Bramante’s Spiral Staircase: Recent Restorations of the Vatican Museums

When an important restoration project in completed many people are justifiably proud, not only for a job well done, but also because scholarship has been furthered. The opportunity to understand the work of art under consideration is unique since rarely is a building, a fresco, a sculpture so thoroughly consiered as when it is being restored. Any serious attempt at conservation needs to be grounded in a thorough knowledge of its history as well as its present state for this alone assures that the restorers proceed using the correct philological method. This also permits them to judge and integrate the objective data, the observations and quite the unexpected discoveries found during the restoration into the overall conservation process thus insuring the highest results in armony with the underlying philosophy and methodology. Since even the smallest detail of every work of art is observed, they must all of them must be integrated into the comprehensive documentation which emerges at the end of the process. In the case of Bramante"s Spiral Staircase for the villa Belvedere in the Vatican, a restoration we have just completed, the oppurtunity was provided for a detailed study of the 36 columns with their bases, capitals and the entablature.