Last Saturday, in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI, the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican Buildings in Rome was inaugurated after seven years of restoration works. The architectonic setting has been restored according to the original 16th century plant and the frescoes – Michelangelo’s last pictorial labour before he started working exclusively on sculptures – have recovered their original colours and regained their antique splendour, thanks to a long and patient intervention which cost more than 3 million euros. During the restoration works it seems that a portrait of Michelangelo himself was identified among the faces depicted in a fresco. This is the firm opinion of Maurizio De Luca, inspector and chief restorer of the Vatican who expressed his theory at the end of the press conference, which was attended also by cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, Vatican governor, professor Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums – who used the occasion to praise the experience of the Vatican in the field of restoration and preservation of artistic heritage – and professor Arnold Nesselrath, in charge of the historical-artistic aspect of the restoration works. Apparently, the artist’s self-portrait has remained unknown for years among the many faces which crowd Saint Peter’s Crucifixion, a fresco which was realised between 1545 and 1550 after the spectacular fresco of Paul’s Conversion. According to De Luca, the great master’s face would correspond to the figure of “one of the 3 knights in the top right hand corner of the fresco wearing on his head a lapis lazuli blue turban with features that look a lot like other renowned faces of Michelangelo”. And then De Luca continued: “It was the turban on his head that made me think of the quarrymen and the stonemasons. Giuliano Bugiardini portrayed the master like this, with that turban on his head. From this intuition, during the restoration works I then understood that the artist painted that image in one single day. If the other knights portrayed are resolved in a bulky way, on the contrary this character was realised in a very detailed way, with his beard hairs painted one by one, giving the impression that Michelangelo wanted to leave an effigy”.
De Luca has been sustaining for a couple of years this hypothesis, which seemed plausible and convincing also to other professional experts who followed carefully the works, like Cristina Acidini, superintendent of the Florentine museum pole and some of the main experts of Michelangelo, Monsignor Timothy Verdon, Kathleen Brandt, Howard Burns, Christoph Luitpold Frommel, Michael Hirst and professor Giorgio Bonsanti, professor of technics and restoration at the university of Florence and former superintendent of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure. This is certainly not the only time that Buonarroti signed one of his masterpieces, camouflaging himself among the figures of a complex composition: this is confirmed by the famous Sistine Chapel where he appears as Saint Bartolomeo holding his own emptied and inconsistent corpse, wearing loose leather clothing with Michelangelo’s features. The same features are narrated in the works of other artists who represented the Renaissance genius (Daniele da Volterra, Giuliano Bugiardini, Iacopino del Conte, Lorenzo Lotto, Giambologna and Marcello Venusti); moreover the presence of headgear would be a further confirmation, given that it is the typical headgear of sculptors, used to protect themselves from dust.
The Pauline Chapel conceived in 1537 by Giuliano da Sangallo The Young, which served as the palace chapel (destined for the exhibition of the Holy Sacrament), was commissioned by Pope Paul III, to whom it owes its name. Michelangelo’s following frescoes generated immediate polemics with regard to the exceptionally old appearance of Paul and to the nudity and absence of nails on Peter’s Crucifixion. The restoration has given brightness back to the works, however it has not redeemed completely Michelangelo’s work, penalized by some subsequent interventions which the restorer De Luca would have gladly remedied: “Those nails are like three cockroaches. I believe that when something is ugly, it should be removed”, considering that, as all the academics know, originally the nails were not there. On the other hand Monsignor Paolo de Niccolò, Deputy of the Pontifical Prefecture specified: “They are pleonastic, as Saint Peter is immortalized in the moment when he is offering himself to be martyred. The restoration has preserved them because they are an element connected to the Crucifixion”. It has been pointed out that the Chapel will absolutely not be part of the Vatican’s museum circuit, therefore the question is whether this is enough to legitimize the faithlessness in the restoration of a detail realised by Michelangelo, following an iconic dictate preferred by the Church, the same that originally commissioned the work to Michelangelo. What has definitely not been betrayed, but rather cleaned from dark marks and dust, are the eyes and the lively expressions of the characters represented, intense and enthralling now like then.
|
Loading ...