docked in the harbor and the Leon Pancaldo Tower.

Via Paleocapa

Vicki is fascinated with Leon Pancaldo. Leon was about her age when he set sail with Ferdinand Magellan on his now famous expedition around the world. Leon was also one of 18 surviving sailors out of a crew of more than 200 who lived to talk it.

His stories of seeing a ‘camel without a hump,’ and a ‘black goose’ that had to be skinned instead of plucked left the locals thinking the trip had really done the poor boy in. But now we know he wasn’t daft, just one of the first Europeans to see a llama and a penguin when Magellen’s ship reached the most southern tip of South America, Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire.

Trattoria Vino and Farinata

Later that evening Vicki, her parents and I head back into the old town for dinner at Farinata and Vino. It’s a hot summer night and we are lucky we don’t have to wait very long inside the trattoria entrance where overheated cooks are pulling and pushing large round pans of farinata in and out of the blazing open oven. Our reservations are for 7 PM, uncommonly early for Italy, and they tell us have to be out by 8:30, also uncommon for Italy. But this is a happening place and they are booked to the max.
It’s the farinata that draws the crowds. Farinata is a simple dish of chickpea flour, water and olive oil baked into a thin pancake, and along with pesto, it is one of the major components of Liguria’s famed cucina povera. Vicki’s father orders another Ligurian summer specialty, room temperature minestrone with pesto while Tracy, Vicki’s mother, and I order fish. After a plateful of farinata, Vicki can barely manage to eat a shrimp or two from her mother’s plate. As we sit there I realize I can’t even count how many times over the past 18 years we have sat together like this and shared a meal.

Crowd in Vino and Farinata

The one place Vicki and I didn’t get to was the Fortezza del Priamar, an imposing stone fortress at the edge of the historic center. I think she would have liked walking through the massive fort, especially if I could have come up with a swashbuckling tale or two about the pirates who were held prisoners here.

Back in the 16th century when the Fortezza was built the Mediterranean Sea was not the playground of the rich and richer it is today, but a watery nest of marauding pirates and armed ships from rival city states looking to attack Savona. The fort stood strong for two hundred years, never challenged until the mid 1700’s when it was attacked by troops of the French Dukes of Savoy. The invading army won the battle and Savona was absorbed into the territories controlled by the Savoy, who would later become the Italy’s first, and last, royal family.

There is a grittiness to Savona that may not appeal to everyone but if you’re the type of person who likes to explore less touristy places, it may be just the town for you. What I like best about it is that there are no pretenses here. What you see is what you get.