The Dirty Renaissance

The Renaissance period is one in the art world that is held just short of the second coming. This “reawakening” is characterized by a renewed interest in human-centered classical art, literature, and learning. Many famous artists and thus pieces of artwork came out of this period, which are still studied by students of art and by professional artists. Famous pieces suck as the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and the Sistine Chapel were created in this period of art. It is easy to study these pieces of artwork by simply reading about them in textbooks, or looking at pictures of them on the internet. However, what has happened to the actual original pieces of artwork that the artists created? It would seem that …show more content…

These were re-painted with watercolor in passive colors intended to indicate they were not original work, whilst not distracting the viewer from Da Vinci's original painting.
Another famous painting that came out of the Renaissance was Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. This painting was on the ceiling of a chapel, and had been damaged by water leaking through the roof, creating white stains that spotted the piece and caused some of the paint to swell. To add to this damage, the ceiling was covered with glue, smoke deposits and paint blunders that took away from the original beauty of the magnificent fresco.
The restoration attempt began after much time was spent studying the fresco so that they would not damage the painting while they were cleaning it. In fact, the research went into such great detail that the restorers even used the same type of scaffold that Michelangelo used so that it would fit into the same holes in the wall that Michelangelo fit his in when the piece was created. As one would imagine, much time was spent fixing other restoration attempts which failed. A special solvent was used to remove the layer of glue that was used during a different restoration effort. The cracks were sealed and missing pieces of the fresco were reattached. Overall, this restoration effort was a success. However, the restorers did not want