A Successful Restoration

For it's great restoration and conservation project, the Vatican brought together an international team of some of the greatest restorers, cleaners, conservationists, and art historians of the time. This team put everything they had into it, and twelve years later in 1992, their hard work was revealed to the public. The team and the Vatican announced that the restoration of the Sistine Chapel was a success and that the chapel was in it's full glory. However, while the team pronounced it a success, they had to defend every single one of their actions to a group who felt the restoration was a complete diaster. To defend what they had accomplished, the team that worked on the frescoes laid out their process, in detail, and allowed all critics to come and examine their records. Their records were found to be consise and clear, and all tests were documented. The following are highlights from their report.




Goals of the Restoration Project

  1. Fixing and consolidating the work materials.
  2. Recovery and restoration of pictorial text.
  3. Conservation of evidence of passage of time and evidence of man, except the evidence of previous restoration.
  4. Use of innocuous, reversible, and widely tested substaces and materials.
  5. Using the minimum amount of materials to be left permanently on the frescoes.
  6. Maximum simplification of the intervention methods.
  7. Systematic testing of all materials used with the possibility of modification.
  8. Minimum number of workers so that stricter control of the restoration is maintained.
  9. Mandatory documentation of all procedures including filming, before, during and after, and archiving of the data on the work carried out.
  10. Detailed scietific and technical research before, during, and after the restoration.
  11. Open work site during restoration to art historians, restorers, artists, architects, chemists, journalists, etc.
  12. Constant transmitting of information through scientific centers and mass media all over the world.
  13. Public exhibition of the restored parts of the ceiling
  14. Publication of the final report on the restoration.



Steps of the Restoration

  1. Scientific analysis of the condition of the frescoes.
  2. Attachment of the intonaco
  3. Fixing of the paint surface.
  4. Cleaning the frescoes: buon and a secco.
  5. Final treatment: microclimate and C80.