Word: giovannoni
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Dates: during 1976-1976
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...sepulchral chamber hidden beneath Florence's Medici Chapel, accessible only through a trap door and a winding staircase, Sabino Giovannoni scraped away at the accumulated layers of soot, grime and whitewash. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the face of a woman began to emerge, a primeval woman who looked remarkably like the Eve in the Sistine Chapel. After several hours, Giovannoni telephoned Medici Chapels Director Paolo dal Poggetto. "Come over quickly," he said. "We've got something important here...
...lavamani had traces of various 16th century sketches under its old whitewash. The other had a trap door in its floor leading to a long, narrow storeroom. Perhaps, Dal Poggetto thought, the storeroom could become another exit to the street. But before digging into the walls, he assigned Restorer Giovannoni to take "soundings" by scratching away a few test layers of whitewash...
...What Giovannoni found was that Michelangelo had evidently used the walls as a big doodling sheet, filling them with visual reflections on projects past and to come. They appear to be: a sketch for the legs of Duke Giuliano, a risen Christ striding forward from a wall by the staircase, a figure of Zacharias writing the name of John the Baptist on a tablet at the prompting of an angel, a memory of the Laocoon-the great Hellenistic figure group that had so impressed Michelangelo when he saw it, newly dug up from a vineyard, in Rome. Though...
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