In Focus: The £16,500 book that's a perfect 1:1 scale reproduction of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

Michaelangelo's great masterpiece, the frescoes that adorn the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, has been reproduced in a quite extraordinary volume of books. Annunciata Elwes takes a look.

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A gargantuan three-volume publication depicting Michelangelo and other Renaissance Masters’ works from the Sistine Chapel in 1:1 scale has been produced as part of the Vatican’s ongoing conservation work, in an English-language edition of 600.

(Image credit: Callaway Arts and Entertainment)

Already dubbed ‘the museum without walls’ and ‘probably the most lavish book produced in the western world’, the 822-page, 24in by 17in trilogy was created using 270,000 images, colour matched to 99.4% accuracy, taken by photographers over the course of 67 nights, digitally stitched together with 3D reconstruction software.

Each of the three volumes weighs an astonishing two stone (28lb/12.7kg).

(Image credit: Ghigo Roli / Callaway Arts and Entertainment)

A pair of white-cotton gloves is provided with each set for handling and a portion of the hefty £16,500 price tag goes to the Vatican Museums.

‘These magnificent volumes can serve as a tonic for the soul,’ says art historian and dealer Robert Simon. ‘Whether seen as a triumph of photography, a monument of scholarship, or a luxurious asset, this is a work to covet.’

(Image credit: Callaway Arts and Entertainment)

It’s ‘a collector’s dream’, adds Manuela Roosevelt, editorial director at publisher Callaway, 'the first opportunity in history for viewers to see the frescos as Michelangelo and the other artists painted them, with images so detailed and sharp and immersive that you feel that you are there next to the artist, seeing in extreme close-up the precise colours, textures, even the artists’ individual brush strokes’.

This extraordinary work is available via New York-based Callaway Arts and Entertainment and Philip Mould & Co in London.

(Image credit: Ghigo Roli / Callaway Arts and Entertainment)

'This is new ground for us, but I was astonished,' says Mould, an art dealer and presenter of the BBC art show Fake or Fortune.

'In many ways these volumes are more rewarding than being in the Sistine Chapel itself — I never thought a printed page could be so visually revealing.

(Image credit: Callaway Arts and Entertainment)

'You are not just able to linger on the acts of beauty like never before, but the illusion behind them — the drawing lines, pigments, and elusive feats of aerial artistry.

'To a connoisseur wishing to get grips with the techniques of some of the Renaissance greats, to art historians, or to anybody with mere curiosity of the secrets behind the act of artistic genius, these books will have a transformative impact.

(Image credit: Callaway Arts and Entertainment)

'As a monument of scholarship, or a luxurious asset, this is a work to covet and, for the fortunate, to own.'

You can buy a copy of this extraordinary work via Philip Mould & Co in St James's, London SW1 (www.philipmould.com) or Callaway Arts and Entertainment in New York (www.callaway.com/sistinechapel).

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Annunciata Elwes
Annunciata Elwes

Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.

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