Let’s go see the frescoes

The Cannon Factory in Tottenham Hale is the venue for a new digital exhibition which allows visitors to explore Michelangelo’s grandest accomplishment up close.

After a lengthy walk, last month, we discovered the exhibition entrance in a courtyard between buildings and behind parked vans and boats.

Inside, digital photographs of the renaissance frescoes are displayed and floodlit in an echoing, dark, and rather chilly warehouse.

The display replicates the paintings from the Sistine Chapel in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, using licensed high-definition photographs supplied by Bridgeman Images.

The look and feel of the paintings are enhanced to allow visitors to see the details.

It is the first time this art experience has appeared in London and the hosts, Fever, a London-based startup company founded in 2014, invite you to view the artwork from a new perspective − on the wall and ceiling of a warehouse.

There are bench seats where you can take your time perusing the detail of each image accompanied by informative signs. Whereas, I’m told the actual Sistine Chapel is small and usually crammed with visitors craning their necks to view the paintings 68 feet up.

Via a video recording in a side hall, we learned Michelangelo’s figures were painted in Rome, between 1508 and 1512.

More than 20 years later, Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo, by then in his 60s, to paint The Last Judgment behind the altar from 1536 to 1541. It’s a surprise that Michelangelo did not paint while lying on his back.

Biblical scenes in this work include: The Creation of Adam, where a bearded God creates the world then gives life to a naked Adam; The Fall of Man, here Michelangelo portrays Adam and Eve betrayed by a satanic female serpent; and The Last Judgment, painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, which includes two sad self-portraits. Pope Julius II, meanwhile, is depicted as the prophet Zechariah. Michelangelo also added a portrait of an enemy courtier, Biagio da Cesena, with a snake around his waist.

This exhibition is being shown simultaneously in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon. It is billed as a full immersion in visual art but I would say it is more of an educative, informative, experience that might be seen as a prequel to experiencing the real thing.

For more information: sistinechapelexhibit.com/london