The Sistine Chapel is the personal chapel of the pope and the place were new popes are elected. But its claim to fame is its paint job: colorful frescoes by Michelangelo, depicting the entire Christian history from Creation to the Last Judgement.
It is also a zoo. 🙁
We visited the chapel during a normal tour. It may be different if you get a private before or after hours tour. But if you visit during a normal tour, expect to be channeled thru here like a piece of meat on a conveyor belt. For this review, I attempted to slow it down, and since pictures are NOT allowed inside, used images from other sources. I’ve attempted to give them all credit and source material – my apologies if I have missed something.
We enter the room from the altar end. The room is bigger than you might expect, and usually extremely crowded. Try not to let that freak you out. 🙂
The very best place to view the chapel is about midway down. Find a spot near the screen that divides the chapel about 2/3 of the way down. Take your time, and find a good place. There are benches along the side, but they are gold and may not be available for you to sit on.
Getting orientated, facing the altar – painted top to bottom – is Michelangelo’s Last Judgement.
As we crane our neck up at the colorful ceiling, we see dozens of saints, prophets, nudes, fake columns – it’s a lot to take in all at once. So let’s start by focusing our eyes on the very center of the ceiling. Yup, there it is – the famous scene of God reaching out his hand to touch the hand of Adam. You have arrived. Enjoy this classic scene, then let your eyes wander around the rest of the ceiling.
In 1508, Pope Julius II asked Michelangelo to take on this important project. Michelangelo said, “No, thanks.” Michelangelo insisted he was a sculptor, not a painter. The Sistine ceiling was a vast undertaking, and he didn’t want to do a half-assed job. But the pope pleaded, bribed, and threatened until Michelangelo finally consented, but only on the condition that Michelangelo be able to do it his own way.
Julius had asked for only 12 apostles along the sides of the ceiling, but Michelangelo had a much grander vision – he would portray the entire history of the world until the coming of Jesus. He spent the next four years (1508 – 1512) craning his neck on scaffolding six stories up, covering the entire ceiling with frescoes depicting epic scenes from Christian history.
Michelangelo’s vision is a complex one; but I’m going to try to help you sort it out. The key to making sense of the tangle of bodies is to see three simple divisions: the central spine of the Bible scenes, prophets on thrones, and more figures in triangles. So, let’s give it a try.
With the altar wall on our left, looking up at the ceiling, find the center spine of nine rectangular scenes. These depict episodes from the creation of the World (at the altar end) to Noah and the flood (at the far end).
Next, flanking these central scenes (where the ceiling starts to curve) are prophets, seated on thrones.
Finally, in the triangles (or “lunettes”) on the outer edge of the ceilings are the so-called ancestors of Christ. These are figures from scripture and lore who foretold the coming of Jesus. Interspersed between all these scenes are fake niches (a painted 3-D illusion) decorated with nude, statue-like figures, each with a symbolic meaning.
The Creation of Man
God and man take center stage in this Renaissance version of creation. Adam, newly formed in the image of God, lounges dreamily in perfect naked innocence. God, with his entourage, swoops in with a swirl of activity. The reaching hands of God and Man are the center of this work. Adam’s is limp and passive. God’s is strong and forceful, his finger twitching upward with energy. Here is the very moment of creation – God passes that spark of life to man, the crowning work of his creation.
This is the spirit of the Renaissance. God is not a terrifying giant reaching down to a puny and helpless man from way on high. Here they’re on an equal plane, divided only by the diagonal patch of sky. The two exchange meaningful eye contact. God’s billowing robe and a patch of green on which Adam is lying balance each other. They’re like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, or two long-separated continents, or like the yin and yang symbols finally coming together – uniting, complementing each other, creating wholeness. This central panel is so Michelangelo – God and man working together in the divine process of creation.
The Nine Scenes from Genesis
In the first scene, God, in a purple robe, begins to create the world by dividing the light from the darkness. As the opening lines of the Bible say, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And God said, “Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God divided the light from the darkness.”
In the next panel on the ceiling, God creates the sun – the burning orange sphere – and the moon (pale white, on the right). The Bible says, “God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.” Speaking of moons, you might wonder what’s up with God’s droopy robe. See Exodus 33:23 for details.
Continuing on to the third panel, God separates the land from the water, or , as the Bible says, “And God called the dry land Earth and the gathering together of the water he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.” In this scene, Michelangelo, in a tour of force of painting ability, depicts god bursting directly down at us – a difficult angle to draw.
Next, in the center panel, is the center of creation – the Creation of Man. And the Bible says, “In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.” And then came woman.
Now, in the next panel, God creates Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. Michelangelo shows Eve almost “diving” into existence from out of Adam’s side.
The next panel shows the turning point in creation. On the left is the leafy Garden of Eden, a paradise where the first man and woman lie around blissfully. But the devil comes along – a serpent with a female torso – and winds around the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. The temptation to gain new knowledge is too great for these Renaissance people. They eat the forbidden fruit.
At right, an angel with a sword drives them from Paradise into the barren plains. They’re grieving, but they’re far from helpless. Adam’s body is thick and sturdy, and we know they’ll survive in the cruel world. Adam gestures firmly to the angel, as if he’s saying, “All right, already – we messed up, we’re going, we’ll be okay!”
From here, Michelangelo fast-forwards to where this original sin leads – to a world filled with sinners. In the next panel, we see the only righteous man – Noah. He kills a ram and stokes the altar fire to make a sacrifice to God.
Continuing to the next panel, God destroys the rest of mankind with a great Flood. The wicked desperately head for higher ground. In the distance, the Ark carries Noah’s family to safety.
And in the final panel, at the far end of the Chapel, Noah’s sons happen upon their father passed-out drunk. Perhaps Michelangelo chose to wrap things up with this sorry scene as a reminder that even the best of men are imperfect.
Michelangelo and the Fresco Technique
In sheer physical terms, the ceiling is an astonishing achievement: 5,900 square feet of frescoes – that’s roughly the same as painting an entire football field – the vast majority done by Michelangelo’s own hand. Raphael, for example, only designed most of his rooms, letting assistants do the grunt work.
First, Michelangelo had to design and erect the scaffolding, so he and his workers could reach the ceiling. Materials had to be hauled up on pulleys. Then, the ceiling had to be plastered. Fresco is painting on wet plaster. When the plaster dries, it locks the colors in so they have a special translucent glow. The trick is, you have to work quickly, before the plaster dries. So assistants would mix the plaster and trowel it on. They’d only do as much as Michelangelo could expect to finish in a day – about a fourth the size of one of the central panels. If Michelangelo didn’t get it right the first time, they’d have to scrape the whole thing off and start over.
Michelangelo worked standing up, not lying down as popular myth has it. He bent backward and reached up. If you’ve ever struggled with a ceiling light fixture or worked underneath a car for even five minutes, you know how heavy your arms get. The physical effort, the paint dripping in his eyes, the creative drain, and the mental stress from a pushy pope combined to almost kill Michelangelo.
But the results are dazzling. By the way, the bright colors we see today are nearly as glorious as when Michelangelo first painted them. Until this millennium, the ceiling was dim and dark, covered with centuries of preservatives, dirt, and soot from candles, oil lamps, and the annual Papal Barbecue (J/K). But now the ceiling and Last Judgement have been cleaned. The bright, bright colors that emerged were a bit shocking, forcing many art experts to reevaluate Michelangelo’s style. Look at the shot below from Wikipedia to show what before and after restoration looked like. Imagine how dreary and dark the whole thing was before cleaning.
Prophets, Ancestors, and Assorted Nudes
Michelangelo depicted his favorite prophets as monumental, robed figures sitting on thrones. A typical one is Isaiah. Isaiah sits on a throne labeled Esaias. Compare him with others nearby, and it becomes clear that each prophet has a completely different personality.
To the left of Isaiah we find a female prophet, the so-called Delphic Sybil. She twists her body and looks out curiously, holding a scroll that predicts the coming of Christ. The Delphic Sybil was not a Christian; she was a pagan from ancient Greece, a worshipper of Zeus, Apollo, and the other pagan gods. But in Renaissance times, they imagined that the enlightened Greeks must have foreseen the coming of the Messiah. Now, pagan priestesses as well as Old Testament prophets were all part of God’s grand plan.
Let’s turn our attention to the triangles along the outer edges of the ceiling. These have still more figures and scenes from the Bible and Christian legend. Scholars generally label them as the “Ancestors of Christ,” though their symbolic meaning is largely lost on modern eyes.
Whatever their symbolism, Michelangelo’s figures speak volumes with their dramatic, twisting poses.
Look in between the central panels, at the Adonises-come-to-life sitting on pedestals. They squirm and twist to show off their buff physiques. Michelangelo had been inspired by a recently discovered nude statue. We saw it during our Vatican Museums tour – the ancient statue of Laocoon. Michelangelo used that nude’s dramatic pose and melodramatic emotions to take this ceiling to a whole new level.
Michelangelo’s Triumph
If you’ve got good eyes, you might notice that the figures farthest from the altar (right side of picture) are a bit smaller than those over the Last Judgement. For example, the scene of Noah’s Flood features many small people, scrambling for safety. On other hand, the scenes near the altar, showing God creating the world, have just a few large-scale figures that fill the entire panel.
Or compare the prophet Isaiah – stately and balanced – with the prophet Jeremiah at the altar end.
This prophet witnessed the destruction of Israel. He slumps, chin in hand, pondering the fate of his people.
Why the difference between the two halves? Well, Michelangelo started the project in 1508 at the far end, with the Noah scenes and prophets like Isaiah. By 1510, he’d finished the first half. When they took the scaffolding down and could finally see what he’s been working on for two years, everyone was awestruck – everyone except Michelangelo. As powerful as his figures are, from the floor they didn’t look dramatic enough for him. So for the other half, Michelangelo pulled out all the stops. His creation scenes became less “busy,” and the prophets became bigger and more intense.
Finally in 1512, the ceiling was finished. The pope and his people gathered here for the grand unveiling… and it simply blew them away. It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. It both caps the Renaissance and turns it in a new direction. In perfect Renaissance spirit, the Sistine ceiling mixed Old Testament prophets with classical figures. But the style is more dramatic, shocking, and emotional than the balanced Renaissance works before it. This is a very personal work – the Gospel according to Michelangelo – but its themes and subject matter are universal. In the opinion of many people – from art scholars to humble tourists – the Sistine ceiling is the single greatest work of art by any one human being.
Only Michelangelo could follow that.
The Last Judgement
In 1535, Michelangelo was asked to complete his Christian history of the world by painting the final event – the end of time. When he returned to the Sistine, the mood of Europe – and of Michelangelo – was completely different. The Protestant Reformation had forced the Catholic Church to clamp down on free thought, and religious wars raged across Europe. Rome had recently been pillaged by roving bands of mercenaries. The Renaissance spirit of optimism was fading. Michelangelo himself – now in his sixties – had begun to question the innate goodness of mankind.
It’s Judgement Day, and Christ has come down to find out who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. There’s Christ, the powerful figure in the center, raising his arm to smite the wicked. Beneath him, a band of angels blows its trumpets Dizzy Gillespie-style, giving a wake-up call to the sleeping dead. The dead – in the lower left of the painting – leave their graves and prepare to be judged. The righteous ones, on Christ’s right hand (our left), are carried up to the glories of heaven. The wicked, on the other hand, are hurled down to hell, where demons await to torture them. Charon, from the underworld of Greek mythology, stands below, ready to ferry the souls of the damned straight to hell.
It’s a grim picture. No one, but no one, is smiling. Even many of the righteous being resurrected (on the lower left) are either skeletons or cadavers with ghastly skin. The angles have to play tug-of-war with underground monsters to drag the saved out of their graves.
Meanwhile, over in hell, the wicked are tortured by gleeful demons. On of the right of the trumpeting angels) has an utterly lost expression, like “Why did I cheat on my wife?!” Two demons grab him around the ankles to pull him down to the bowels of hell, condemned to an eternity of comstipation.
Above all, it’s the terrifying figure of Christ that dominates this scene. This is not your “love-thy-neighbor” Jesus anymore. He’s come for justice. His raised arm sends a ripple of fear through everyone. Even the saints around him shrink back in terror. Even his own mom, Mary, beneath his arm, turns away. Clearly, her interceding days are over. Christ’s expression is completely closed. He turns his head, refusing to even listen to the whining alibis of the damned. Look at Christ’s bicep. If this muscular figure looks familiar, it’s because we saw it earlier in the Vatican Museums – the Belvedere Torso.
When the Last Judgement was unveiled to the public in 1541, it caused a sensation. The pope is said to have dropped to his knees and cried, “Lord, charge me not with my sins when thou shall come on the Day of Judgement.”
And this fresco changed the course of art. The complex composition, with more than 300 figures swirling around Christ, was far beyond traditional Renaissance balance. The twisted figures shown from every imaginable angle challenged other painters to try and top this masterpiece of 3-D illusion. And the sheer terror and drama of the scene was a striking contrast to the placid optimism of, say, the Creation of Adam on the ceiling just behind you. Michelangelo had broken all the rules of the Renaissance – or should I say “Baroque-en” the rules. It signaled a new era of emotional art that would come to be known as Baroque.
Check out the Judgement Day band. 🙂
Charon, with Dr. Spock ears and a Dali moustache, paddles the damned in a boat filled with human turbulence. Before the cleaning, details such as these were lost in the murk.
Michelangelo loved to pain the human body in all its naked splendor. But with the Renaissance fading, these fleshy figures suddenly became politically incorrect and drew murmurs of discontent from Church authorities. Michelangelo got even by painting his chief critic in hell. Look at the picture above again. In the far right hand corner (which is the very bottom right of the larger picture as well) – near the entrance door. He’s the jackassed guy wrapped in a snake. Look how Michelangelo covered his critic’s privates. Sweet revenge. As a postscript, though, after Michelangelo’s death, those prudish Church authorities eventually had their way and painted the strategically placed wisps of clothing that we see today.
Looking around the entire Chapel, it is important to appreciate Michelangelo’s grand vision: He’s taken us from the Creation, to the coming of Man and Woman, to the prophets that foretold Christ, and finally, to Christ’s return at the end of time.
The Last Judgement marks the end of the Renaissance optimism epitomized in The Creation of Man, in the central panel of the ceiling. There, he was the wakening man-child of a fatherly God. Here, in The Last Judgement, man cowers in fear and unworthiness before a terrifying, wrathful deity.
Michelangelo himself must have wondered how he’d be judged – had he used his God-given talents wisely?
Look at St. Bartholomew. He’s the bald, bearded guy above who is at Christ’s left foot in the main painting. Bartholomew holds a flayed skin. In the flayed skin you can see a barely recognizable face – the twisted self-portrait of a self-questioning Michelangelo.
I hoped you enjoyed this slow wander thru the Sistine Chapel. As mentioned in the opening, unless you get a special viewing before opening or after closing… you likely won’t get that leisurely option.