ABSTRACT
The most obvious source of the fresco citations in the broadsheet plates would have been the paintings themselves. However, since the Pauline Chapel was – and is still – the pope’s private chapel, the frescoes would not have been within easy reach. Relative inaccessibility, however, had not prevented other papal-commissioned works by Michelangelo being widely known. The Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgement was immediately copied in sketches and in engravings for the huge and profitable market which existed for his work. However, few prints of the Pauline Chapel frescoes were produced, perhaps because of their location but perhaps, more importantly, because of the lack of critical enthusiasm for them. The Conversion of St Paul and The Crucifixion of St Peter were not, unlike The Last Judgement, ‘must-have’ images and if they were a talking point in Rome it was because they had not been well received, were not understood. Certainly they had, Steinberg says, a ‘cold reception’.1 Vasari and Condivi loyally praised them, but by the time of Michelangelo’s death in 1564, as Tolnay notes, opinion was against them.2 They were considered to be lacking in grace, to be discordant, bleak and unappealing and to represent a change in Michelangelo’s style, one which resulted, his critics said, from his declining powers of creative expression. This makes their deliberate citation by the broadsheet all the more significant.
