CINCINNATI - Visitors move through the dimly lit corridor, flanked by irregular rows of rough-hewn wooden stepladders. The ladders support a series of boards that together form a makeshift scaffolding upon which rest flickering lanterns, paint buckets, rags, and other materials used to create one of history's most famous works of art nearly 5 centuries ago: Michelangelo's massive and intricate paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
On the ceiling, in a space between the scaffolding, can be seen a partially finished portion of the masterful artwork, showing God and Adam reaching out to touch one another. This is The Creation of Adam, the centerpiece of Michelangelo's famous work, which took four years to complete, most of which the artist spent lying on his back.
The re-creation of the Sistine Chapel scaffolding - which makes visitors feel like they're 60 feet above the chapel's floor, right alongside Michelangelo - is one of the highlights of a major exhibition that will continue for the next two months at the Cincinnati Museum Center.
"St. Peter and the Vatican: The Legacy of the Popes" is the largest collection of artworks and artifacts from the Vatican ever to tour North America. The 15,000-square-foot exhibit is also the largest ever presented at the museum center at Union Terminal.
The Vatican rarely lends its treasures out to the secular world, and many of the 350 artworks and historically significant objects on display here have never before been sent outside the Vatican. Others can't even be seen there, since they're kept in storage or are from private collections.
The exhibit combines religious, cultural, and historical artifacts to trace the development of the Roman Catholic Church and its leadership over the past 2,000 years, from the first pope, the apostle Peter, to the current one, Pope John Paul II. It also looks at the popes and their influence on world history and Western civilization.
"These artworks, these artifacts tell a really great story," said Dr. Peter Radetsky, lead developer for the exhibit. "It's 2,000 years of our culture, really, the focus being on this unique institution that has had such a strong role in our culture, in our history. It's a great history-detective-archeology story with terrific art, great artifacts, lots of history."
Radetsky is a former contributing editor of Discover magazine and a teacher at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Among the highlights of the exhibit are a life-sized reproduction of the tomb of St. Peter; the Mandylion of Edessa, a 5th-century image on linen considered to be the oldest known representation of the face of Jesus; original sketches by Michelangelo, including figure studies for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; a large wooden model of the original St. Peter's Basilica built during the time of the emperor Constantine; a tortoise-shell missal stand used by Christopher Columbus; a terra-cotta sculpture by 17th-century master Bernini called Charity with Four Putti, which has the artist's thumbprint pressed into the clay, and a Buddhist Thanka, a wall-hanging of embroidered silk and pearls, created in 1978 by the Dalai Lama of Tibet as a gift to John Paul II.
The exhibit is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view some items that may never again see the light of day, according to Radetsky.
"Most of these items have never been out of Rome, and once they go back they'll probably never leave Rome again," he said. "And many of them you can't see even if you're there. They're just not on display."
Cincinnati is the third of four U.S. stops for the exhibit - it premiered in Houston last March, went to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in August, and will move on to San Diego after its Cincinnati runs ends on April 18.
The exhibit was assembled with the blessing of Pope John Paul II. At its entrance is a framed welcoming message from the pontiff, and near the exit is a bronze cast of his right hand, which departing visitors are invited to touch - and many do, with great reverence.
Ads and other promotional material describe the exhibit as "2,000 years in the making," which in a way it is, tracing the papacy from the first pope to the 265th, John Paul II. But preparations to mount the unique exhibit actually began in 1997, when a boyhood friend of John Paul's, Jerzy Kluger, suggested that part of the Vatican's vast collection of artwork and other items should be put on display for those who couldn't visit Rome.
Cincinnati was chosen as a venue because of the large number of Catholics within a 500-mile radius (an estimated 29 million), and also because the president of the museum center, Doug McDonald, followed up on a "Titanic" exhibit in Cincinnati by directing a prolonged lobbying effort at Clear Channel Exhibitions, producer of both shows.
Don Bacigalupi, director of the Toledo Museum of Art, helped arrange the San Diego presentation of the exhibit in his former post as head of the art museum there. He said negotiations leading to the selection of the four American venues for the Vatican exhibition were "extremely complex" because it involved so many different parties.
Though the crowds here are fairly steady - tickets allow timed entry every 15 minutes - most people are quiet, even reverential, as they move through the exhibit's several galleries. Soft music, as if from a celestial chorus, flows from hidden speakers, and it can be heard even by those listening to the taped audio tour on headphones included in the admission price.
There are plenty of jeweled vestments and gilded statues, ornate jewelry and deeply colored oil paintings, velvety thrones and ostrich-plume fans. But the exhibit is much more than a series of galleries loaded with precious artifacts. Some of the stories behinds the artifacts are more fascinating than the items themselves.
For instance, there's a tiara, or three-tired crown, sent to Pope Pius VII by Napoleon Bonaparte. It's embellished with precious stones that the French had previously stolen from the Vatican, including what might be the world's largest emerald resting near the top of the crown.
Returning the jewels to the Vatican may have been a nice gesture, except in a not-so-veiled insult, Napoleon purposely had the crown made too small to fit the pope's head.
Displayed among the ornately decorated golden chalices used to hold Communion wine is a simple glass goblet that was used by priests to celebrate Mass at Auschwitz during World War II, and later given to the Vatican by survivors of the Nazi death camp.
Illustrations of St. Peter's crucifixion reveal that he was crucified upside-down at his own request, claiming he wasn't worthy of the same upright crucifixion suffered by Jesus.
Another part of the exhibit deals with the choosing of a new pope (there have been 265 of them over 20 centuries). On display is a tiny silver hammer that until the last century was used to confirm the death of a pope by tapping him on the forehead.
New popes are selected by the church's cardinals, whose paper ballots are burned in a small oven, with the smoke telling the faithful gathered outside whether or not a new pope has been chosen. White smoke means "yes," and black means "no."
In centuries past, wet straw was added to the ballots to make the smoke black, but the resulting smoke sometimes was a murky shade of gray, which confused everybody. In more recent papal elections, small chemical cylinders have been burned along with the ballots to color the smoke, and some of those cylinders are on display.
Probably the single most significant artifact in the exhibit is the Mandylion of Edessa. This is a small linen towel (mandylion) encased in a gold and silver frame adorned with figures of angels. On the towel is the unmistakable image of a face, said to be that of Jesus Christ. Legend says the image was left on the cloth when Jesus pressed it to his face, but others claim it was painted by an artist.
Regardless of the image's origin, the piece is said to have healing powers, and visitors to the exhibit in Cincinnati and its earlier stops have stood for hours waiting to get a close-up glimpse of the piece.
"No matter the legends that surround it, when you think that it's almost certainly the oldest image of Jesus in the Western world, that's really something," said Radetsky.
Though its focus is on the Catholic Church, the exhibit is not just for Catholics, Radetsky said.
"For Catholics, this is who they are and what their faith is," he said. "They see 2,000 years of that faith reflected.
"But for non-Catholics - and I'm not a Catholic - it may have a different impact. It appeals to me because of the history as well as the beauty, the art as well as the story behind it. It appeals to my sense of kind of historical detective work."
Taken as a whole, the exhibit's collection of bejeweled chalices, vestments, crowns, crucifixes, and other objects is literally priceless. While the importance of such artifacts is undeniable, there's a certain irony in spotlighting such exceptional wealth at a time when the Catholic Church in America is facing strong criticism over sexual abuse by some of its priests.
That irony of that is not lost on exhibit organizers.
"The timing couldn't be more ironic," said Radetsky. "But the plans for the exhibit predated what's happening here in the states. And some people seem heartened by being able to tell a church story or a cultural story that doesn't involve what's going on in the states now."
One delicate question regarding the exhibit involves the presence of artifacts that are actually used when a new pope is elected, such as a special papal throne and chalice, for example. With the 83-year-old Pope John Paul II in extremely frail health, would any of the items now on display have to be removed suddenly and returned to the Vatican in the event that he died and a new pope would have to be chosen?
"No," Radetsky replied. "Everything was promised to us for the duration of the exhibit." But he added that Vatican officials are all too aware of the possibility of a new pope having to be chosen before too long.
"The one relevant piece, the one I wanted a lot, which the Vatican refused to give us, was the stove in which the ballots are burned," he said. "They told us that was one thing they couldn't let go because they may need it. So they're aware."
Once the exhibit concludes its scheduled run in San Diego, it's possible that other parts of the world may get a look at it before everything is shipped back to the Vatican.
"It's unclear right now," Radetsky said. "I hope that it can go elsewhere, because the collection will never be put together again; I'm sure of that."
First Published February 8, 2004, 2:52 p.m.
