DUST and pollution brought into the Sistine Chapel by thousands of tourists every day risk endangering the chapel’s masterpieces by Michelangelo, the Vatican Museums chief warned.

ART officials yesterday unveiled the painting at the centre of the latest Caravaggio mystery, after the Vatican newspaper first suggested and then denied that the canvas was the work of the Italian master.

A series of four books presented at the Vatican seeks to explain how Michelangelo and other artists translated the Bible into images to produce in the Sistine Chapel some of the world’s most renowned frescoes.

Italian museum officials are deciding whether to install a stream of gushing air around Michelangelo’s David to protect the Renaissance masterpiece from dust.