Vatican Wants £2m to Restore Michelangelo's Last Frescos

The Vatican is hoping to raise £2m to fund the restoration of Michelangelo's last two frescos, which are hidden from the public in a chapel where the Pope prays and reads mass to private audiences.

The frescos - the Crucifixion of St Peter and the Conversion of St Paul - are faded after being exposed to dust and soot over centuries of candlelit prayer in the Pauline chapel, close to the better-known Sistine chapel.

Michelangelo finished painting the frescos at the age of 75, and died 14 years later.

As the artist's last paintings, the two six-sq-metre (20-sq-ft) frescos are considered among the most important masterpieces in the Vatican's care. When they were last restored, in the 1930s, several cracks were repaired.

A committee of restoration experts has been preparing for the project for years. Italian press reports yesterday said work could begin this autumn.

"It is a scholar's job of cleaning and maintenance," said Arnold Nesselrath, the Vatican curator of Byzantine, Medieval and Renaissance painting.

"They are great works of art and they are 500 years old. If you live in a house for 50 years, doors are slammed, things like that, and plaster gets loose. It needs to be fixed."

The Pauline chapel is in the Apostolic palace, separated from the Sistine by a hallway, the Aula Regia. Unlike the Sistine, where Michelangelo's ceiling and wall frescos draw millions of visitors, the Pauline is closed to the public.

The last published photographs there were taken in the 1980s.

Anthony Majanlahti, a Rome-based historian, said: "Permits for visits have become increasingly difficult to get as the condition [of the frescos] has deteriorated. Only a handful of people get to see it every year."

The Pauline chapel has undergone endless alterations since it was built in 1537. While the Michelangelo frescos, completed in 1550, are still in their original place, the vault above them has been moved and other structural additions made.

As Vatican coffers have dwindled in recent decades, the Holy See has become increasingly dependent on wealthy outsiders to fund maintenance of its treasures.

Father Allen Duston, the international director of the Vatican's Office for the Patrons of the Arts, is still touting for potential sponsors to provide at least €3m (£2m) for the job.

But he may find the likes of Japan's Nippon TV - which funded the Sistine restoration a decade ago - less keen to help salvage masterpieces only the pontiff and a select few will ever see.