Restoring Michelangelo

Robert Hughes provides the most informative account to date of the Sistine Chapel-cleaning controversy ((ART, April 27)). Regrettably, the before and after photographs accompanying the article are misleading. If the conserved fresco really looked like TIME's illustration, the critics would be right. However, the cleaned fresco is not flat and washed out but fully modeled and richly colored.

Illustrations of the conserved frescoes published to date show only details taken from the scaffolding under artificial light. But the cleaning is ultimately to be judged from the floor of the Sistine Chapel, as originally viewed by Michelangelo's contemporaries, with the full stretch of the ceiling bathed in natural light from the upper windows. So viewed, the frescoes are clear, strong and wonderfully harmonious -- fully in keeping with the central Italian fresco tradition.

Charles S. Rhyne, Professor

Art History, Reed College

Portland, Ore.

The photographs you used of the frescoes before cleaning look disgustingly cruddy, while those taken afterward are washed down, inpainted and appallingly Disneyish. It is true that Michelangelo's lunettes had suffered from water seepage and required some restoration, but the vast barrel vault itself was relatively pristine; it did not need cleaning. The frescoes now present a fresh Michelangelo whose tie has been straightened to the strangulation point and whose ears are scoured until the ears themselves disappear. The "conservation" that has been done on the Sistine Chapel may be good for tourism, but it is death for the frescoes.

Alexander Eliot

Venice, Calif.

Every artwork created in the past possesses a dual aspect: its contemporaneousness when created and its saturation with time as it survives through the ages. These two elements cannot be separated. Consider a medieval edifice like the Amiens Cathedral. If it were sandblasted to its original surface, the building would be out of keeping with the surrounding medieval structures and would emerge as a distasteful visual anachronism. A close examination of your color illustrations reveals that the Sistine Chapel's uncleaned surfaces have a warmth of spirit that is absent in the cleaned areas. The vitality of the "old" Michelangelo is absent in the bland, dispirited imagery that has emerged.

Saul Levine

Westbury, N.Y.