Detail of the Sis­tine Chapel.

Today marks the 500th anniver­sary of the unveil­ing of the Sis­tine Chapel’s ceil­ing, one of Michelan­gelo’s masterpieces.

What does this have to do with Camp­bell House? Not much, but it’s the per­fect flim­sy excuse for us to toot our own horns about the spec­tac­u­lar ceil­ings in this house, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the Parlor.

Dur­ing the restora­tion (2000–2005), painters removed up to 40 lay­ers of paint and wall­pa­per from the walls and ceil­ings in the house, and what they found on the first lay­er of plas­ter was repli­cat­ed for us to enjoy today.

Though we had clues in the 1880s pho­tographs and in the back­ground of Vir­gini­a’s large por­trait that hangs in the Par­lor, the tedious and time-con­sum­ing “strip every­thing off the walls” method was the only way we could know for sure what the Camp­bells’ orig­i­nal pat­terns and col­or schemes were through­out the house.

Here are a few images of painters from Mas­ter Arti­sans work­ing on the Par­lor’s ceil­ing dur­ing the restora­tion. Click on the images for a larg­er view:

Detail of the Par­lor ceil­ing dur­ing Restora­tion. You can see the lay­ers of paint the artists are in the process of care­ful­ly peel­ing away along the edges.

The motif from the pre­vi­ous image repaint­ed on the ceiling.

Scrap­ing away more old paint.…..

An artist work­ing on the intri­cate design in the cen­ter of the Parlor.

The com­plet­ed design.

As always, thanks for read­ing, and check back tomor­row for infor­ma­tion about our upcom­ing Hol­i­day His­toric House Tour!