Word: michelangelo
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...much noise has been raised against the cleaning that it comes almost as . an anticlimax to discover that most experts on Renaissance art, and on Michelangelo in particular, strongly endorse it and reject out of hand the antis' allegations of haste or insufficient study. The scholars and restorers who have visited the scaffolding seem to agree that the extreme care with which the work proceeds, the constant testing, the minute adjustment of the strength of the solution to the chemical and stratigraphic analysis of each portion of the fresco, is very far from the absurd impression of the restorers that...
Hence the controversy that has risen over the past few months as the Vatican's head restorer, Gianluigi Colalucci, and his team on the scaffold move toward the cleaning of the most famous image in Western art, Michelangelo's Creation of Adam...
...freshly laid sections of damp plaster -- the intonaco. When the plaster dries, the color is literally bonded in. Further touches may be put on a secco, on the dry plaster. The antis believe that some of the darkness of the Sistine ceiling and lunettes was put there by Michelangelo himself, in a dark wash of black pigment in glue size, brushed on after the fresco was dry to give more density to the figures and atmosphere to the space. They think this wash is being "indiscriminately" swabbed off along with the dirt. Beck claims that Colalucci and his team...
...Gallery of Art), having inspected the frescoes at the foundation's behest, reported in an open letter that the "new freshness of the colors and the clarity of the forms on the Sistine ceiling, totally in keeping with 16th century Italian painting, affirm the full majesty and splendor of Michelangelo's creation...
What weakens the antis' case is that they have not produced clear physical or documentary evidence that any of the glue and lampblack on the Sistine was put there by Michelangelo himself. James Beck cites a phrase in an account by Ascanio Condivi, a Renaissance biographer, about Michelangelo applying "so to speak, the ultima mano" (final touches) to the mighty fresco cycle; but Condivi did not say what medium these touches were in. Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), whose Lives of Italian artists is a fundamental source on the Sistine, describes how "Michelangelo desired to retouch some parts a secco, painting...