ART

The Veil Stays: Workers restoring Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” fresco will leave intact most of the 40 or so modesty garments painted over its nude figures by subsequent generations, an Italian official said Tuesday. “It is for technical and historical reasons and not because of any moral judgment,” said Fabrizio Mancinelli, who is in charge of restoring the 1,800-square-foot fresco on the altar wall of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. Only the worst and most recent daubings will be removed, he told journalists, adding that some changes made since the fresco was finished in 1541 were themselves historic. Others were impossible to remove because the original was no longer underneath them, he said. Restoration of the “Last Judgment,” which took Michelangelo seven years to paint, began in 1990 and is expected to be finished by spring 1994.