Day 16

Today I was on Entrance Float which basically meant that I did every single job. I did guarding, palazzo, guardaroba, tickets and audio-guide. It was pretty hectic but I was never bored because I did so many different things.

The best thing about my day was the talk with Paul Schwatzbaum who is the Chief Conservator. He was also one of the conservators who did the Sistine Chapel which is what he told us all about. It was fascinating!

There were only 13 people working on the ceiling in 1980’s and Paul said it became a bit like the story of when they found Tutankhamen’s tomb because all of the conservators started dying off! He showed us a picture of all 13 of them before they started and he pointed and almost everyone saying “He’s dead, he’s dead...”

But anyway, he told us how the ceiling got so discoloured from various things such as candles, there was a leak 30 years after it was painted, people ‘restoring it’ in the 1700’s, people putting varnish over it etc.

He said that being able to get that close to the fresco, you could really see which parts were painted by Michelangelo and which bits were done by his assistants. He had some of his own pictures which show evidence that the helpers traced Michelangelo’s cartoons because there were dents in the plaster and nails holes from where they would’ve nailed the paper on to the wall. Michelangelo obviously didn’t need to use the cartoons and you can see from his brush strokes that he used the same methods that he did with his sculpture. Paul’s close up photos of the ceiling were stunning. It’s definitely confirmed that Michelangelo was a genius and the best artist ever. I think everyone knows that I am Mr Buonarroti’s no.1 fan J

He told us about the controversy over restoring it and all of the backlash that the project got. I think they did an amazing job!

There is so much more to tell you but I know most of you probably aren’t that interested and it’s pretty guaranteed that I will tell you all about it about 100 times anyway.

Oh and he was also involved with the restoration/trying to save The Last Supper. I won’t go too much into detail about it but he said why there’s only like 20% of it left. It has a lot to do with the chemicals Leonardo used in hi paint but also that Leonardo was a bit of an idiot even though he was a genius.

When Leo agreed to paint The Last Supper he said that he wanted to put up his own wall the right distance from the windows to best go with his painting. Unfortunately when building this wall he said it only needed to be thin. In Milan they have a really bad condensation problem in the winter because it get so cold which is why they build really thick walls. Unfortunately Leonardo’s thin wall was the wall to get the condensation running down it every winter since 1498 so it’s no wonder it hasn’t lasted.

I have pages and pages of notes from this talk so if anyone is interested or at least would like to pretend to be interested, please let me know and I will come and bore you.

So yh, best talk ever. And that was how awesome my day was!