Restoration of The Sistine Chapel Frescoes - Modern Restoration

Modern Restoration

The preliminary experimentation for the modern restoration began in 1979. The restoration team comprised Gianluigi Colalucci, Maurizio Rossi, Piergiorgio Bonetti, and others, who took as their guidelines the Rules for restoration of works of art as established in 1978 by Carlo Pietrangeli, director of the Vatican's Laboratory for the Restoration of Pictures, which govern the procedure and methods employed in restoration. An important part of modern restoration procedure, as established by these rules, is the study and analysis of the artwork. Part of this was the recording of every stage of the restoration process. This was done by the photographer Takashi Okamura for Nippon Television Network Corporation.

Between June 1980 and October 1984 the first stage of restoration, the work upon Michelangelo's lunettes, was achieved. The focus of the work then transferred to the ceiling, which was completed in December 1989 and from there to the Last Judgment. The restoration was unveiled by Pope John Paul II on 8 April 1994. The final stage was the restoration of the wall frescoes, approved in 1994 and unveiled on 11 December 1999.

Read more about this topic:  Restoration Of The Sistine Chapel Frescoes

Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or restoration:

    The experience of the gangster as an experience of art is universal to Americans. There is almost nothing we understand better or react to more readily or with quicker intelligence.... In ways that we do not easily or willingly define, the gangster speaks for us, expressing that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life, which rejects “Americanism” itself.
    Robert Warshow (1917–1955)

    Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.
    Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)