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The Creation of the Sun and Moon.

Joanna Wane previews an Auckland exhibition of Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel frescoes that's turned the world upside down

Monty Python aced it when they depicted Michelangelo copping an earful from the Pope for painting an early version of The Last Supper with 28 disciples and three Christs — on the grounds of artistic licence.

When the real Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to decorate his private chapel at the Vatican in the early 16th century, he requested the 12 Apostles.

By the time "Il Divino" descended for the final time after four years on the scaffolding, every inch of plaster on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was covered not only with the entire Genesis creation story but hundreds of other biblical and mythological figures.

Driven by what one art historian describes as a desire to "glorify man as a creature of nobility, beauty and power", he later created another masterpiece, The Last Judgment, to cover the altar wall. The number of nudes caused such a scandal that, after Michelangelo's death, one of his students was brought in to restore a sense of decency by painting on some clothes.

"He was a rebel of his time," says Michael Schaumer, of the master artist, sculptor, poet and architect whose famous Sistine Chapel frescoes feature in a suitably controversial exhibition, Michelangelo – A Different View.

Schaumer is production manager of the international exhibition, which opens at Auckland's Aotea Centre next week. And as it turns out, he's a bit of a rebel himself.

In the late 70s, the Berliner founded cult New Wave band P1/E and fell into a career in event management, booking gigs for the likes of US punk rockers The Dead Kennedys. When Canvas caught up with him via Zoom, Schaumer was in Sudan preparing for a huge culture festival being held on the banks of the Nile.

There are actually two rival Sistine Chapel exhibitions currently doing the rounds, the result of a falling out between the business partners who originally came up with the idea. However, A Different View holds the high ground, despite its unorthodox approach, after winning the Vatican Museum's official stamp of approval.

Pre-Covid, five million visitors a year trawled through the Sistine Chapel, gawping up at the vaulted ceiling more than 20m above. In A Different View, the heavens have been brought down to earth, so visitors can admire high-quality reproductions of the frescoes literally laid out at their feet.

"Our idea was to do something different and put the ceiling on the floor, so you can look down and see it from above," says Schaumer. "But there was a real discussion because up there is heaven and down there is hell!"

The concept was championed by church historian Cardinal Walter Brandmuller and, after much negotiation, access was given to a series of slides taken of the frescoes in the 90s, following a 12-year restoration of the Sistine Chapel to remove centuries-old layers of soot and candle wax.

Photographer Roland Ursprung then digitised the images, correcting colour inconsistencies and repairing damage caused by scratches on the slides. Using what's known as a sublimation process, they were then transferred on to fabric panels for the exhibition.

The most complex challenge was "flattening" the reproductions of the frescoes, which curve across the ceiling of the chapel. "It took [the photographer] weeks," Schaumer says. "That was actually the most expensive part."

From Auckland, the exhibition will head to Asia — one of four iterations on tour next year, including a downsized edition for smaller venues (we're getting the full-scale version here).

In March, the show will finally make its US premiere, in Baton Rouge, after being delayed for three years — cancelled by Covid-19 in 2019 as the shipping container was en route, and then called off again at the last minute in August as Hurricane Ida swept towards Louisiana.

The nine Book of Genesis panels, with the iconic image of God's outstretched finger passing the spark of life to Adam, will undoubtedly be the main drawcard.

However, dozens of Michelangelo's other Sistine Chapel masterpieces also feature, including the heroic tales, the prophets and sibyls, and The Last Judgment, while the Quattrocento frescoes (by Botticelli, Perugino, Ghirlandaio and Rosselli) will be displayed at the entrance.

The Sistine Chapel remains at the heart of the Catholic Church today and is where the papal conclave is held when the cardinals gather to elect a new pope.

Father Merv Duffy, a Marist priest and lecturer in theology at Auckland's Good Shepherd College, spent four years studying in Rome and has a special interest in art and archaeology. He visited the Sistine Chapel several times, joining a queue that stretched for a kilometre around the outside of the Vatican.

"I remember being shoulder-to-shoulder with a huge crowd of people, getting a crick in my neck leaning back [to look at the ceiling] and being just gobsmacked because it was so gorgeous and so hard to take in," he recalls.

"Some of it is just fascination — he had to paint at a ferocious rate, on wet plaster, covering a huge area. And when he was lying up against it, how did he work out how it would look from down below?

"Every tourist and every pilgrim going to Rome wants to see the Sistine Chapel if they can. It moves you at all kinds of levels."

Michelangelo saw the (male) body as a work of great beauty; his marble statue of David is considered the peak of physical perfection. And "like many creatives", he was a genius who didn't always follow the rules, says Duffy, who loves the idea of being able to examine the frescoes more closely laid out on the floor.

"It was done for the glory of God, so it was painted on the ceiling, in a sense being offered to God. But this was also a Renaissance prince of a pope who wanted his private chapel to have the best artist in the world decorating it. So it's some serious showing off."

* Michelangelo – A Different View will be on show at Auckland's Aotea Centre from January 3 to 30.

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