Combine the Vatican and Italian Renaissance painters and you’ve automatically got mystery and controversy, it seems.
Michelangelo’s recently restored fresco of the Crucifixion of St. Peter in the Vatican’s Pauline Chapel has been drawing press attention for more than its beauty.
First came speculation that Michelangelo had included a self-portrait among the crowd of figures witnessing the martyrdom.
Then an Italian newspaper suggested that Pope Benedict himself had ordered restorers not to remove a loincloth that censors had added to Peter’s nude figure years after the master painted it.
In tomorrow’s edition of the official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, the director of the Vatican Museums dismisses that claim, insisting that the decision to leave Peter covered up was nobody’s call but the experts. It seems the usual practice in such cases is not to remove any changes if doing so would further damage the original.