Endnote 2 – Michelangelo’s Masterpiece Reclaimed

This is actually the second book on the restoration produced by the Nippon Television Network. The first in the series, The Sistine Chapel: Michelangelo Rediscovered (London: Muller, Blond & White, 1986), dealt with the historical setting in Michelangelo’s Rome, the history of the earlier decoration in the Sistine Chapel, the theology behind Michelangelo’s ceiling, his later Last Judgment fresco (on the end wall above the Sistine Chapel altar) and the painting of the lunettes, the semicircular scenes that make up the lowest section of the ceiling decoration. Only the lunettes had been cleaned and restored when this volume went to press in 1986. The current issue was published in Italian six years later (the English edition appeared in 1994), after the entire ceiling had been cleaned and while the cleaning of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment fresco was under way.