Anyone else over the Promise Collection? 6 6

[Flex Mentallo]

Daniel's right hand and knee. On the unrestored fresco, the intense red underpainting shows through the black a secco wash adding luminescence to the shadows. The form under the garment is achieved by the black wash. Hence the wet layer is a form of scaffolding, executed in full knowledge of what remained to be finalized in the secco layer. [And I know from personal experience, that once you've painteda first layer, the memory of how to repeat that is held in the hand, not the conscious mind, so the second layer is more fluent and spontaneous.]

Edited January 27, 2022 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

When his painting was originally unveiled in 1512, observers were stunned not by any brilliance of coloring (no one mentioned his coloring) but by the fact that the artist had given such great emphasis to light and shade, and to “sculptural” modelling in between his great tonal contrasts, that his figures appeared real, not painted, and that they seemed to be occupying real space and not merely decorating surfaces. Experts marveled that such were Michelangelo’s powers of design that surfaces on the ceiling that were actually advancing towards the viewer, appeared to recede because of his brilliantly conjured illusion of perspective. This novel and revolutionary development was recognized for nearly five centuries…until the last restoration. There are no historical or artistic grounds for accepting claims that the unexpected restoration changes constitute miraculous “revelations” of original values.

 

This engraving (of c. 1790) of Michelangelo’s Prophet Daniel shows intense, almost “cinematic” contrasts of light and shade and of very strong shadows that appear to have been cast by the depicted forms and draperies. As such, this image accords perfectly with the responses of Michelangelo’s contemporaries when the ceiling was first painted. It accords with accounts of Michelangelo producing model sculptures of figures that he was painting, in order to study the shadows that would be cast onto the ground or onto adjacent walls.

Edited January 27, 2022 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

Mind you, its not the greatest botch ever. Behold the man! The fame of the incident led to a great increase of visitors to the parish church in Borja, Spain. The church imposed an entrance charge. The parish priest was arrested for what the Daily Telegraph reports as “suspicion of misappropriating funds [£174,000], of money laundering and sexual abuse”.

 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

On 23 October 2013 the Daily Telegraph reported the outcome of a Chinese Government-approved, £100,000 restoration during which a Qing dynasty temple fresco was entirely obliterated by luridly colorized repainting. This only came to light when a student posted comparative photographs online. In the resulting furor, a government official from the city responsible for the temple described the restoration as “an unauthorised project”. Wang Jinyu, an expert on fresco restoration from the Dunhuang Academy, had said the intervention could not be called “restoration, or [even] destructive restoration” because “[It is] the destruction of cultural relics since the original relics no longer exist”.

[Flex Mentallo]

Details of Michelangelo’s Cumaean Sibyl on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, as seen before and after restoration. Susan Cicconi, eat your heart out!

[Flex Mentallo]

On 1/27/2022 at 12:20 AM, sfcityduck said:

Super complex debate.  The restorers decided that Michelangelo used a particular technique in painting the ceiling, that he painted on wet plaster so the paint infused in, and that embellishments added on the dry plaster (additional detail and black highlights) weren't him.  So they went beyond just cleaning off the dirt and grime, which is the usual conservative practice, and took an approach that might have been overly aggressive in also removing paint (which may or may not have been original).  It's a cautionary tale with the moral that a conservative approach is probably best as you can always clean more, but you can't really add back what you took off. The moral is not "don't clean" as part of conservation, it is clean appropriately.

In 1986, when defending his own restoration, the chief restorer, Gianluigi Colalucci admitted that his professional predecessors’ judgements had been contrary to his own and “not encouraging” to the restoration. That was an understatement. Restorers who had worked on the previous restoration (1935-36) had officially and flatly reported that Michelangelo had “finished off a secco”, that is, that he had painted on top of his frescoes when they had dried.

Restorers who had worked on the previous restoration attempt of 1904 had abandoned attempts to clean the frescoes for fear of damaging Michelangelo’s vulnerable work on the surface. Colalucci, greatly in thrall to contemporary “scientific” analysis, dismissed such official reports as “subjective impressions”. He also ignored the testimony of the British painter and fresco expert Charles Heath Wilson who had reported his own close-hand examination of the ceiling in an 1876 book “Life and Works of Michelangelo Buonarotti”. Wilson had found the frescoes “extensively retouched with size colour…evidently by the hand of Michelangelo”. He found that this secco painting “readily melted on being touched with a wet finger and consisted of a finely ground black, mixed with a size probably made according to the usage of the time from parchment shavings.” He further noted, “The shadows of the draperies have been boldly and solidly retouched with this size color, as well as the shadows on the backgrounds…The hair of the heads and the beards of many of the figures are finished in size color …These retouchings…constituted the finishing process or as Condivi [Michelangelo’s preferred biographer] expresses it, alluding to it in the history of these frescoes, ‘l’ultima mano’ ['the last hand'].”

For Wilson, there could “be no doubt that nearly all of this work is contemporary, and in only one part was there evidence of a later and incompetent hand.” Aside from its artistic force, certainty about the secco painting’s antiquity lay in an elegant technical proof: “The size color has cracked as the plaster has cracked”. It is a matter of record that the ceiling cracked before any restorers touched it. If, as has been claimed, later restorers had repeatedly applied glues, those glues would inevitably have been brushed into the pre-existing cracks. Wilson, who tested the depth of the cracks with a penknife, saw that none had been. Artists like Wilson appreciate that it is impossible to paint over a cracked surface without working the material into the cracks. Wilson was left in no doubt: having been applied when the ceiling was new and not-yet-cracked, these surface glue paints could only have been Michelangelo’s own work, his finishing stages, his l’ultima mano. Normally, restorers recognize that when varnishes or paints can be shown to have run into age-cracked materials this can be taken as a proof of their more recent origins. On this occasion, the restorers failed to recognize the implications of the converse.

[Randall Dowling]

On 1/27/2022 at 1:42 AM, Flex Mentallo said:

Mind you, its not the greatest botch ever. Behold the man! The fame of the incident led to a great increase of visitors to the parish church in Borja, Spain. The church imposed an entrance charge. At the end of December the parish priest was arrested for what the Daily Telegraph reports as “suspicion of misappropriating funds [£174,000], of money laundering and sexual abuse”.

 

This is just very sad.

[Randall Dowling]

On 1/27/2022 at 1:51 AM, Flex Mentallo said:

Details of Michelangelo’s Cumaean Sibyl on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, as seen before and after restoration. Susan Cicconi, eat your heart out!

Wow.  Good-bye craquelure.

[Randall Dowling]

@Flex Mentallo  Thanks for sharing these examples and your knowledge.  A bit painful to see but very interesting.  

[Randall Dowling]

On 1/27/2022 at 1:32 AM, Flex Mentallo said:

The Prophet Daniel, before and after restoration.

This is a shocking loss in the before and after.  Very tough.

[Flex Mentallo]

On 1/27/2022 at 8:16 AM, Randall Dowling said:

This is a shocking loss in the before and after.  Very tough.

The money for the restoration was supplied by, of all things, a Japanese television station. No one understood why. What was Japanese television getting out of it?

The motivation turned out to be mildly absurd and fully comic. The pope at the time, John Paul II, the Polish pope, was famous for his traveling. Crisscrossing the world in the search for forgotten Catholics, he had ended up in Tokyo at a posh reception hosted by Japanese television. Pressing spiritual flesh, here and there, he happened to mention his hopes for the Sistine ceiling. It had grown too dark and needed restoration but the costs were prohibitive.

In the audience was the man who ran NTV — an adventurous television station that was trying to muscle its way up the broadcasting ladder — and, more importantly, his wife. She came from a family of Japanese Catholics. This is no place to go into the grim persecution of Catholicism in Japan, but the circumstances would certainly harden you and made you determined.The wife began badgering her husband about paying for the restoration. After a few weeks of it he succumbed.

Edited January 27, 2022 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

It strikes me that those of you in America waking up to my untimely discourse may perhaps be wondering why I didn't just start another thread 'anyone else over the Sistine restoration?'

[Flex Mentallo]

On 1/27/2022 at 12:16 AM, lou_fine said:

Have always absolutely loved this cover here because of the stunning green colors that often show up on the higher condition copies, like this raw condition copy right here before it got graded and slabbed:     

Although the colors on this copy here definitely looks stronger than on the above CGC 8.0 graded copy, it also looks pretty close to the deeper colors on the CGC 9.8 graded Promise Collection copy.  

I'm viridian with envy, if not downright emerald!

[Flex Mentallo]

On 1/27/2022 at 12:47 AM, szav said:

I'm thrilled with how this one looks in hand, but the HA scan does appear to make the color appear a bit deeper.  That said, in hand it's radiant, bright, glossy, and fresh in a way that the HA scan doesn't capture.  When I hold it up against other comics, even high grade ones you can tell the difference.  I don't think my phone pic captures all the qualities either.  How my eye sees them is a bit in between the two.

Sparkling!

[Flex Mentallo]

On 1/27/2022 at 2:30 AM, szav said:

Bedrock seems pretty smart.  I’m sure he bought them dinner and offered them a ride home.

Well, that's what he did with me!

[Flex Mentallo]

On 1/27/2022 at 12:19 AM, MrBedrock said:

These walked in the door today. Found in a box in a house here in Houston and the older couple who brought them in said they will let us know if any more books show up. Other than a couple in the vgf range they are pretty low grade with tape and such. But apparently low grade is the new sign of a true collector, and I am nothing if not a follower, so I think I will keep them. Got to rebuild my street cred around here.

 

Cue gazillions of PM's from boardies happy to take those off your hands.

 

[MusterMark]

On 1/27/2022 at 12:54 AM, Flex Mentallo said:

It strikes me that those of you in America waking up to my untimely discourse may perhaps be wondering why I didn't just start another thread 'anyone else over the Sistine restoration?'

I suppose it was a bit OT, but still very interesting - so thank you.  But very painful for me to see ...

Visiting the Sistene Chapel was a highlight in my life; I'm just glad I got to experience the grandeur before this so-called "restoration" - what a huge travesty ... there are no words ...

Edited January 27, 2022 by MusterMark

[Flex Mentallo]

On 1/27/2022 at 12:19 AM, MrBedrock said:

Got to rebuild my street cred around here.

Uh huh, sure, yep, we all believe you. No, really we do, not a shred of doubt.

 

Kinda reminds me of a very early scene in Broadcast News.

 

EXT. SCHOOL YARD - DAY

        Clusters of graduates at the fence bordering the sunken school
        yard looking down as the tough cap and gowners seen earlier
        cuff Aaron around.

        CLOSER IN

        Aaron feeling from a blow -- his lip bleeding -- his teeth
        covered with blood...as he gets to his feet.  He is livid --
        something primal triggered by this brutality.

                                AARON
                Go ahead, Stephen -- take your
                last licks.
                        (points at his
                         face)
                But this will heal -- what I'm
                going to say to you will scar you
                forever.  Ready?  Here it is.

        He dodges as they come after him.  They catch him by the hair
        and hurl him to the ground.  As he gets up he hurls his
        devastating verbal blow.

                                AARON
                You'll never make more than
                nineteen thousand dollars a year.
                Ha ha ha.

        They twist his arm and grip him -- his face scraped on the
        concrete.

                                AARON
                Okay, take this:  You'll never
                leave South Boston and I'm going
                to see the whole damn world.  You'll
                never know the pleasure of writing
                a graceful sentence or having an
                original thought.  Think about it.

        He's punched in the stomach and sinks to the ground.  As the
        Young Toughs walk off Aaron catches a phrase of their
        conversation.

                                YOUTH TOUGH
                Nineteen thousand dollars...
                Not bad.

[lou_fine]

On 1/26/2022 at 4:16 PM, lou_fine said:

Have always absolutely loved this cover here because of the stunning green colors that often show up on the higher condition copies, like this raw condition copy right here before it got graded and slabbed:     

Although the colors on this copy here definitely looks stronger than on the above CGC 8.0 graded copy, it also looks pretty close to the deeper colors on the CGC 9.8 graded Promise Collection copy.  

 

On 1/27/2022 at 1:14 AM, Flex Mentallo said:

I'm viridian with envy, if not downright emerald!

Depends, if you are a an old school type of collector, you would downright love the look and the strong colors of the book.    

If you are more of the new generation CGC label collector who likes the big number on the top left hand corner of the slab, not so much.  

Edited January 27, 2022 by lou_fine

[Pickie]

On 1/26/2022 at 11:25 PM, buttock said:

 

Whoa