The Sistine Chapel ceiling (Italian: Soffitto della Cappella Sistina), painted in fresco by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art.
The Sistine Chapel is the large papal chapel built within the Vatican between 1477 and 1480 by Pope Sixtus IV, for whom the chapel is named. The ceiling was painted at the commission of Pope Julius II.
The ceiling's various painted elements form part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel. Prior to Michelangelo's contribution, the walls were painted by several leading artists of the late 15th century including Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Pietro Perugino. After the ceiling was painted, Raphael created a set of large tapestries (1515–1516) to cover the lower portion of the wall. Michelangelo returned to the chapel to create The Last Judgment, a large wall fresco situated behind the altar. The chapel's decoration illustrates much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church, serving as the setting for papal conclaves and many other important services.
Central to the ceiling decoration are nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, including The Creation of Adam. The complex design includes several sets of figures, some clothed and some nude, allowing Michelangelo to demonstrate his skill in depicting the human figure in a variety of poses. The ceiling was immediately well-received and imitated by other artists, continuing to the present. It has been restored several times, most recently from 1980 to 1994.
Context and creation
The walls of the Sistine Chapel had been decorated 20 years before Michelangelo's work on the ceiling. Following this, Raphael designed a set of tapestries (1515–1516) to cover the lowest of three levels; the surviving tapestries are still hung on special occasions. The middle level contains a complex scheme of frescoes illustrating the Life of Christ on the right side and the Life of Moses on the left side. It was carried out by some of the most renowned Renaissance painters: Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, Luca Signorelli, and Cosimo Rosselli. The upper level of the walls contains the windows, between which are painted pairs of illusionistic niches with representations of the first 32 popes.
The original ceiling painting was by Pier Matteo d'Amelia, and had depicted stars over a blue background like the ceiling of the Arena Chapel decorated by Giotto at Padua. For six months in 1504, a diagonal crack in the chapel's vault had made the chapel unusable, and Pope Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere) had the damaged painting removed by Piero Roselli, a friend of Michelangelo.
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 Catholic Church. He invested in symbolism to display his temporal power, such as his procession, in which he (in the Classical manner) rode a chariot through a triumphal arch after one of his many military victories. Julius II's project to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica would distinguish it as the most potent symbol of the source of papal power; he ultimately demolished and replaced the original basilica with a grander one intended to house his own tomb. The pope summoned Michelangelo to Rome in early 1505 and commissioned him to design his tomb, forcing the artist to leave Florence with his planned Battle of Cascina painting unfinished. By this time, Michelangelo was established as an artist; both he and Julius II had hot tempers and soon argued. On 17 April 1506, Michelangelo left Rome in secret for Florence, remaining there until the Florentine government pressed him to return to the pope.
In 1506, the same year the foundation stone was laid for the new St. Peter's, Julius II conceived a programme to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It is probable that, because the chapel was the site of regular meetings and Masses of an elite body of officials known as the Papal Chapel (who would observe the decorations and interpret their theological and temporal significance), it was Julius II's intention and expectation that the iconography of the ceiling was to be read with many layers of meaning.
The scheme proposed by the pope was for twelve large figures of the Apostles to occupy the spandrels. Michelangelo negotiated for a grander, much more complex scheme and was finally permitted, in his own words, "to do as I liked". It has been suggested that Augustinian friar and cardinal Giles of Viterbo could have influenced the ceiling's theological layout. Many writers consider that Michelangelo had the intellect, the biblical knowledge, and the powers of invention to have devised the scheme himself. This is supported by Michelangelo's biographer Ascanio Condivi's statement that the artist read and reread the Old Testament while he was painting the ceiling, drawing his inspiration from the words of the scripture, rather than from the established traditions of sacral art.
On 10 May 1506, Piero Roselli wrote to Michelangelo on behalf of the pope. In this letter, Roselli mentions that papal court architect Donato Bramante doubted that Michelangelo could take on such a large fresco project, as he had limited experience in the medium. According to Bramante, Michelangelo stated his refusal. In November 1506 Michelangelo went to Bologna, where he received a commission from the pope to construct a colossal bronze statue of him conquering the Bolognese. After he completed this in early 1508, Michelangelo returned to Rome expecting to resume work on the papal tomb, but this had been quietly set aside.
Michelangelo was instead commissioned for a cycle of frescoes on the vault and upper walls of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo, who was not primarily a painter but a sculptor, was reluctant to take on the work; he suggested that his young rival Raphael take it on instead. The pope was persistent; according to Giorgio Vasari, he was provoked by Bramante to insist that Michelangelo take on the project, leaving him little choice but to accept. The contract was signed on 8 May 1508, with a promised fee of 3,000 ducats (approximately US$600,000 in gold in 2021). At the pope's behest, Bramante built the initial scaffolding, hung via ropes from holes in the ceiling. This method displeased Michelangelo as it would force him to paint around the holes, and he had freestanding scaffolding constructed instead. This was built by Piero Roselli, who subsequently roughcast the ceiling. Michelangelo initially sought to engage assistants who were more well-versed in fresco-painting, but he was unable to find suitable candidates and decided to paint the whole ceiling alone. Among the Florentine artists whom Michelangelo brought to Rome in the hope of assisting in the fresco, Vasari names Francesco Granacci, Giuliano Bugiardini, Jacopo di Sandro, l'Indaco the Elder, Agnolo di Domenico, and Aristotile.
Michelangelo soon began his work, starting at the west end with the Drunkenness of Noah and the Prophet Zechariah and working backwards through the narrative to the Creation of Eve, in the vault's fifth bay, finished in September 1510. The first half of the ceiling was unveiled with a preliminary showing on 14 August 1511 and an official viewing the next day. A long hiatus in painting occurred as new scaffolding was made ready. The second half of the ceiling's frescoes were done swiftly, and the finished work was revealed on 31 October 1512, All Hallows' Eve, being shown to the public by the next day, All Saints' Day. Michelangelo's final scheme for the ceiling includes over 300 figures.
Vasari states that "When the chapel was uncovered, people from everywhere [rushed] to see it, and the sight of it alone was sufficient to leave them amazed and speechless." At the age of 37, Michelangelo's reputation rose such that he was called il divino ('the divine'), and he was henceforth regarded as the greatest artist of his time, who had elevated the status of the arts themselves, a recognition that lasted the rest of his long life. The ceiling was immediately considered one of the greatest masterpieces of all time, a distinction which continues to endure.
Method
Michelangelo probably began working on the plans and sketches for the design from April 1508. The preparatory work on the ceiling was complete in late July the same year and on 4 February 1510, Francesco Albertini recorded that Michelangelo had "decorated the upper, arched part with very beautiful pictures and gold". The main design was largely finished in August 1510, as Michelangelo's texts suggest. From September 1510 until February, June, or September 1511, Michelangelo did no work on the ceiling on account of a dispute over payments for work done; in August 1510 the pope left Rome for the Papal States' campaign to reconquer Bologna and despite two visits there by Michelangelo, resolution only came months after the pope's return to Rome in June 1511. On 14 August 1511, Julius held a papal mass in the chapel and saw the progress of the work so far for the first time. This was the vigil for Assumption Day on 15 August, the Sistine Chapel's patronal feast. The whole design was revealed to visitors on 31 October 1512 with a formal papal mass the following day, the feast of All Saints. Clerical use of the chapel continued throughout, except when the work on the scaffolding necessitated its closure, and disruption to the rites was minimized by beginning the work at the west end, furthest from the liturgical centre around the altar at the east wall. Debate exists on what sequence the parts of the ceiling were painted in and over how the scaffold that allowed the artists to reach the ceiling was arranged. There are two main proposals.
The majority theory is that the ceiling's main frescoes were applied and painted in phases, with the scaffolding each time dismantled and moved to another part of the room, beginning at the chapel's west end. The first phase, including the central life of Noah, was completed in September 1509 and the scaffolding removed; only then were the scenes visible from the floor level. The next phase, in the middle of the chapel, completed the Creation of Eve and the Fall and Expulsion from Paradise. The Cumaean Sibyl and Ezekiel were also painted in this phase. Michelangelo painted the figures at a larger scale than in the previous section; this is attributed to the artist's ability to effectively judge the foreshortening and composition from ground level for the first time. The figures of the third phase, at the east end, were at still grander scale than the second; The Creation of Adam and the other Creation panels were finished at this stage, which took place in 1511. The lunettes above the windows were painted last, using a small movable scaffold. In this scheme, proposed by Johannes Wilde, the vault's first and second registers, above and below the fictive architectural cornice, were painted together in stages as the scaffolding moved eastwards, with a stylistic and chronological break westwards and eastwards of the Creation of Eve. After the central vault the main scaffold was replaced by a smaller contraption that allowed the painting of the lunettes, window vaults, and spandrels. This view supplanted an older view that the central vault formed the first part of the work and was completed before work began on the other parts of Michelangelo's plan.
Another theory is that the scaffolding must have spanned the entire chapel for years at a time. To remove the existing decoration of the ceiling, the entire area had to be accessible for workmen to chisel away the starry-sky fresco before any new work was done. On 10 June 1508, the cardinals complained of the intolerable dust and noise generated by the work; by 27 July 1508, the process was complete and the corner spandrels of the chapel had been converted into the doubled-spandrel triangular pendentives of the finished design. Then the frame of the new designs had to be marked out on the surface when frescoeing began; this too demanded access to the whole ceiling. This thesis is supported by the discovery during the modern restoration of the exact numbers of the giornate employed in the frescoes; if the ceiling was painted in two stages, the first spanning two years and extending to the Creation of Eve and the second lasting just one year, then Michelangelo would have to have painted 270 giornate in the year-long second phase, compared with 300 painted in the first two years, which is scarcely possible. By contrast, if the ceiling's first register – with the nine scenes on rectangular fields, the medallions, and the ignudi – was painted in the first two years, and in the second phase, Michelangelo painted only their border in the second register with the Prophets and Sibyls, then the giornate finished in each year are divided almost equally. Ulrich Pfisterer, advancing this theory, interprets Albertini's remark on "the upper, arched part with very beautiful pictures and gold" in February 1510 as referring only to the upper part of the vault – the first register with its nine picture fields, its gnudi, and its medallions embellished with gold – and not to the vault as a whole since the fictive architectural attic with its prophets and prophetesses were yet to be started.