Art: Change of Horse

Michelangelo's Conversion of St. Paul, in the Vatican's Pauline Chapel, had always troubled a Vatican official named Filippo Magi. The composition is dominated not by the prostrate St. Paul but by his horse, which Magi described as having "an expressionless and towering head similar to that of a mule." And curiously, the horse was bridled, though Michelangelo made a habit of painting horses without bridles. Last summer Magi persuaded a Vatican colleague, Professor Deoclecio Redig de Campos, that the strange beast might be the result of overpainting by some unknown bungler. De Campos took an infra-red photograph, which showed that there was indeed an other head beneath the first.

Neither of the experts could determine from the photograph whether the second head was anything more than Michelangelo's own rough draft, but they resolved to gamble that it was complete, and set about removing the top head. "We were scared when we started scraping," De Campos confesses, "because, had there been nothing much underneath and had we beheaded that horse, no one would have ever forgiven us."

But the first thing they uncovered was the vivid and reassuring eye of the original horse, "so different from the dull look of the repaint" as to establish at once that they had made a find. Last week the original head stood entirely revealed. Far livelier and more graceful than the overpainted one, it had no bridle (although the reins were still to be removed).

No one could guess who had tampered with the fresco, but apparently the damage was done centuries ago. Hardest to explain was the fact that, over those centuries, artists and scholars without exception accepted the mulish impostor as Michelangelo's work. "Probably," says De Campos, "it's because people take things for granted when a big name is involved."