Gianluici Colalucci. Photograph by Adolfo Plasencia, and courtesy of G.C.
Gianluici Colalucci. Photograph by Adolfo Plasencia, and courtesy of G.C.
I believe that art, throughout the path that humanity has taken, is its highest, its most spiritual expression. Humanity has made extraordinary technical scientific progress, but if there isn’t a spiritual element to accompany man on that path, it’s an incomplete process.
In Europe and the East, the concept of “original” is not the same. An Eastern temple can be constantly remade and continue to be regarded as original. For us in the West, something that has been made and is then modified is no longer original.
An artist should also wait until his or her doubts are resolved. When those doubts are cleared up, he or she can begin to work.
—Gianluigi Colalucci
Gianluigi Colalucci is technical director of the restoration of medieval frescoes of the Monumental Cemetery of Pisa, consultant for the restoration of paintings in the Vatican Museums, and former Chief Restorer of the Vatican Museums. He received a diploma in restoration from the Central Restoration Institute in Rome and undertook further professional work in the Restoration Laboratory of the National Gallery of Sicily. From 1979 to 1995 he was Chief Restorer of the Vatican Laboratory for the Restoration of Paintings, Papal Monuments, Museums, and Galleries. He spent fourteen years restoring Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel and has also restored works by such artists as Raphael, Titian, Leonardo, and Giotto. He has served as adviser to the Prado Museum of Madrid, and also consultant for the restoration of the ceiling of the Church de los Santos Juanes in Valencia, both of them, in Spain.
Among his publications are (with F. Mancineli and others) Michelangelo: La Cappella Sistina. Rapparto sul restauro del Guidizio Universale, and (with F. Mancineli and N. Gabrielli) Michelangelo, La Cappella Sistina. Rapparto sul restauro della Volta.
He is a member of the International Institute of Conservation, Cultural Art Association Educatrice Museum of Roma, and was named a Knight of the Equestrian Order of San Gregorio Magno by Pope Paul VI.
In addition to restoration of the Volta and Last Judgment frescoes in the Sistine Chapel and other works under the Vatican’s purview, he has restored frescoes by Raphael in the Room of the Oath of Leo III in the Vatican, and frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel by Giotto in Padova; Caravaggio’s St. Jerome canvas in Rome; three Titian frescoes in Scuola del Santo in Padova; frescoes by Andrea Mantegna in the Basilica del Santo, S. Antonio and S. Bernardino, also in Padova; the Venus and Cupid table by Luca Cranach; and the San Girolamo table by Leonardo da Vinci.
Adolfo Plasencia:
Professor Colalucci, thank you very much for receiving me.
Gianluigi Colalucci:
It’s a pleasure.
A.P.:
When you were named Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (UPV) , the president at that time, Justo Nieto, began his speech by saying:
Art and artists have managed to make the path taken by humanity more legitimate. From more than twenty thousand years ago, from Altamira to Leonardo, from Michelangelo to Picasso, the anguish, contradictions, and rebelliousness of those giants has left us with a heritage that we have to look after, as, through it, we can constantly recognize ourselves.1
Professor Colalucci, do you think that art and artists have really managed to make the path taken by humanity more legitimate?
G.C.:
Yes, surely. I believe that art, throughout the path that humanity has taken, is its highest, its most spiritual expression. Humanity has made extraordinary technical scientific progress, but if there isn’t a spiritual element to accompany man on that path, it’s an incomplete process. Science and technology alone are not enough. Art is absolutely indispensable for humankind, although it is true that humans themselves have created it.
A.P.:
In the speech following those words, the resident referred to you as an artist-scientist. I suppose you agree with that definition. What alchemy provides the balance for these two facets of creators? And how are the two, art and science, balanced in your research and work?
G.C.:
I don’t think of myself as an artist. I think a restorer must be a person who understands art, who knows about art. The artist is a creator. The restorer is not a creator. He or she is a person who has the basic technical and scientific baggage to preserve art and on occasion to restore it. There are two “souls” in the restorer: the art-loving soul, which knows how to interpret it, and the technical soul, which knows when and what has to be done technically to conserve art.
A.P.:
Let’s talk now about your personal universe. You have touched the surface, and I imagine sometimes the inside, of the most highly valued artwork in the world, especially the work of Michelangelo, but also the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Giotto, Raphael, Andrea Mantegna, Caravaggio, Titian … with your own hands, and I want to ask you:
G.C.:
Touch in restoration is very important, but it is a question mainly of technique. When one cleans a picture, touch is fundamental because, with its help, one understands what is happening on that surface. For example, and to continue talking about Michelangelo, the frescoes had a very rough surface before they were cleaned because it was a surface where there were materials that did not belong to Michelangelo’s paints, materials that had been deposited and were gradually consolidated to form a rough surface and, I would go as far as to say, a surface that was dirty to the touch. When the frescoes were freed of those foreign substances, the paintings of Michelangelo shone through. We could then see that they had an enamel surface, like that of porcelain, something that is the consequence of the artist’s technique, showing us that he had used mortar and also how he had painted them. With the passage of time, mortar oxidizes, consolidates, and becomes very compact, and this surface, if one looks at it side on, is very flat and, like plaster, very smooth.
And one realizes that this is what the artist wanted because he is someone working to achieve that material. He is an artist who, also through this material, is sending his message, speaking his language. Obviously, material is only material, and before being worked it is not a work of art. How to transform the material into a work of art is the ultimate mystery of art. How do we know when a material can be converted into a work of art? We can only know it there, where it has taken place.
A.P.:
Is there something spiritual inside, behind the artistic surface?
G.C.:
Inside, yes, because it is that which the artist transmits. It’s similar in music. Music needs a piano to make you feel what the player wants you to feel. The quality of the piano, which is a technical means, will also have an influence. It may be in the hands of Michelangelo or it could also be in the hands of an amateur who only paints on Sundays. The colors are the same, but the results may be very different. This forms part of all that we call art. I continue to believe it is an absolute mystery.
A.P.:
Professor Colalucci, you have also been called a “caresser” of art. When one can approach the most sublime works of art without encountering any barriers at all, as in your case, do you “caress” those works with your hands or also, close up, with your eyes?
G.C.:
Although we see with our eyes, we could say that the hand also sees, because observation can then be accompanied by a reasoning that tries to understand the details and feel of a color, of a figure, and so on, something that is much fuller.
A.P.:
Normally, over the years, over the centuries, the accumulated smoke from the candles darkens the original colors of frescoes and old paints, as has happened in the Sistine Chapel.
What do you feel when you begin to clean that darkened surface, and suddenly the original colors begin to shine through just as they were when the artist saw them when he had finished his work?
Do you think that the feeling this new sheen to the colors produces has the same effect as that felt by the artist? Do you think that is possible, or does the time difference mean that we see them in a different way?
G.C.:
Materially speaking, the colors there are the originals, they are the same material. I think the difference is us. It is in us. If I had been one of those present at the unveiling of The Last Judgment, I would have been a man of the Cinquecento with no knowledge of art coming after that period because the fresco was, in that era, one of the latest works of art of that moment.
A.P.:
Clearly, because at that time, in that moment, the work of Picasso, Goya, Kandinsky did not yet exist.
G.C.:
There literally didn’t exist anything of what you say. So much so that this Last Judgment by Michelangelo has served all the later generations of painters to make their own art, as it provided a great impetus for a grand transformation over the following centuries.
When we see this Final Judgment today, we also see in our mind’s eye all the other works of art that other artists have painted—Picasso, Goya, up to the artists of today, with their so-called performances—and all those things that provide us with a diverse culture. We look at that painting in a certain way that probably brings to mind a whole series of experiences that we have had.
From this point of view, we can say that the painting is diverse, not materially but in the way we look at it today. Equally, the men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw it in accordance with their own time and experience. There’s something I would like to add. The true work of art is that which in every century gives language to the people of that century, and that means it is a work that is capable of outlasting the centuries and becoming universal.
A.P.:
Professor Colalucci, as you know, there has been great controversy over how to preserve the great works of artistic and cultural heritage, but is this only a question of applying scientific criteria, or are there differences in interpretations and criteria depending on the dominant cultural-artistic currents or guidelines of restoration schools?
Is this a strictly scientific issue or can it be culturally interpreted in a different way?
G.C.:
Conservation—conserving things as they are—is a substantially technical matter, concerned with issues of environment, microenvironment, microclimate, and the like, whereas restoration isn’t. Restoration is now a concept of state philosophy, and schools of restoration change, so there may be contrasts. Today, there is generally a uniform method of restoration throughout the world, although it’s not only the material that is involved but the final intention. For example, in Europe and the East, in Asia, the concept of “original” is not the same. An Eastern temple can be constantly remade and continue to be regarded as original. For us in the West, something that has been made and is then modified is no longer original.
A.P.:
I said that because here, in this region, during the Baroque era, certain ecclesiastical powers considered, for example, Gothic art as being old, poor, and outdated, so they destroyed many elegant Gothic towers and replaced them with ornate Baroque towers, as you well know. These cultural interpretations often depend on power, on who is governing at a particular moment.
G.C.:
It depends on the concept that a society has of a work of art. We were talking about the past. In the past, they didn’t have the problem we have today. The works that we have decided to maintain for history today, the past did not worry about. The rooms in the Vatican where Raphael’s paintings are displayed were before that covered with frescoes by Piero della Francesca. These were destroyed with hardly a second glance so that new ones could be painted. Piero della Francesca was no longer liked, and the artist who seemed more interesting at that time was Raphael. That is linked to the concept of each age, and today we are linked to “conserving.”
A.P.:
Returning to your own field, restoration, and your work and research, what has most impressed us is your relationship with the work of Michelangelo Buonarroti, who, like Leonardo da Vinci, is one of the preeminent figures in universal art. Let’s talk now about the Sistine Chapel. You were one of the restorers of that chapel and also a restorer of that majestic fresco within it, the Last Judgment. You told me that you spent a long time there, many a night alone in front of those paintings, in front of those giants that Michelangelo created.
I’d like to ask you: what did you feel there, alone in front of Michelangelo’s giants?
Did you feel small? When alone, did they humble you? Does the scene make you feel afraid? Does it make the spectator’s soul float in the air?
What emotions are aroused in that solitude?
G.C.:
The initial feeling is one of realizing that you are a privileged person to be there where others are not. I believe that when the restorer works on a work of art for a certain period of time, he or she becomes the patron of that work of art and has no need to collect paintings, because for that brief period of time spent on restoring them, the works actually belong to them. I devote myself to this job, which is a privilege, because I have always thought that I wanted to make a direct contribution to the world of art. It is morally uplifting. It’s as if a string quartet plays for you alone, and not for the three hundred other people who are also listening to it with you. You are there alone, and it plays just for you. It’s extraordinary.
Do I feel small faced with these paintings? Always. It’s good for a restorer to feel small in front of an artist, even before those of a lesser stature than Michelangelo. I should point out that a restorer serves the artist, and this must be so.
A.P.:
Do these paintings make one feel small, more humble?
G.C.:
Yes, it’s necessary to feel humble. You don’t have to be in front of the giants of art: the restorer always has to be humble.
A.P.:
Now let’s employ a metaphor using a detail I know from the Last Judgment fresco. There is, in one of the figures of the Last Judgment, a very long leg, the complicated profile of which Michelangelo resolved in a single gesture, as if he had no doubts about doing it.2
Before you gave your speech, there was talk about the relationship between the greatness of artists such as Michelangelo and the anguish, doubt, contradictions, and rebelliousness of those artists—Michelangelo left Florence to escape the pressure of Pope Julius II, who had commissioned a tomb from him, for which he sculpted another great work, the famous Moses. He fled so as to be able to work in peace.
You’ve had the opportunity to see many details, like that leg, close up. That will have let you analyze and reflect on them.
From what you have seen, can you imagine the doubts, anguish, and contradictions that the artist must have felt when he made the paintings? The way that leg is painted would seem to indicate the opposite of doubt.
G.C.:
When one is very close to the work, one sees the most “material” part of its execution, because in the work, its execution is the development of a creative person, the creation the result of undertaking it. Making a fresco that has to be placed on a wall, for example, involves the development of technique. Yes, when one is very close, in front of it, one sees the enormous effort of the execution technique that the artist has had to make to transfer his or her ideas there, so that its design functions safely. But later, when the restoration is being done, one has to be like a lithographer, one has to be well positioned before the whole. The effort involved in the execution is also hard work. When one does restoration work, one sees all the traces, all the fingerprints of the effort of the artist.
A.P.:
In these great works, the artists prioritize certainty rather than doubt, don’t they? They give the idea of having chosen one final “path” from the various possible ones, don’t you think?
G.C.:
If I’ve understood the question correctly, I would say that all that forms part of the technique. First of all, in the field of restoration, before making any decision, we have to develop all the necessary techniques to know exactly what should be done. Once we are technically prepared and have decided what to do, there’s not going to be much doubt, because if one begins to work while having doubts, things don’t work out well. An artist should also wait until his or her doubts are resolved. When those doubts are cleared up, he or she can begin to work.
A.P.:
Do you think that in art, out of all the possible paths, there is always one that is better?
G.C.:
No. Or maybe yes, in the case of artists like Michelangelo, who had a great influence on many other artists who came along later. But in art it is difficult to find the best path, one that is higher or lower. Think about music: who can choose between Mozart and Bach? They are different and both extraordinary.
A.P.:
Let’s talk now about the present and what is happening now in the world. This is a period of crises and change. There is in this book a conversation with Yung Ho Chang, a professor of architecture at MIT.3 He told me two things that are of interest here. The first is that the era of grand egos in architecture has finished; and the second is that he is convinced that cutting-edge architecture can be done through knowledge derived from the past. His dialogue is titled “Going Forward in Architecture by Looking Back.” Perhaps the market, the large companies, the short-sightedness of present life make us forget that wisdom.
Do you think, Professor Colalucci, that something similar has happened in the world of art and that we have put the accumulated wisdom of the past, many centuries of art, aside?
G.C.:
The question is very complicated and needs thinking about. What I understand is that at the moment, a revolution is taking place, and we are abandoning the past. There is a transition, not only of century but also of millennium. It’s inevitable that, after hundreds of years, someone will arrive here, see this, and say no, I don’t know what this is. For me it’s difficult to know what we should do and what will be done. As far as the future is concerned, any future that I’ve imagined has turned out to be ridiculous once I’ve seen what really happened. So I don’t know. However, it’s usual now to run away from anything that seems too old. It’s as if you put your foot in an ants’ nest and everybody begins to flee. It’s true, for example, that today in contemporary art things are presented that are quite strange, quite unexpected.
A.P.:
The philosopher of science Javier Echeverria, whom I also have a conversation with in this book, told me that he believes that inventing something is not an instantaneous event, a momentary stroke of genius, but a process, and, as Picasso said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”4
G.C.:
Yes, it’s true. Creation is a process, something that comes from a brain in which many things have entered beforehand.
A.P.:
I’d like to mention something else that is going on now. The restoration work on the frescos in the Sistine Chapel took fourteen years to complete and was financed by Nippon Television, the biggest private TV broadcaster in Japan. In exchange, they have the exclusive rights to the reproduction of images of the different stages of the restoration over all of those years.
The Sistine Chapel belongs to all humanity and forms part of our common heritage, but in exchange for finance, the said company possesses the image reproduction rights for decades to come.
Do you think this is a good method and compatible with heritage? Or do you think that everything that involves recovering universal heritage should be paid for out of public funds? Finally, what was the relationship like between you scientists and the company in the case of the Sistine Chapel?
G.C.:
Yes. But we have to remember that, apart from the Vatican, which is a very small state, we often do not have the capability of financing so many great works of art. We restorers earn the same whether we are restoring Michelangelo’s frescoes or restoring a painting that was in the warehouse. For us the stipend is always the same. Nippon TV of Tokyo made this offer and in exchange was granted the rights to the photographs taken during the process. That’s normal. World heritage is so immense, so extensive, and so in need of intervention that the money of a single state is insufficient, and so, if there is a sponsor, they can intervene. They shouldn’t ask for too much, but the sponsor can be granted things in exchange. Private money for restoration is very important.
A.P.:
Does a company have to be sensitive in order to help to maintain the common heritage of all, as in the case we are speaking about? A company has to be sensitive to art and culture, doesn’t it?
G.C.:
There are companies that dedicate certain funds to culture. Companies have to be careful not to dirty the planet, and it would also be a good thing if a part of what they earned was dedicated to culture.
A.P.:
I’d like to ask you one more question, and you can decide for yourself whether to answer it or not.
Today, a different concept of the global world is beginning to take hold in which many people from other continents also consider any important work of world heritage as their own. We can see this in the destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, which, in 2001, after having survived 1,500 years, were destroyed by the Taliban Islamist government.
Parallel to this is another debate as to whether, for example, the friezes of the Parthenon in the British Museum in London should be returned to Athens, the city they came from.5 Do you think this type of art should be left where it is, that it is better to leave things of the past as they are, and to conserve them there as best as possible? Or do you agree with the people who think that they should be returned to their original location. What’s your opinion?
G.C.:
To that last question, I’ll have to give a rather inarticulate response.
He who loves art, feels it to be his own, whether African, Japanese or Valencian. When I am in Valencia in front of a work of art, I don’t ask myself if it is Valencian, European, or Japanese because it belongs to me. I’ve been in Japan in a Zen temple, but I feel it’s mine. I didn’t feel at all foreign there. And the same is true anywhere, for any part of the world. If I go to London and see the Parthenon sculptures, I don’t think about where they came from. There’s no need for them to be there or anywhere else for me to feel they are mine. However, returning things to their former site forms part of the negative side of our society. The more global society becomes, the more small societies close themselves off and withdraw into themselves. There are examples in Spain and in Italy too.
I believe it’s nonsense because I cannot live in a global world and keep closing myself off more and more. If the culture of a small center expands, all feel it, even those far away. That is more important than the money to be gained from tourism, but in the end, it boils down to the same thing, economics. I consider a work of art as being for everyone. In all lands, all works of art belong to everyone, to the human condition.
A.P.:
Thank you very much. It’s been a privilege talking to you, Professor Colalucci.
G.C.:
You are welcome. Thanks to you. It’s been a pleasure.