Rome. Early 1500s.
Imagine standing on a flimsy platform held up by scaffolding, around 40 feet above the floor, craning your neck up at a ceiling whilst painting lifelike frescoes on wet plaster. Imagine wet plaster and paint dripping onto your face for hours a day. Imagine doing this work daily, for four years.
This was the task which Pope Julius II saddled Michelangelo with in 1508, resulting in the famous Sistine Chapel ceiling. It is covered with vivid frescoes depicting various biblical scenes from the book of Genesis and many different biblical figures. The ceiling is an absolutely breathtaking and unique masterpiece; perhaps one of the most famous to be born from the Renaissance.
The original Sistine chapel looked quite different than the one known today. Before the iconic works of Michelangelo graced the chapel ceiling, it was actually painted blue and covered in a geometric pattern of golden stars. However, when Pope Julius II was admiring the ceiling in 1504, he noticed a rather large crack had appeared, which could only be fixed by a repaint. But rather than covering up the crack and keeping the original design, Julius decided it was time for an update to the chapel interior. The original design, he thought, was modest and dated. Instead, he wanted it to be replaced with something much more grand; something embodying the dramatic artistry sweeping across Italy during the Renaissance movement. But who to commission for such a project?
In the year 1506, Michelangelo was chiseling away at one of the 40 marble figures on Julius’ burial monument, when the Pope approached the artist and asked if he would be willing to undertake the project. Michelangelo was certainly not known for his painting skills at the time. His two most famous works in marble, Pieta and David, had earned the Renaissance artist quite a bit of fame as being the greatest sculptor of his time, or possibly in all of history. Despite this, the Pope insisted that Michelangelo should try his hand at painting and be the one to complete the chapel ceiling. What Pope Julius had in mind were twelve portraits, each one depicting an Apostle.
At first, the artist refused. After all, there were other, much more experienced fresco painters who were likely more fit for the task than he was at the time. Raphael, Botticelli, Rosselli, and several other early Renaissance painters had already created stunning frescoes on the walls of the chapel a few years prior, and could likely achieve Julius’ grand vision. However, the Pope insisted on hiring Michelangelo, and in 1508, the artist finally agreed- but only on the condition that he would be given creative freedom. He thought the pope’s original proposal of the Apostles’ portraits would be a “poor thing,” not nearly grandiose enough for Michelangelo’s taste. Thus, the great task of painting the ceiling frescoes by hand was begun.
Rather than painting directly onto the ceiling, Michelangelo used a technique called fresco painting; a painstaking technique in which wet plaster made of limestone powder was applied to a surface, and while the plaster was still wet, the top layer was painted on with oil paint. With the help of four apprentices and two artists, Rosselli and Granacci, Michelangelo scraped away the old plaster of the blue starry ceiling and laid new plaster, section by section, as he painted a total of 47 scenes- nine main scenes based on stories found in the book of Genesis, and many other smaller portraits of prophets, ancestors of Christ, and other biblical figures. This tedious work took four years to complete, and was certainly far from comfortable. Michelangelo sent a poem to his friend, Giovanni da Pistoia, about the whole ordeal, a section of which reads:
“My stomach’s squashed under my chin, my beard’s
pointing at heaven, my brain’s crushed in a casket,
my breast twists like a harpy’s. My brush,
above me all the time, dribbles paint
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!”
Despite Michelangelo’s frustrations, some battles with moldy plaster, and a yearlong break in 1510, the chapel ceiling was finally completed in 1512. A few decades later, the artist returned to the chapel to paint a final fresco, the Last Judgement, behind the altar. The painting, which depicts the second coming of Christ, contains over 300 figures painted in remarkable detail. Since this piece was on a wall, and not the ceiling, Michelangelo probably avoided the traumatic neck pain of his previous commission. Both this fresco, and the 47 others on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, stand as some of the most impressive masterpieces of European art, and can still be viewed in Florence today.
Works Cited:
Ferris, Anne A. “Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling: A Portrait of the Renaissance.” Richmond.edu, 1985, scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2039&context=honors-theses.
“Michelangelo’s Assistants in the Sistine Ceiling.” Ilaria Marsili Rome Tours, 2 Oct. 2015, www.ilariamarsilirometours.com/blog/michelangelos-assistants-in-the-sistine-ceiling.
“Michelangelo’s Painting of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling.” ItalianRenaissance.org, www.italianrenaissance.org/a-closer-look-michelangelos-painting-of-the-sistine-chapel-ceiling/.
Mortel, Richard. “Interior of the Sistine Chapel.” WorldHistory.org, 16 Sept. 2020, https://www.worldhistory.org/image/12758/sistine-chapel-interior/.
“Pope Julius II and the Sistine Chapel.” Medium, OTDSYB, 1 Nov. 2017, medium.com/otdsyb/pope-julius-ii-and-the-sistine-chapel-1e73054dc941.
“The Last Judgement.” Wikimedia Commons, 13 May 2011, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michelangelo,_Giudizio_Universale_02.jpg.
Zappella, Christine. “Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.” Smarthistory, smarthistory.org/michelangelo-ceiling-of-the-sistine-chapel/.