BUZZ BOOK: Get your own piece of the Sistine Chapel — for just $22k

They say it’s hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, but he might have more luck getting his hands on this heavenly book: “The Sistine Chapel,” a three-volume limited edition collectors series of 600 numbered sets. Basically, it’s the Sistine Chapel in book form, with masterpieces by Michelangelo, Botticelli, Perugino, and other Renaissance artists presented in the pages with 99 percent color authenticity.

The price: a mere $22,000 — it’s a work of art in its own right.

The book, which is 24 by 17 inches and a whopping 822 pages total (each volume weighs 25 pounds), is the result of a five-year collaboration between Callaway Arts & Entertainment, the Vatican art museums and Italian art publisher Scripta Maneant.

The publication of this book is a big deal; the Vatican museums have never before authorized a publication of its kind, and the work will never be reprinted. The creation of the book is its own dramatic story. Over the course of 67 consecutive nights, the Sistine Chapel was closed to the public while a team of photographers took more than 270,000 digital images, using a 33-foottall scaffold and rig to capture every inch. “Now more than ever, when travel is limited and the immense amount of digital imagery fatigues the eye, these magnificent volumes can serve as a tonic for the soul,” says art historian and art dealer Robert Simon, who was responsible for discovering Leonardo da Vinci’s lost work “Salvator Mundi” in 2005. “Whether seen as a triumph of photography, a monument of scholarship, or a luxurious asset, this is a work to covet and, for the fortunate, to own.”