Scaffolding in a niche of the Vatican Museums’ Round Hall conceal from view the work of restorers who are removing centuries of grime from the largest known bronze statue of the ancient world: the gilded Hercules Mastai Righetti. For more than 150 years, the four-meter-tall (13-foot-tall) figure of the half-human Roman god of strength has stood in that niche, barely garnering notice among other antiquities because of the dark coating it had acquired. Vatican Museum restorer Alice Baltera works on the bronze Hercules statue, in the Round Hall of the Vatican Museums, Thursday, May 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) But it was only after removing a layer of wax and other material from a 19th-century restoration that Vatican experts understood the statue’s true splendor as one of ...
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