The Sistine Chapel Ceiling. An Artistic Vision Without Precedent. (Part Five).

Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopaedia,
unless otherwise stated.

Creation of the Stars and Planets by God,

by Michelangelo.

Sistine Chapel Ceiling Fresco.

Image from Christus Rex.

From: English Wikipedia:

en:Image:Creation of stars and planets.jpg.

(Wikimedia Commons)

In the Book of Esther, it is related that Haman, a Public Servant, plots to get Esther's husband, the King of Persia, to slay all the Jewish people in his land. The King, who is going over his books during a sleepless night, realises something is amiss. Esther, discovering the plot, denounces Haman and her husband orders his execution on a scaffold he has built. The King's eunuchs promptly carry this out. Michelangelo shows Haman crucified, with Esther looking at him from a doorway, the King giving orders in the background.

English: Interior of The Sistine Chapel

showing the Ceiling painted by

Michelangelo.

Italiano: Interno della cappella sistina.

Origine: http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm.

Immagine preparata per Wikipedia da Adria Pingstone (:en:User:Arpingstone).

Date: 17 May 2004.

Source: Transferred from it.wikipedia;

transferred to Commons by User:Pierpao using CommonsHelper.

Author: Original uploader was Snowdog at it.wikipedia

(Wikimedia Commons)

The other two stories, those of David and Judith, were often linked in Renaissance art, particularly by Florentine artists, as they demonstrated the overthrow of tyrants, a popular subject in the Republic. In this image, the Shepherd Boy, David, has brought down the towering Goliath with his sling, but the giant is alive and is trying to rise as David forces his head down to chop it off.

The depiction of Judith and Holofernes has an equally gruesome detail. As Judith loads the enemy's head onto a basket, carried by her maid, and covers it with a cloth, she looks towards the tent, apparently distracted by the limbs of the decapitated corpse threshing about.

There are obvious connections in the design of the Slaying of Holofernes and the Slaying of Haman, at the opposite end of the Chapel. Although, in the Holofernes picture, the figures are smaller and the space less filled, both have the triangular space divided into two zones by a vertical wall, allowing us to see what is happening on both sides of it. There are actually three scenes in the Haman picture, because, as well as seeing Haman punished, we see him at the table with Esther and the King and get a view of the King on his bed. Mordechai sits on the steps, making a link between the scenes.

English: The Last Judgement.

Italian: Il Giudizio universale.

Artist: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564).

Current location: Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Italy.

Credit line: user:GianniG46.

(Wikimedia Commons)

While the Slaying of Goliath is a relatively simple composition, with the two protagonists centrally placed, the only other figures being dimly-seen observers, the Brazen Serpent picture is crowded with figures, and separate incidents, as the various individuals, who have been attacked by snakes, struggle and die or turn towards the icon that will save them. This is the most Mannerist of Michelangelo's earlier compositions at The Sistine Chapel, picking up the theme of human distress, begun in the Great Flood scene, and carrying it forward into the torment of Lost Souls in The Last Judgement, which was later painted below.

The Ceiling of The Sistine Chapel was to have a profound effect upon other artists, even before it was completed. Vasari, in his Life of Raphael, tells us that Bramante, who had the keys to the Chapel, let Raphael in to examine the paintings in Michelangelo's absence. On seeing Michelangelo's Prophets, Raphael went back to the picture of the Prophet Isaiah, that he was painting on a Column in the Church of Sant'Agostino, and, according to Vasari, although it was finished, he scraped it off the wall and repainted it in a much more powerful manner, in imitation of Michelangelo. John O'Malley points out that even earlier than the Isaiah is Raphael's inclusion of the figure of Heraclitus in the School of Athens, a brooding figure similar to Michelangelo's Jeremiah, but with the countenance of Michelangelo, himself, and leaning on a block of marble.

There was hardly a design element on the Ceiling that was not subsequently imitated: The fictive architecture, the muscular anatomy, the foreshortening, the dynamic motion, the luminous colouration, the haunting expressions of the figures in the Lunettes, the abundance of Putti. Gabriele Bartz and Eberhard König have said of the Ignudi, "There is no image that has had a more lasting effect on following generations than this. Henceforth, similar figures disported themselves in innumerable decorative works, be they painted, formed in stucco or even sculpted."

The Sistine Chapel.

The Prophet Daniel,

before (left) and after (right) Restoration.

Date: 1505.

Source: Webgallery of art, Bartz and Konig, "Michelangelo".

Author: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564).

(Wikimedia Commons)

Within Michelangelo's own work, the Chapel Ceiling led to the later, and more Mannerist, painting of The Last Judgement, in which the crowded compositions gave full rein to his inventiveness in painting contorted and foreshortened figures, expressing despair or jubilation. Among the artists in whose work can be seen the direct influence of Michelangelo are Pontormo, Andrea del Sarto,Correggio, Tintoretto, Annibale Carracci, Paolo Veronese and El Greco.

In January 2007, it was claimed that as many as 10,000 visitors passed through the Vatican Museums in a day and that the Ceiling of The Sistine Chapel is the biggest attraction. The Vatican, anxious at the possibility that the newly-restored frescoes will suffer damage, announced plans to reduce visiting hours and raise the price in an attempt to discourage visitors.

Five hundred years earlier, Vasari had said "The whole world came running when the Vault was revealed, and the sight of it was enough to reduce them to stunned silence."


THIS CONCLUDES THE ARTICLE ON THE SISTINE CHAPEL CEILING

Available (in U.K.) from

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The Sistine Chapel Ceiling. An Artistic Vision Without Precedent. (Part Four).

Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopaedia,
unless otherwise stated.

Raphael's Isaiah was painted in imitation of Michelangelo's Prophets.

Artist: Raphael (1483–1520).

Date: 1511.

Current location: Sant'Agostino, Rome, Italy.

Source/Photographer: Web Gallery of Art:

(Wikimedia Commons)

The twelve Prophetic figures are:

Jonah (IONAS) – above the Altar;
Jeremiah (HIEREMIAS);
Persian Sibyl (PERSICHA);
Ezekiel (EZECHIEL);
Erythraean Sibyl. (ERITHRAEA);
Joel (IOEL);
Zechariah (ZACHERIAS) – above the Main Door of the Chapel;
Delphic Sibyl. (DELPHICA);
Isaiah (ESAIAS);
Cumaean Sibyl. (CVMAEA);
Daniel (DANIEL);
Libyan Sibyl (LIBICA).

The seven Prophets of Israel, chosen for depiction on the Ceiling, include the four, so-called, Major Prophets: Isaiah; Jeremiah; Ezekiel; Daniel. Of the remaining twelve possibilities among the Minor Prophets, the three represented are Joel, Zechariah and Jonah. Although the Prophets Joel and Zechariah are considered "Minor", because of the comparatively small number of pages that their Prophecy occupies in the Bible, each one produced Prophesies of profound significance.

They are often quoted:

Joel for his: "Your sons and your daughters shall Prophesy, your elderly shall dream dreams and your youth shall see visions". These words are significant for Michelangelo's decorative scheme, where women take their place among men, and the youthful Daniel sits across from the brooding Jeremiah with his long white beard.

English: Coat-of-Arms of the Popes of the family Della Rovere:

Pope Sixtus IV and Pope Julius II.

Español: Escudo de los papas de la familia Della Rovere:

Sixto IV y Julio II.

Date: 18 March 2014.

Source: Own work.

Author: Echando una mano.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Zechariah prophesied: "Behold ! Your King comes to you, humble and riding on a donkey". His place in the Chapel is directly above the door through which the Pope is carried in Procession on Palm Sunday, the day on which Jesus fulfilled the Prophecy by riding into Jerusalem on a donkey and being proclaimed King.

Jonah's main Prophecy concerned the downfall of the City of Nineveh. While this alone does not seem to warrant him a place above the High Altar, it is the person of Jonah, himself, that is of symbolic and Prophetic significance, a significance which was commonly perceived and had been represented in countless works of art, including Manuscripts and Stained-Glass Windows.

Jonah, through his reluctance to obey God, was swallowed by a "mighty fish". He spent three days in its belly and was eventually spewed up on dry land, where he went about God's business. Jonah was thus seen as presaging Jesus, Who, having died by Crucifixion, spent part of three days in a tomb and was Raised on The Third Day. So, on The Ceiling of The Sistine Chapel, Jonah, with the "great fish" beside him and his eyes turned towards God the Creator, represents a "portent" of the Resurrection of Christ.

A reconstruction of the appearance of the Chapel in the 1480s, prior to the painting of the Ceiling.

An engraving, which attempts to reconstruct the probable appearance of the Interior of The Sistine Chapel before the internal reorganisation, the moving of the Screen; and the painting of the Ceiling and The Last Judgement by Michelangelo.

Artist: Unknown.

Date: 19th-Century.

Current location: Sistine Chapel, Rome, Italy.

Source/Photographer: Web Gallery of Art.

(Wikimedia Commons)

In Vasari's description of the Prophets and Sibyls, he is particularly high in his praise of the portrayal of Isaiah: "Anyone who studies this figure, copied so faithfully from nature, the true mother of the art of painting, will find a beautifully composed work, capable of teaching in full measure all the precepts to be followed by a good painter.”

The Sibyls were prophetic women who were resident at shrines or temples throughout the Classical World. The five depicted here are each said to have Prophesied the Birth of Christ. The Cumaean Sibyl, for example, is quoted by Virgil in his Fourth Eclogue as declaring that "a new progeny of Heaven" would bring about a return of the "Golden Age". This was interpreted as referring to Jesus.

In Christian Doctrine, Christ came not just to the Jews but also to the Gentiles. It was understood that, prior to the Birth of Christ, God prepared the world for his coming. To this purpose, God used Jews and Gentiles alike. Jesus would not have been born in Bethlehem (where it had been Prophesied that His Birth would take place), except for the fact that the pagan Roman Emperor Augustus decreed that there should be a Census. Likewise, when Jesus was Born, the announcement of His Birth was made to rich and to poor, to mighty and to humble, to Jew and to Gentile. The Three Wise Men (the "Magi" of the Bible), who sought out The Infant King with precious gifts, were pagan foreigners.

English: Michelangelo's rendering of The Erythraean Sibyl on The Sistine Chapel's Ceiling.

Deutsch: Deckenfresko zur Schöpfungsgeschichte in der Sixtinischen Kapelle,

Szene in Lünette: Die Erythräische Sibylle.

Artist: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564).

Date: 1508-1512.

Source/Photographer: The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei.

DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.

(Wikimedia Commons)

In The Church of Rome, where there was an increasing interest in the remains of the City's pagan past, where scholars turned from reading Mediaeval Church Latin to Classical Latin, and the philosophies of the Classical World were studied along with the Writings of Saint Augustine, the presence, in The Sistine Chapel, of five pagan Prophets is not surprising.

It is not known why Michelangelo selected the five particular Sibyls that were depicted, given that, as with the Minor Prophets, there were ten or twelve possibilities. It is suggested by John O'Malley that the choice was made for a wide geographic coverage, with the Sibyls coming from Africa, Asia, Greece and Ionia.

Vasari says of the Erythraean Sibyl: "Many aspects of this figure are of exceptional loveliness; the expression of her face, her head-dress and the arrangement of her draperies; and her arms, which are bared, are as beautiful as the rest."

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling fresco,

by Michelangelo, depicting The Cumaean Sibyl, on the right.

Artist:

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564).

Date: 1508-1512.

Current location: Sistine Chapel, Rome, Italy.

Source/Photographer: Web Gallery of Art.

(Wikimedia Commons)

In each corner of The Chapel is a triangular Pendentive, filling the space between the walls and the Arch of the Vault, and forming the Spandrel above the windows nearest the corners. On these curving shapes, Michelangelo has painted four scenes from Biblical stories that are associated with the Salvation of Israel by four great male and female heroes of the Jews: Moses; Esther; David; and Judith:

The Brazen Serpent;
The Punishment of Haman;
David and Goliath;
Judith and Holofernes.

The first two stories were both seen, in Mediaeval Theology and Renaissance Theology, as pre-figuring The Crucifixion of Jesus. In the story of The Brazen Serpent, the people of Israel become dissatisfied and grumble at God. As punishment, they receive a plague of poisonous snakes. God offers the people relief by instructing Moses to make a snake of brass, set up on a pole, the sight of which gives miraculous healing. Michelangelo chooses a crowded composition, depicting a dramatic mass of suffering men, women and writhing snakes, separated from redeemed worshippers, by the snake, before an Epiphanic light.


PART FIVE FOLLOWS

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling. An Artistic Vision Without Precedent. (Part Three).

Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopaedia,
unless otherwise stated.

Sistine Chapel fresco, by Michelangelo.

The Downfall of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Date: 1509.

Source: Web Gallery of Art[1]

Author: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564).

(Wikimedia Commons)

While much of the symbolism of The Ceiling dates from The Early Church, The Ceiling also has elements that express the specifically Renaissance thinking that sought to reconcile Christian Theology with the Philosophy of Renaissance Humanism.

During the 15th-Century in Italy, and in Florence, in particular, there was a strong interest in Classical Literature and the Philosophies of Plato, Socrates and other Classical writers. Michelangelo, as a young man, had spent time at the Humanist academy established by the Medici family in Florence. He was familiar with early Humanist-inspired sculptural works, such as Donatello's Bronze David, and had himself responded by carving the enormous nude Marble David, which was placed in the Piazza near the Palazzo Vecchio, the home of Florence's Council.

The Humanist vision of Humanity was one in which people responded to other people, to social responsibility, and to God, in a direct way, not through intermediaries, such as The Church. This conflicted with The Church's emphasis. While The Church emphasised Humanity as essentially sinful and flawed, Humanism emphasised Humanity as potentially noble and beautiful.

These two views were not necessarily irreconcilable to The Church, but only through a recognition that the unique way to achieve this "elevation of spirit, mind and body" was through The Church as the agent of God. To be outside The Church was to be beyond Salvation. In The Ceiling of The Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo presented both Catholic and Humanist elements in a way that does not appear visually conflicting. The inclusion of "non-Biblical" figures, such as the Sibyls or Ignudi, is consistent with the rationalising of Humanist and Christian thought of The Renaissance. This rationalisation was to become a target of The Counter Reformation.

Sistine Chapel fresco by Michelangelo,

God dividing the waters, showing the illusionary architecture,

and the positions of the Ignudi and Shields.

Date: 1509.

Source: Web Gallery of Art[1].

Author: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564).

(Wikimedia Commons)

The iconography of The Ceiling has had various interpretations in the past, some elements of which have been contradicted by modern scholarship and others, such as the identity of the figures in the Lunettes and Spandrels, continue to defy interpretation.

Modern scholars have sought, as yet unsuccessfully, to determine a written source of the Theological programme of The Ceiling, and have questioned whether or not it was entirely devised by the artist, himself, who was both an avid reader of the Bible and a genius.

Also of interest, to some modern scholars, is the question of how Michelangelo's own spiritual and psychological state is reflected in the iconography and the artistic expression of The Ceiling. One such speculation is that Michelangelo was tormented by conflict between homosexual desires and passionate Christian beliefs.

English: The Prophet, Joel. Fresco, painted by Michelangelo and his assistants,

for the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, between 1508 and 1512.

Polski: Fresk w Kaplicy Syksyńskiej przedstawiający

Sąd Ostateczny Michała Anioła.

Source: Scanned from book.

Author: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564).

(Wikimedia Commons)

The Sistine Chapel is 40.5 metres long and 14 metres wide. The Ceiling rises to 20 metres above the main floor of The Chapel. The Vault is of quite a complex design and it is unlikely that it was originally intended to have such elaborate decoration. Pier Matteo d'Amelia provided a Plan for its decoration, with the architectural elements picked out, and The Ceiling painted Blue and dotted with Gold Stars, similar to that of the Arena Chapel, decorated by Giotto, at Padua.

The Chapel walls have three horizontal tiers, with six windows in the upper tier down each side. There were also two windows at each end, but these have been closed up above the Altar, when Michelangelo's Last Judgement was painted, obliterating two Lunettes. Between the windows are large Pendentives, which support the Vault. Between the Pendentives are triangularly-shaped Arches, or Spandrels, cut into the Vault above each window. Above the height of the Pendentives, the Ceiling slopes gently without much deviation from the horizontal. This is the real architecture. Michelangelo has elaborated it with illusionary, or fictive, architecture.

The first element, in the scheme of painted architecture, is a definition of the real architectural elements by accentuating the lines where Spandrels and Pendentives intersect with the curving Vault. Michelangelo painted these as decorative Courses, that look like sculpted Stone Mouldings. These have two repeating motifs, a formula common in Classical architecture. Here, one motif is the Acorn, the symbol of the family of both Pope Sixtus IV, who built The Chapel, and Pope Julius II, who commissioned Michelangelo's work.

The Persian Sibyl,

by Michelangelo.

Sistine Chapel Ceiling Fresco.

This File: 20 March 2005.

User: Ccson.

(Wikipedia)

The other motif is the Scallop Shell, one of the symbols of The Madonna, to whose Assumption The Chapel was Dedicated in 1483. The Crown of the wall then rises, above the Spandrels, to a strongly projecting painted Cornice, that runs right around The Ceiling, separating the pictorial areas of the Biblical scenes from the figures of Prophets, Sibyls and Ancestors, who, literally and figuratively, support the narratives. Ten broad painted Cross-Ribs, of Travertine, cross The Ceiling and divide it into, alternately, wide and narrow pictorial spaces, a grid that gives all the figures their defined place.

A great number of small figures are integrated with the painted architecture, their purpose apparently purely decorative. These include two faux marble Putti, below the Cornice on each Rib, each one a male and female pair; stone ram's-heads are placed at the apex of each Spandrel; Copper-Skinned nude figures in varying poses, hiding in the shadows, propped between the Spandrels and the Ribs, like animated book-ends; and more Putti, both clothed and unclothed, strike a variety of poses as they support the name-plates of the Prophets and Sibyls.

Above the Cornice, and to either side of the smaller scenes, are an array of Round Shields, or Medallions. They are framed by a total of twenty figures, the so-called Ignudi, which are not part of the architecture but sit on inlaid Plinths, their feet planted convincingly on the fictive Cornice. Pictorially, the Ignudi appear to occupy a space between the narrative spaces and the space of the Chapel, itself.

Sistine Chapel painting in the triangular Spandrel,

in the fourth Bay over the Ezekiel (Hezekiah)-Manasseh-Amon Lunette,

and between the Cumaean Sibyl and Isaiah. Part of the Ancestors of Christ series.

Artist: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564).

Date: 1509.

Source/Photographer: Web Gallery of Art, URL:http://www.wga.hu/html/m/michelan/3sistina/7triangl/04_5sp4.html

(Wikimedia Commons)

Along the Central Section of the Ceiling, Michelangelo depicted nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, the first Book of the Bible. The pictures fall into three groups of three, alternating, large and small Panels.

The first group shows God creating the Heavens and the Earth. The second group shows God creating the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, and their disobedience of God and consequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden, where they had lived and walked with God. The third group, of three pictures, shows the plight of Humanity, and, in particular, the family of Noah.

The pictures are not in strictly chronological order. If they are perceived as three groups, then the pictures in each of the three units inform upon each other, in the same way as was usual in Mediaeval Paintings and Stained-Glass. The three Sections, of Creation, Downfall and Fate of Humanity, appear in reverse order, when read from the entrance of the Chapel. However, each individual scene is painted to be viewed when looking towards the Altar. This is not easily apparent when viewing a reproduced image of the Ceiling, but becomes clear when the viewer looks upward at the Vault. Paoletti and Radke suggest that this reversed progression symbolises a return to a state of Grace. However, the three Sections are generally described in the order of Biblical chronology.

The Lunette of Jacob and Joseph, the Earthly father of Jesus.

The suspicious old man may represent Joseph.

Sistine Chapel fresco, by Michelangelo. One of the Ancestors of Christ series. Note: This is not Joseph, who ruled Egypt, or Jacob, son of Isaac. This is the Joseph that was the Earthly father of Jesus. It is the last in the Series of Ancestors on The Sistine Chapel Ceiling.

Artist: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564).

Date: 1509.

Source: Web Gallery of Art[1]

(Wikimedia Commons)

The scenes, from the Altar towards the Main Door, are ordered as follows:

The Separation of Light and Darkness;
The Creation of the Sun, Moon and Earth;
The Separation of Land and Water;
The Creation of Adam;
The Creation of Eve;
The Temptation and Expulsion;
The Sacrifice of Noah;
The Great Flood;
The Drunkenness of Noah.

Adjacent to the smaller Biblical scenes, and supported by the Ignudi, are ten circular Parade Shields (Medallions), sometimes described as being painted to resemble bronze. Known examples are actually of lacquered and gilt wood. Each is decorated with a picture drawn from The Old Testament, or the Book of Maccabees, from the Apocrypha.

The Medallions represent:

Abraham about to sacrifice his son, Isaac;
The Destruction of the Statue of Baal;
The worshippers of Baal being brutally slaughtered;
Uriah being beaten to death;
Nathan the Priest condemning King David for murder and adultery;
King David's traitorous son, Absalom, caught by his hair in a tree, while trying to escape, and beheaded by David's troops;
Joab sneaking up on Abner to murder him;
Joram being hurled from a Chariot onto his head;
Elijah being carried up to Heaven;
On one Medallion, the subject is either obliterated or incomplete.

PART FOUR FOLLOWS

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling. An Artistic Vision Without Precedent. (Part One).

Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopaedia,
unless otherwise stated.

Section of The Sistine Chapel Ceiling.

This File: 2 September 2013.

User: Amandajm.

(Wikimedia Commons)

English: Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Українська: Сикстинська каплиця.

Date: 4 травня 2010.

Source: власне фото (by Qypchak).

Author: Мікеланджело; Michelangelo.

(Wikimedia Commons)

The Libyan Sibyl,

Date: 1508-1512.

From the Ceiling of The Sistine Chapel.

Source: CGFA.

(Wikimedia Commons)

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art.

The Ceiling is that of The Sistine Chapel, the large Papal Chapel, built within The Vatican between 1477 and 1480 by Pope Sixtus IV, whose namesake The Chapel is. It was painted at the Commission of Pope Julius II. The Chapel is the location for Papal Conclaves and many important Services.

The Ceiling's various painted elements form part of a larger scheme of decoration within The Chapel: Including the large fresco, The Last Judgment, on the Sanctuary Wall, also by Michelangelo; Wall Paintings by several leading painters of the Late-15th-Century, including Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Pietro Perugino; and a set of Large Tapestries, by Raphael, the whole illustrating much of the Doctrine of The Catholic Church.

Sistine Chapel.

The Hands of God and Adam,

from "The Creation of Adam"

(above and below)

Fresco by Michelangelo,

Date: 1509.

Source/Photographer: Web Gallery of Art[1]

Author: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564).

Central to the Ceiling decoration are nine scenes from The Book of Genesis, of which The Creation of Adam is the best known, having an iconic standing equalled only by Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the hands of God and Adam being reproduced in countless imitations.

The complex design includes several sets of individual figures, both clothed and nude, which allowed Michelangelo to fully demonstrate his skill in creating a huge variety of poses for the human figure, and have provided an enormously influential pattern book of models for other artists ever since.

Pope Julius II was a "Warrior Pope", who, in his Papacy, undertook an aggressive campaign for political control, to unite and empower Italy under the leadership of The Church. He invested in symbolism to display his temporal power, such as his procession, in the Classical manner, through a Triumphal Arch in a chariot, after one of his many military victories. It was Julius who began the rebuilding of Saint Peter's Basilica in 1506, as the most potent symbol of the source of Papal power.

Portrait of Pope Julius II.

Painter: Raphael (1483–1520).

Current location: National Gallery, London.

Source/Photographer: National Gallery, London.

(Wikimedia Commons)

In the same year, 1506, Pope Julius II conceived a programme to paint The Ceiling of The Sistine Chapel. The walls of The Chapel had been decorated twenty years earlier. The lowest of three levels is painted to resemble draped hangings, and was (and sometimes still is) hung on special occasions with the set of Tapestries designed by Raphael.

PART TWO FOLLOWS