A huge curtain covered the wall of The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. There were only a few hours left before Pope John Paul II would unveil, on April 8, 1994, a spectacular restoration. The team of Vatican experts, headed by Gianluigi Colalucci, had freed the work of soot and other substances that made it almost unrecognizable. Thirty years have passed since the resurrection of the fresco, like that of those righteous people it portrays ascending, while the damned descend to hell.
But the explosion of color was not the only thing that was revealed with the cleaning. Also some genitals that the Congregation of the Council of Trent ordered to be covered for decorum. Only about 15 of the 40 painted by Michelangelo could be recovered. Most were scraped off before being hidden behind cloths. Just in case… The audacity of the artist, who considered that “souls have no tailor”, was already criticized by his contemporaries, he even came close to ending up before the Holy Office accused of heresy.
One of the fiercest voices was that of the Pope’s master of ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena. As a vendetta, Michelangelo portrayed him in hell, with donkey ears and a snake biting his testicles. It is said that the cardinal went to Clement VII, who amused himself by answering: “If the painter had put you in purgatory, he would have done everything possible to get you out of there; but I didn’t get to hell.”
In reality, this Pope, commissioned by Michelangelo, carried out his own vendetta, perhaps not as well known as that of the artist. Previously, on the wall of the main altar of the Chapel, there was a representation of an Assumption by Perugino, in which Sixtus IV appeared before the Virgin. And things in life, that Pope participated in the conspiracy against Lorenzo de Medici, who was miraculously saved, and his brother Giuliano, who died, leaving behind an orphan a child who would eventually become Clement VII. It is clear that the Pope could not see his predecessor even in painting. Michelangelo, reluctant to eliminate a colleague’s work, found it done. The Pope ordered it to be torn before his arrival.
The one who did not have so many union objections was El Greco, who not even ten years after the death of il Divino went to Rome ready to repaint the wall with a more decent work. Luckily, there were enough loincloths. Peccadillo.
