SISTINE ...THE SEQUEL!
Never mind Hollywood’s attempt to recreate the Vatican masterpiece. A Sussex signwriter beat them to it in this tiny seaside Catholic church
THE Sistine Chapel ceiling, one of the most famous works of art in western civilisation, is in serious fashion on screen.
Michelangelo’s masterpiece appears in Netflix’s The Two Popes and HBO’S The Young Pope and The New Pope.
Since the Vatican bans filming in the sanctum where new popes are chosen, the film giants used digital recreations. But if you want to see the real thing, don’t bother going all the way to Rome.
Instead, make your way to pretty Goring-by-Sea on the West Sussex coast. There, in the english Martyrs Catholic Church, you’ll find an awe-inspiring replica of the ceiling with no need to get on a plane and none of the queueing.
It is an astonishing achievement. You open the door of the modern, pebble-dashed church, walk inside and, suddenly, you are in the Vatican — with God, Adam, eve and Noah staring down at you.
Michelangelo had the help of assistants and a hefty payment from Pope Julius II when he painted his ceiling between 1508 and 1512.
When church deacon Gary Bevans painted the Sussex version between 1987 and 1993, he did it entirely himself — and wasn’t paid a penny. Rather, it was his ‘personal offering to the church and to God,’ he says.
he was inspired to paint the ceiling on a church pilgrimage to Rome. When he returned, he saw that the barrel vault of the Goring church was not unlike that of the Sistine Chapel. So he embarked on his wildly ambitious scheme, with the backing of the church’s priest.
What is even more surprising is that Gary had no formal art training. his background is in signwriting. A fan of the Renaissance, he taught himself 16th- century techniques as he went along, with photos of the Sistine Chapel as his models and using acrylic paint.
Unlike Michelangelo, who painted directly onto fresh plaster, Gary planned the 100-foot picture inch
by inch, using a network of wooden panels that would all fit together precisely on to the ceiling. Once in place, he primed them with white paint, before adding the pictures on top. Like Michelangelo, Gary painted while high up on scaffolding. The only difference is the dimensions. Michelangelo’s ceiling is 60ft high; Gary’s 30ft and a two-thirds scale replica.
Also like Michelangelo, Gary was 33 when he embarked on the mammoth task. ‘I thought it would take only a couple of years,’ he says. ‘But it took more than two years to reach the halfway point and over five years to finish it.’
There is no reason why his painting, like Michelangelo’s, shouldn’t last for 500 years — provided the tiled roof keeps out the rain.
According to legend, Michelangelo painted his ceiling lying on his back. In fact, like Gary, he is now thought by scholars to have done it standing up. ‘I got a sore neck to begin with and could only paint for 20 minutes at a time,’ says Gary. ‘But my neck got stronger and I began to paint for five or six hours at a time.’
Meanwhile, he continued to hold down his day job, as he had a mortgage to pay, but managed to spend 40 hours a week painting the ceiling.
It became an obsession. ‘I’d often paint at night,’ he says. ‘And the congregation would hold services around me as I moved my scaffolding around.’
Luckily, he lives just three minutes away. And his wife and two daughters were very supportive of him and the project. His faith also kept him going, he says.
As he finished, so the fame of his work began to spread around the world. Thousands of visitors pour into the church each year.
‘I’ve been asked to paint churches in seven places,’ says Gary, ‘including Europe, America and Africa. But I think my work is done.’
This spring, you too can visit the masterpiece by the Michelangelo of West Sussex.
n THE English Martyrs Church in Goring-by-Sea is open to the public from April. An exhibition by Gary will also be on show. Harry Mount is the author of How England Made the English (Penguin).