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The Sistine Ceiling Restored

Name: The Sistine Ceiling Restored
Author: Michael Hirst
ISBN: 9780810938403

by Michael Hirst

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Overview

Michelangelo's creation of the monumental frescoes in the Sistine Chapel marked a revolutionary event in the history of Western art. However, our understanding and appreciation of their great importance has been seriously compromised by five hundred years of candle soot, incense smoke, dirt, and restorers' glues and varnishes. Now, another revolutionary event has occurred: a nine-year restoration, carried out by experts at the Vatican Museums, has finally made the original vivid colors of Michelangelo's astonishing paintings visible once again. Grimy blue grays have geven way to luminous reds, oranges, yellows, greens, azures, and purples. It is now abundantly clear that Michelangelo's mastery of color equalled his abilities as a draftsman, sculptor, and architect.

In this book, the overwhelming beauty of the Sistine Ceiling frescoes is captured in nearly three hundred photographs taken by Takashi Okamura. The reader can pore over views of the entire Ceiling, individual panels showing such scenes as the Creation of Adam and the Deluge, and detail after gorgeous detail of prophets, sibyls, nudes, and other stunning figures.

Accompanying the photographs are nine authoritative essays by an international group of scholars and other experts who examine a wide variety of issues raised by the restoration: the fresco-painting techniques Michelangelo employed; his use of color to create three dimensional form; the question of work done by assistants; the role of drawings and a study of Michelangelo's drafting techniques; the meaning of the images and the expressive ability of the many poses and figures assume. Also included are a chapter on the construction of the Chapel, which incorporates new information gained during the cleaning, and one on the restoration, currently underway, of Michelangelo's Last Judgement.

The Sistine Ceiling has long been recognized as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. This book makes its newly restored beauty accessible to all.

Michelangelo's creation of the monumental frescos in the Sistine Chapel marked a revolutionary event in Western art. Now, another revolutionary event has occurred: a nine-year restoration, carried out by experts at the Vatican Museums and described and illustrated in this incredible work. 312 illustrations, 293 in full color; gatefold.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Completed earlier this year, the lengthy and painstaking restoration of Michelangelo's 16th-century frescoes in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel removed layers of soot, varnish and grime, revealing his hidden intents, clarity of form and harmonious color schemes. Featuring nearly 300 color photographs by Takashi Okamura, this impressive album documents the restored ceiling and wall frescoes--depicting biblical scenes, the prophets and sibyls and the Last Judgment --in all their primordial force. Specialized, academic essays by 10 Italian, British and American art historians, curators and restorers investigate the construction of the Chapel over a medieval building on the same site, Michelangelo's preparatory drawings, his use of color, the sources of imagery for the costumes worn by the Ancestors of Christ, etc. Hirst is professor of art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. (June)

Library Journal

The imprecise title of this splendidly illustrated volume on the recent unveiling of Michelangelo's restored Last Judgment should not be allowed to misdirect the potential reader as to its content. With minimal exception, its subject is the aesthetic miracle called back to life by the restoration of Michelangelo's ceiling fresco. Complementing the many excellent reproductions are apposite fragments of biblical text, a 16th-century commentary on the work, and pithy iconographical observations. The text itself consists of nine scholarly essays engendered in part by the revelation of the restored masterwork. In addition to those studies focusing on various technical and documentary aspects of the chapel and its paintings, others provide real-if not always pellucid-insights into the artist's figurative language and his achievement as a colorist. The quality and quantity of the illustrations alone, however, are sufficient to warrant recommendation to all fine arts collections.-Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York

Brad Hooper

Nine years in duration, the elaborate restoration of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes was one of the major events in recent art history. Not executed without controversy, the restoration renewed the vivid colors of Michelangelo's greatest work--in fact, caused a reevaluation in the minds of art historians of the master's use of color. (The controversy centered on concern that restorers had taken off "too much" of the accumulated overlay of the ages and that maybe Michelangelo had himself surfaced the frescoes with a layering of varnish "meant" to subdue the vibrant coloring.) Approximately 300 photographs of the restored frescoes are brilliantly presented here, a visual enticement to enjoy the original color as well as the form and the composition of these spectacular works. Accompanying the perfect reproductions are nine essays by specialists discussing such topics as Michelangelo's preparatory drawings for the figures in the frescoes, the plaster and pigment techniques he employed, the issue of whether he used assistants or not, and his use of color. This magnificent, celebratory book--of both the frescoes and their restoration--belongs in every active art-history collection.