The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is one of the greatest artistic triumphs in history. From 1508 to 1512, the artist Michelangelo lay on his back and painted the Fall and the Flood.

But Michelangelo's magnificent art started to fade almost immediately. Within a century of completing his work, no one remembered what his original frescoes had really looked like. Painter Biagio Biagetti described it in 1936: "We see the colors of the Sistine ceiling as if through smoked glass."

In 1981 a scaffold was erected to clean the frescoes that adorn the chapel. With a special solution, Fabrizio Mancinelli and Gianluigi Colalucci gently washed a small corner of the painting.

They invited art experts to examine the work. The result was stunning. No one had imagined that beneath centuries of grime lay such vibrant colors. This was not the Michelangelo known by art critics. That artist was the master of form, his paintings resembling sculpture more than painting. This "new" artist was also the master of color—azure, green, rose, and lavender of amazing nuance.

Their success prompted the restoration of the entire ceiling. The task was completed on December 31, 1989. It had taken twice as long to clean the ceiling as the artist had needed to paint it. But the result was breathtaking. For the first time in nearly 500 years, people viewed this masterpiece the way it was intended, in all of its color and beauty.