Michelangelo: The Medici Chapel
by Antonio Paolucci, Bruno Santi, James H. Beck, Aurelio Amendola (Photographer)
Unlike the recent cleaning of Michelangelo’s other masterworks, the restoration of his Medici chapel has engendered little controversy and has not required a profound rethinking of its essential character. Nevertheless, Amendola’s excellent corpus of more than 200 black-and-white photographs of the refreshened structure and its sculptural contents are an appreciable contribution to our better apprehension of this masterpiece. Particularly noteworthy is the photographer’s ability to conjoin the documentary requirements of his task with the imaginative perspective of an artist. Beck provides a sound but summary overview of the project’s history and an agnostic apercu of the problem of its iconographic program. And Bruno Santi succinctly articulates the more purely formal aspects of the structure and its contents. Recommended for collections serving an informed art-loving public.