An extraordinary maintenance operation on Michelangelo’s Last Judgment will begin in 2026. This operation will be in addition to the ordinary one, carried out annually through the use of a mechanical lift. The need for the extraordinary action stems from the impact that the high influx of visitors has on the conservation of one of the world’s most famous frescoes. This was announced by the new head of the Vatican Museums’ Painting and Wooden Materials Restoration Laboratory, Paolo Violini, in an interview with Vatican News.
“We should finish in March, so as to free the wall before the beginning of Holy Week,” Violini said in thearticle published by Vatican News. During the three months of work, “a scaffold will be erected that will cover the entire wall. It will consist of a dozen work planes with an elevator that, in order to reduce time and not penalize public viewing, will allow us to be able to work even in 10-12 people at the same time and have a close relationship with the work.”
The five-year project to restore Raphael’s Loggia will also begin. “Fourteen bays of exquisite stucco and frescoes by Giovanni da Udine and other collaborators gave rise to the decorative genre of the ’grotesque’ taken from Roman antiquity and widespread throughout the 16th century,” Violini said. “The restoration of the Stanza dell’Incendio di Borgo,” he explained, “has only been started but not completed.” Tackling it would mean exploring “an important moment in the transition between Raphael and his workshop.” It would mean “better understanding the frescoes of the Hall of Constantine,” recently returned to the general public.
Paolo Violini has been at the helm of the Vatican Museums’ Painting and Wooden Materials Restoration Laboratory since the beginning of August, taking over from Francesca Persegati, but he has been involved in the research and conservation of masterpieces in the papal collections since 1988. She began her work at the site of the Raphael Rooms, where, as head, she completed the restoration of the Stanza della Segnatura in 2000 and that of the Stanza di Eliodoro in 2012.
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| Extraordinary maintenance on Michelangelo's Last Judgment will be initiated in 2026 |
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