An Irishman's Diary

NOT MANY people know that an Irishman painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. No, of course I don't mean the original ceiling. As you've probably heard, that was by a chap named Michelangelo. It's the 1965 job I'm referring to, when a full-scale model had to be created at the Cinecittá Studios in Rome, for Carol Reed's film The Agony and the Ecstasy.

There could be no question of letting a film crew into the real place. Besides which, they needed shots of the ceiling before and after Michelangelo (played by Charlton Heston) worked his magic. Thus the masterpiece had to be painted anew. And among those responsible for doing it was one Niccolo D’Ardia Caracciolo.

He doesn’t sound very Irish, it’s true. Even so, he was born in Dublin, and his mother was a Fitzgerald from Waterford. He was a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, exhibiting regularly. And although he died 22 years ago in Italy, where his paternal family came from, he is buried in Ireland, at Bunclody, Co Wexford.

Furthermore, he still has a sister living here: Maria Levinge (nee Caracciolo), a painter herself, who was taught much of what she knows by Niccolo. Her latest exhibition opens in the Jorgensen Gallery in Dublin on February 16th.

THE CARACCIOLOScan thus perhaps share a little of the reflected glory from 2012's most important art anniversary. This coming autumn, it will be exactly 500 years since Michelangelo came down off his scaffolding in the Vatican, the original masterpiece complete. Half a millennium later, people are still gaping at his finished work in awe.

Which is just as well, because unlike few painters before or since, Michelangelo had suffered for his art. He suffered more than Charlton Heston did too. Although in some ways unduly faithful to its subject – some reviewers thought it more like an illustrated art lecture than drama – Reed’s film helped propagate one enduring myth: that during the four years it took him to paint the ceiling, Michelangelo had been lying down on the job.

On the contrary, art historians assure us, the real-life protagonist did it standing up, his head crooked at a severe angle, arms and shoulders aching and occasionally in spasms of pain.

Happily for Pope Julius II, who had pressured him into accepting the commission, the concept of repetitive strain injury had not yet taken hold in workplaces then. The ceiling job permanently damaged Michelangelo’s eyesight, at least; although, on the plus side, his reputation emerged not only intact but enhanced, an outcome he himself had doubted.

When he started in the chapel, Michelangelo was hardly a painter at all. He was a sculptor, with such masterworks as the statue of David and the Pietàalready to his credit. The Vatican's commission was, he feared, a plot concocted by rivals to ensure he failed not only publicly but on an epic scale.

It didn’t help that, as well as having to paint a curved ceiling in such a way that made sense to eyes looking at it from 65 feet below, he also had to grapple with a (for him) new technique of painting on fresh plaster.

For this and other reasons, the work was painfully slow. The plaster became infected with mould at one stage and had to be chipped off and begun anew. But he learned from his mistakes, and sped up eventually. When the finished work was unveiled in October 1512, nobody was in any doubt about its greatness.

There were plenty of doubts in 1994 when the ceiling re-emerged to public view after a decade of restoration. Like many people who have visited it since, I was amazed at how bright the 500-year-old colours were. It was as if the restorers had touched up the original using all the latest products from the Dulux catalogue. And if you had seen it before the clean-up, apparently, the transformation was almost shocking.

The restorers insisted that, in removing five centuries of grime, they had merely uncovered the work as its creator left it. Certain experts strongly disagreed.

There were suggestions that the cleaning agents used had in fact brightened the colours, making the painting gaudier than Michelangelo ever intended. But in some cases, there was also a philosophical issue involved.

One of the fiercest critics was, in general, opposed to such cleaning work. “A thing that’s 500 years old is 500 years old,” he wrote in 1994. “Things happen to objects, surface accrues. When you take off that accrued surface, it’s never the same [. . .] All works of art have the inalienable right to live an honorable life and, when necessary, to die a dignified death.”

As of now, of course, surface is again accruing on the ceiling. So if it’s not an accurate representation at the moment, maybe some time over the next 500 years, Michelangelo’s masterpiece will get back to its old self.

In the meantime, it offers one great advantage to admirers compared with works of similar fame. Uncomfortable as it may be to stare at for any great length, at least there are never any other people in your way.