The Sistine Chapel visually recovers Michelangelo's frescoes with LED lighting technology

The restoration of the Sistine Chapel has featured LED lighting technology and a new air conditioning system to recover Michelangelo's spectacular pictorial work, coinciding with the 450 years of the death of the Florentine artist, which has had solutions from the German manufacturer Osram.

“New light and new oxygen for the Sistine Chapel”, as defined by the director of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci, the complex and laborious restoration project, almost five hundred years later, of the exceptional pictorial work made by Michelangelo, that from next 31 October the thousands of visitors (almost six million annually) they will be able to see, appreciate and enjoy homogeneously and with a precise level of detail the Renaissance frescoes of the Florentine artist.

The choice of this date responds to the fact that the 31 October 1512, Pope Julius II discovered the vault with the frescoes of The Creation, as explained by Paolucci during the presentation at the press office of the Holy See of the international congress 'The Sistine Chapel twenty years later: new breath, new light', which is celebrated precisely from 30 al 31 October.

The lamp maker Osram has been responsible for the new lighting solution, based on LED technology, from the Sistine Chapel in Rome, which has been based on the rigorous and precise light specifications that this company has already carried out in the Lenbachhaus museum, in the German city of Munich, As Peter Laier has pointed out, Osram CTO.

To achieve homogeneous and precise lighting of the Sistine Chapel, lights have been installed. 7.000 LED (of 50 a 100 lux), that meet the strict requirements for the protection and conservation of works of art, as can be seen in the photos provided by the Gobernatorato dello Stato della Città of the Vatican.

In this sense, The RGB luminaires developed by Osram emit two types of white light (one warm and one cold), as well as five independently controlled color channels to adjust their temperature, which in the case of the Sistine Chapel ranges between 3.000 y 4.000 Kelvin.

These luminaires are specially designed for installation at a height of ten meters and their small size allows them to be installed hidden on protrusions., cornices or structural elements, just as it happened in this case. Specifically, Forty LED luminaires with heat sinks have been deployed, distributed in rows of twenty on both sides of the chapel, in groups of four devices, each of which provides 140 RGB dots and white light.

Besides, Around thirty LED luminaires have also been installed in the chapel windows. 50 watts, that are scheduled for when special events are held, such as concerts or galas, as Pope Francis himself recently announced.

Energy efficiency

In addition to increasing the quality of lighting homogeneously throughout the spectrum, Another benefit of the implementation of this technology is that it consumes a 60% less energy compared to the previous luminaire system and reduces up to 50% the emission of heat to the cool.

Another of the projects that have been part of the restoration of the Sistine Chapel is air conditioning, made by the North American manufacturer Carrier, after three years of studying the conditions to control the necessary temperature and humidity parameters of the works, as well as reduce and control the level of carbon dioxide produced by the massive daily presence of visitors..

The illumination of the Sistine Chapel is a pilot project, known until now as 'LED4Art', subsidized by the European Union, and in which a consortium of specialized companies has worked, coordinated by Osram; lighting designers, conservators and light and energy measurement technicians, whose objective is to demonstrate the new possibilities offered by LED technology in relation to energy efficiency and light quality.