Volume 34, Number 15 · October 8, 1987
Storm Over the Sistine Ceiling
By John Pope-Hennessy
The Sistine Chapel: The Art, the History, and the Restoration
text by Carlo Pietrangeli, by André Chastel, by John Shearman, by John O'Malley, by S. J., by Pierluigi de Vecchi, by Michael Hirst, by Fabrizio Mancinelli, by Gianluigi Colalucci, by Franco Bernabei
Harmony Books, 271 pp., $60.00
Visiting the Sistine Chapel nowadays is a strange experience. You hurry, as you have always done, the whole length of the Vatican building. 'Permesso, permesso,' you say, as you push aside coveys of Germans and Japanese in order to reach the chapel before it fills with tourists. If you are successful, you come in, as you have always done, through the little door under the Last Judgment and look up, speechless, at the rebellious Jonah, the melancholy Jeremiah, and the Libyan Sibyl heroically supporting her colossal book. But about half-way down the chapel is a scaffolding resting on rails along the walls, covered with mustardcolored fabric on which appear the shadows of ordinary mortals busily at work. Beyond it you look toward the Zechariah, the Joel, and the Delphic Sibyl, suffused with light and seemingly the work of another, more lively, more decorative artist.
Review, 4755 words
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