Bullshit: The Sistine Chapel is Copyrighted?! I want my Credit Card.
As you all know (or you should know, if you read my blog, and you are doing that right now so YOU SHOULD KNOW) the Libyan Sibyl is famously depicted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. She is one of the 12 Sibyls that border the depiction of Genesis on the outskirts of the ceiling:
Am I not allowed to post these? Too bad.
Obviously, I’m a big fan. One of the highlights of my life was seeing this masterpiece in person. So when I saw that Wells Fargo had a free service called “Design Studio,” I saw an opportunity to promote my fandom on my credit and debit cards. I had so much fun making them and I was so excited about getting my newly designed cards I went home and waited by the mailbox for two days.
Today I received two emails stating my designs for both cards were NOT approved for printing. According to Wells Fargo, the following images are not acceptable:
- Trademarks, copyrighted materials, advertising, or branding.
- Celebrities, musicians, athletes, entertainers, or other public figures.
- Telephone numbers, URLs, account numbers, addresses, or email addresses.
- Cartoon characters or artwork that you have not created and/or do not have permission from the copyright owner to use.
- Violent, offensive, anti-social, or death imagery – including any other material that could be perceived as violent.
- Provocative, lewd, or sexual content – including nude, semi-nude, or partially clothed pictures of people of any age.
- Dead animals, including game animals.
- Political or religious imagery.
- Symbols representing money or other content that might result in confusion at the point of sale, or that might result in card fraud.
- Socially unacceptable or discriminatory behavior or signs (for example, gangs, hatred, drug or alcohol abuse, graffiti, profanity, or other obscene behavior or gestures).
- Images of flags, unless it is one of the flag-related images from our photo gallery.
So there’s a lot that can’t be put on the card – and, Wells Fargo being a private company, it’s understandable that they would not want to be responsible for putting up offensive or divisive images on something that displays their logo. That’s fine, that’s not my beef. But it turns out being “provocative,” “discriminatory or even “religious” isn’t the offense. Michelangelo’s Libyan Sibyl falls under “copyrighted materials” so I can’t have the image printed on my goddamn cards.
Strict copyright laws are a fairly recent invention, so many famous works of art created prior to the Industrial Revolution fall under public domain. Works by Shakespeare and Beethoven, for example, are open to the public and are not copyrighted by any person or party. So I thought I was safe in assuming Michelangelo, a High Renaissance, early 16th-Century, artist fell under public domain. I was dead wrong. Way back in the 1980s, the Chapel had begun a long and very expensive restoration process, and that’s when fight between public domain and modern copyright law got ugly:
They issued a call for public sponsorship, the Japanese TV network NHK stepped forward with a proposal. NHK would pay for the restoration, in return for exclusive film and publication rights…NHK paid between $3 and $4 Million. The Vatican could only license the copyrights of a public domain work due to an old quirk of copyright law. The original artwork may be in the public domain, but a photograph of that artwork may be copyrighted as a new unique work. The photograph taken today becomes a new copyrighted work with new intellectual property rights.
So the work itself is not copyrighted. But any photo taken of the work is copyrighted. So you can’t use any photo of the work, unless you take it yourself. And I’ve been to the Sistine Chapel, and you are not allowed to take photos of the ceiling yourself (You can’t escape the Vatican guard who keeps screaming “NO FOTO!”). And 12 years into the new millennium, I can’t get the Libyan Sibyl on my credit card. And for that I call bullshit.
