More than a quarter of a million photographs have been taken of Michelangelo and other masters' ceiling frescoes in a project ordered by the Vatican to digitally remap the Sistine chapel.
Photographers used 50 mega-pixel cameras to take 270,000 images of the 300 figures painted across 4,000 sq m of the chapel, in order to aid future restoration projects. The images have been joined together with software. Each photo covers an area of 30cm by 40cm and offers insights into the brushwork.
“In the future, this will allow us to know the state of every centimetre of the chapel as it is today, in 2017,” said Antonio Paolucci, former head of the museums and a world-renowned expert on the Sistine.
Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes include one of the most famous scenes in art: The Creation of Adam. The Renaissance master finished the ceiling in 1512 and painted the massive Last Judgment panel behind the altar between 1535 and 1541.
The Sistine frescoes were last photographed during a 14-year restoration project between 1980 and 1994 that saw them cleaned for the first time in centuries.
Photographers worked on the new images for 65 nights during the hours after the chapel closed to visitors and before the cleaners arrived at 2am. Their photographs have been published in a three-volume set of books that are limited to 1,999 copies and marketed to libraries and collectors.
The set, which costs about €12,000 (£10,000) and weights 26kg, is a joint production of the Vatican Museums and Italy’s Scripta Maneant art publishers.
“We used special post-production software to get the depth, intensity, warmth and nuance of colours to an accuracy of 99.9 per cent,” said Giorgio Armaroli, head of Scripta Maneant.
“Future restorers will use these as their standards,” he said, adding that each page was printed six times.
The Vatican will give scholars access to the database and has also supplied the images for a lifesize reconstruction of the Sistine chapel in Mexico.
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