Great excitement spread through the worldwide press last week when the city of Rome announced that a fireworks display designed by Michelangelo would be staged at 10:30pm on Saturday 24 May in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo’s work on the Sistine Chapel Ceiling (Michelangelo signed the contract that bound him to paint the Sistine Ceiling on May 10, 1508).
The plan–as reported by websites and newspapers worldwide–was to reproduce Michelangelo’s Girandola, an elaborate fireworks display created by the artist for Pope Julius II, which was first staged from the heights of Castel Sant’Angelo in the early 16th century and repeated annually until 1834.
As many of our readers might imagine, we at the eCool Compound were extremely excited about the recreation of the Girandola. We did a bit of research. We discovered the color-washed etchings of the event (above) created by Francesco Piranesi and Louis-Jean Desprez in the 1780s (now in the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art), and we cleared our Saturday evening calendars in preparation for a fireworks extravaganza.
We were excited to see how Michelangelo’s fireworks display would differ from the modern fireworks that so often light up the Roman sky at night. And we were interested to hear that an historic fireworks expert, Giuseppe Passeri, had spent years studying ancient documents and finding ways to reproduce the fireworks-making materials of Michelangelo’s era.
In article after article, Passeri explained that unlike modern firework shows, the Girandola used few explosives and focused on transparency and color definition:
The Girandola was an unmistakably baroque event, an astounding play of colors wedded to its surroundings. It was a kind of elaborate game, like a fountain transformed into fire.
Yes! This would be interesting! And it would be made even more so by the fact that Renaissance fireworks production techniques were vastly different from modern ones, using entirely natural materials and relying heavily on the location to enhance the effect. According to Passeri, his team would do its best to reproduce the original shape of Michelangelo’s fireworks, which were meant to mimic a volcanic eruption on the island of Stromboli, off the coast of Sicily.
And so, on Saturday evening, we took ourselves to Castel Sant’Angelo. We arrived about 10:20pm and found an excellent vantage point on a nearby bridge. We stood there amongst Romans, tourists, and any number of lederhausen-clad oom-pah-pah bands (we can’t explain their enthusiasm for the event). We waited. And we waited. And we waited some more. But the Girandola never happened.
ADDENDUM: Since we first published this article some days ago, Jennifer and Hande, two intrepid residents of Rome, have written to tell us that Girandola DID take place. Despite being scheduled for 10:30pm, the fireworks actually went off early, about 9:45 or 10:00pm. We must not have been the only ones foiled in our efforts to photograph the event, for no images have appeared in the press.
Some information via ANSA
