Sistine Chapel ceiling

Prompt: In the context of Sistine Chapel ceiling, explain the Method and the Context and creation.

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, exempting 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 pendentives. 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 yearlong 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.The scaffolding needed to protect the chapel's existing wall frescoes and other decorations from falling debris and allow the religious services to continue below, but also to allow in air and some light from the windows below. The chapel's cornice, running around the room below the lunettes at the springing of the window arches themselves, supported the structure's oblique beams, while the carrying beams were set into the wall above the cornice using putlog holes. This open structure supported catwalks and the movable working platform itself, whose likely stepped design followed the contour of the vault. Beneath was a false ceiling that protected the chapel. Though some sunlight would have entered the workspace between the ceiling and the scaffolding, artificial light would have been required for painting, candlelight possibly influencing the appearance of the vivid colors used.Restoration overseer Fabrizio Mancinelli speculates that Michelangelo may have only installed scaffolding platforms in one half of the room at a time to cut the cost of timber and to allow light to pass through the uncovered windows. The areas of the wall covered by the scaffolding still appear as unpainted areas at the base of the lunettes.The entire ceiling is a fresco, which is an ancient method for painting murals that relies upon a chemical reaction between damp lime plaster and water-based pigments to permanently fuse the work into the wall. Michelangelo had been an apprentice in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the most competent and prolific of Florentine fresco painters, at the time that the latter was employed on a fresco cycle at Santa Maria Novella and whose work was represented on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. At the outset, the plaster, intonaco, began to grow mildew or mould because it was too wet. When Michelangelo despaired of continuing, the pope sent Giuliano da Sangallo, who explained how to remove the fungus.Because Michelangelo was painting alfresco, the plaster was laid in a new section every day, called a giornata. At the beginning of each session, the edges would be scraped away and a new area laid down.The work commenced at the end of the building furthest from the altar with the last chronological part of the narrative and progressed towards the altar with the scenes of the Creation. The first three scenes, from The Drunkenness of Noah, contain crowded compositions of smaller figures than other panels, evidently, because Michelangelo misjudged the ceiling's size. Also painted in the early stages was the Slaying of Goliath. After painting the Creation of Eve adjacent to the marble screen which divided the chapel, Michelangelo paused in his work to move the scaffolding to the other side. After having seen his completed work so far, he returned to work with the Temptation and Fall, followed by the Creation of Adam. As the scale of the work got larger, Michelangelo's style became broader; the final narrative scene of God in the act of creation was painted in a single day.According to Vasari, the ceiling was unveiled before it could be reworked with a secco and gold to give it "a finer appearance" as had been done with the chapel's wall frescoes. Both Michelangelo and Pope Julius II wanted these details to be added, but this never took place, in part because Michelangelo did not want to rebuild the scaffolding; he also argued that "in those days men did not wear gold, and those who are painted ... were holy men who despised wealth." Julius II died only months after the ceiling's completion, in February 1513.According to Vasari and Condivi, Michelangelo painted in a standing position, not lying on his back, as another biographer, Paolo Giovio, imagined. Vasari wrote: "These frescos were done with the greatest discomfort, for he had to stand there working with his head tilted backwards." Michelangelo may have described his physical discomfort in a poem, accompanied by a sketch in the margin, which was probably addressed to the humanist academician Giovanni di Benedetto da Pistoia, a friend with whom Michelangelo corresponded. Leonard Barkan compared the posture of Michelangelo's marginalia self-portrait to the Roman sculptures of Marsyas Bound in the Uffizi Gallery; Barkan further connects the flayed Marsyas with Michelangelo's purported self-portrait decades later on the flayed skin of St Bartholomew in his Last Judgment but cautions that there is no certainty the sketch represents the process of painting the chapel ceiling. Michelangelo wrote the poem describing the arduous conditions under which he worked. Michelangelo's illustrated poem reads:Jelbert has suggested that the physical pain described in this poem, and the pose of Michelangelo in his illustration for it, resonate with the agonised postures of the Vatican's 'Laocoön Group'. In the illustration, suggests Jelbert, Michelangelo appears to have drawn himself as the dying son on the right-hand side of the group (his arm sheered at the wrist), and the figure he is painting has the raised knees, wild eyes and broken right arm of Laocoön himself. Michelangelo's reference to the 'Laocoön Group' in the 'Brazen Serpent' has been noted above, but the artist also alluded to this sculpture in other areas of the Sistine ceiling, including the 'Punishment of Haman', and a pair of ignudi between the 'Sacrifice of Noah' and the 'Prophet Isiah'.

Hypothetical reconstruction of the first project for the tomb of Julius II (1505) according to an interpretation by Adriano Marinazzo (2018)<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal

The lunette of Jacob and his son [[Saint Joseph

:File:Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - Judah.jpg

title=La Tomba di Giulio II e l'architettura dipinta della volta della Sistina: Quell'idea di sepoltura che mai vide la luce

:File:The Creation of the Sun and the Moon, Michelangelo (1508-1512).jpg

Creation of the Earth and the celestial bodies

commonly depicted in Western Christian art

:File:Sacrifice of Noah michaelangelo.jpg

File:'Isaiah Sistine Chapel ceiling' by Michelangelo JBU36FXD.jpg

File:Cappella sistina, ricostruzione dell'interno prima degli interventi di Michelangelo, stampa del XIX secolo.jpg

Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament

Tree of the knowledge of good and evil#Christianity

Michelangelo's structural sketch (Archivio Buonarroti, XIII, 175v) overlaid on the Chapel ceiling<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal

The ceiling of the [[Stanza della Segnatura

title=Ipotesi su un disegno michelangiolesco del foglio XIII, 175v, dell'Archivio Buonarroti

The evidence of the plaster laid for a day's work can be seen around the head and arm of this ''ignudo''.

File:Adriano Marinazzo Michelangelo first drawing Sistine Ceiling.jpg

File:Tomb of Pope Julius II - Adriano Marinazzo.jpg

Medieval theology#Medieval Christian theology

Serpent (symbolism)#Judaic and Christian symbolism

The mark of the scaffolding used for painting the ceiling is evident on the lower right of this [[lunette

:File:Raphael School of Athens Michelangelo.jpg

Detail showing intersection of first and second registers, with: a prophet, a lunette, a sibyl, ''ignudi'', medallions, bronze figures, and ''telamones''

An ''ignudo'' commonly reproduced by other artists

God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam

s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Apocrypha of the New Testament/The Protevangelium of James

The ceiling as it may have looked before Michelangelo painted it

Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar - detail Eleazar with wife.jpg

The ceiling's west end (above the entrance)

title=Found? Michelangelo's Sistine Sketch

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar and Mathan - WGA.jpg

the unattainability of divine perfection by man

:File:Michelangelo, Separation of the Earth from the Waters 00.jpg

claimed in the New Testament to have been prophesied


Sistine Chapel ceiling

Prompt: Explain the Method about the Context and creation of this artwork, Sistine Chapel ceiling.

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, exempting 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 pendentives. 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 yearlong 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.The scaffolding needed to protect the chapel's existing wall frescoes and other decorations from falling debris and allow the religious services to continue below, but also to allow in air and some light from the windows below. The chapel's cornice, running around the room below the lunettes at the springing of the window arches themselves, supported the structure's oblique beams, while the carrying beams were set into the wall above the cornice using putlog holes. This open structure supported catwalks and the movable working platform itself, whose likely stepped design followed the contour of the vault. Beneath was a false ceiling that protected the chapel. Though some sunlight would have entered the workspace between the ceiling and the scaffolding, artificial light would have been required for painting, candlelight possibly influencing the appearance of the vivid colors used.Restoration overseer Fabrizio Mancinelli speculates that Michelangelo may have only installed scaffolding platforms in one half of the room at a time to cut the cost of timber and to allow light to pass through the uncovered windows. The areas of the wall covered by the scaffolding still appear as unpainted areas at the base of the lunettes.The entire ceiling is a fresco, which is an ancient method for painting murals that relies upon a chemical reaction between damp lime plaster and water-based pigments to permanently fuse the work into the wall. Michelangelo had been an apprentice in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the most competent and prolific of Florentine fresco painters, at the time that the latter was employed on a fresco cycle at Santa Maria Novella and whose work was represented on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. At the outset, the plaster, intonaco, began to grow mildew or mould because it was too wet. When Michelangelo despaired of continuing, the pope sent Giuliano da Sangallo, who explained how to remove the fungus.Because Michelangelo was painting alfresco, the plaster was laid in a new section every day, called a giornata. At the beginning of each session, the edges would be scraped away and a new area laid down.The work commenced at the end of the building furthest from the altar with the last chronological part of the narrative and progressed towards the altar with the scenes of the Creation. The first three scenes, from The Drunkenness of Noah, contain crowded compositions of smaller figures than other panels, evidently, because Michelangelo misjudged the ceiling's size. Also painted in the early stages was the Slaying of Goliath. After painting the Creation of Eve adjacent to the marble screen which divided the chapel, Michelangelo paused in his work to move the scaffolding to the other side. After having seen his completed work so far, he returned to work with the Temptation and Fall, followed by the Creation of Adam. As the scale of the work got larger, Michelangelo's style became broader; the final narrative scene of God in the act of creation was painted in a single day.According to Vasari, the ceiling was unveiled before it could be reworked with a secco and gold to give it "a finer appearance" as had been done with the chapel's wall frescoes. Both Michelangelo and Pope Julius II wanted these details to be added, but this never took place, in part because Michelangelo did not want to rebuild the scaffolding; he also argued that "in those days men did not wear gold, and those who are painted ... were holy men who despised wealth." Julius II died only months after the ceiling's completion, in February 1513.According to Vasari and Condivi, Michelangelo painted in a standing position, not lying on his back, as another biographer, Paolo Giovio, imagined. Vasari wrote: "These frescos were done with the greatest discomfort, for he had to stand there working with his head tilted backwards." Michelangelo may have described his physical discomfort in a poem, accompanied by a sketch in the margin, which was probably addressed to the humanist academician Giovanni di Benedetto da Pistoia, a friend with whom Michelangelo corresponded. Leonard Barkan compared the posture of Michelangelo's marginalia self-portrait to the Roman sculptures of Marsyas Bound in the Uffizi Gallery; Barkan further connects the flayed Marsyas with Michelangelo's purported self-portrait decades later on the flayed skin of St Bartholomew in his Last Judgment but cautions that there is no certainty the sketch represents the process of painting the chapel ceiling. Michelangelo wrote the poem describing the arduous conditions under which he worked. Michelangelo's illustrated poem reads:Jelbert has suggested that the physical pain described in this poem, and the pose of Michelangelo in his illustration for it, resonate with the agonised postures of the Vatican's 'Laocoön Group'. In the illustration, suggests Jelbert, Michelangelo appears to have drawn himself as the dying son on the right-hand side of the group (his arm sheered at the wrist), and the figure he is painting has the raised knees, wild eyes and broken right arm of Laocoön himself. Michelangelo's reference to the 'Laocoön Group' in the 'Brazen Serpent' has been noted above, but the artist also alluded to this sculpture in other areas of the Sistine ceiling, including the 'Punishment of Haman', and a pair of ignudi between the 'Sacrifice of Noah' and the 'Prophet Isiah'.

Hypothetical reconstruction of the first project for the tomb of Julius II (1505) according to an interpretation by Adriano Marinazzo (2018)<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal

The lunette of Jacob and his son [[Saint Joseph

:File:Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - Judah.jpg

title=La Tomba di Giulio II e l'architettura dipinta della volta della Sistina: Quell'idea di sepoltura che mai vide la luce

:File:The Creation of the Sun and the Moon, Michelangelo (1508-1512).jpg

Creation of the Earth and the celestial bodies

commonly depicted in Western Christian art

:File:Sacrifice of Noah michaelangelo.jpg

File:'Isaiah Sistine Chapel ceiling' by Michelangelo JBU36FXD.jpg

File:Cappella sistina, ricostruzione dell'interno prima degli interventi di Michelangelo, stampa del XIX secolo.jpg

Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament

Tree of the knowledge of good and evil#Christianity

Michelangelo's structural sketch (Archivio Buonarroti, XIII, 175v) overlaid on the Chapel ceiling<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal

The ceiling of the [[Stanza della Segnatura

title=Ipotesi su un disegno michelangiolesco del foglio XIII, 175v, dell'Archivio Buonarroti

The evidence of the plaster laid for a day's work can be seen around the head and arm of this ''ignudo''.

File:Adriano Marinazzo Michelangelo first drawing Sistine Ceiling.jpg

File:Tomb of Pope Julius II - Adriano Marinazzo.jpg

Medieval theology#Medieval Christian theology

Serpent (symbolism)#Judaic and Christian symbolism

The mark of the scaffolding used for painting the ceiling is evident on the lower right of this [[lunette

:File:Raphael School of Athens Michelangelo.jpg

Detail showing intersection of first and second registers, with: a prophet, a lunette, a sibyl, ''ignudi'', medallions, bronze figures, and ''telamones''

An ''ignudo'' commonly reproduced by other artists

God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam

s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Apocrypha of the New Testament/The Protevangelium of James

The ceiling as it may have looked before Michelangelo painted it

Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar - detail Eleazar with wife.jpg

The ceiling's west end (above the entrance)

title=Found? Michelangelo's Sistine Sketch

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar and Mathan - WGA.jpg

the unattainability of divine perfection by man

:File:Michelangelo, Separation of the Earth from the Waters 00.jpg

claimed in the New Testament to have been prophesied


Sistine Chapel ceiling

Prompt: In Sistine Chapel ceiling, how is the Method of the Context and creation explained?

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, exempting 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 pendentives. 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 yearlong 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.The scaffolding needed to protect the chapel's existing wall frescoes and other decorations from falling debris and allow the religious services to continue below, but also to allow in air and some light from the windows below. The chapel's cornice, running around the room below the lunettes at the springing of the window arches themselves, supported the structure's oblique beams, while the carrying beams were set into the wall above the cornice using putlog holes. This open structure supported catwalks and the movable working platform itself, whose likely stepped design followed the contour of the vault. Beneath was a false ceiling that protected the chapel. Though some sunlight would have entered the workspace between the ceiling and the scaffolding, artificial light would have been required for painting, candlelight possibly influencing the appearance of the vivid colors used.Restoration overseer Fabrizio Mancinelli speculates that Michelangelo may have only installed scaffolding platforms in one half of the room at a time to cut the cost of timber and to allow light to pass through the uncovered windows. The areas of the wall covered by the scaffolding still appear as unpainted areas at the base of the lunettes.The entire ceiling is a fresco, which is an ancient method for painting murals that relies upon a chemical reaction between damp lime plaster and water-based pigments to permanently fuse the work into the wall. Michelangelo had been an apprentice in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the most competent and prolific of Florentine fresco painters, at the time that the latter was employed on a fresco cycle at Santa Maria Novella and whose work was represented on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. At the outset, the plaster, intonaco, began to grow mildew or mould because it was too wet. When Michelangelo despaired of continuing, the pope sent Giuliano da Sangallo, who explained how to remove the fungus.Because Michelangelo was painting alfresco, the plaster was laid in a new section every day, called a giornata. At the beginning of each session, the edges would be scraped away and a new area laid down.The work commenced at the end of the building furthest from the altar with the last chronological part of the narrative and progressed towards the altar with the scenes of the Creation. The first three scenes, from The Drunkenness of Noah, contain crowded compositions of smaller figures than other panels, evidently, because Michelangelo misjudged the ceiling's size. Also painted in the early stages was the Slaying of Goliath. After painting the Creation of Eve adjacent to the marble screen which divided the chapel, Michelangelo paused in his work to move the scaffolding to the other side. After having seen his completed work so far, he returned to work with the Temptation and Fall, followed by the Creation of Adam. As the scale of the work got larger, Michelangelo's style became broader; the final narrative scene of God in the act of creation was painted in a single day.According to Vasari, the ceiling was unveiled before it could be reworked with a secco and gold to give it "a finer appearance" as had been done with the chapel's wall frescoes. Both Michelangelo and Pope Julius II wanted these details to be added, but this never took place, in part because Michelangelo did not want to rebuild the scaffolding; he also argued that "in those days men did not wear gold, and those who are painted ... were holy men who despised wealth." Julius II died only months after the ceiling's completion, in February 1513.According to Vasari and Condivi, Michelangelo painted in a standing position, not lying on his back, as another biographer, Paolo Giovio, imagined. Vasari wrote: "These frescos were done with the greatest discomfort, for he had to stand there working with his head tilted backwards." Michelangelo may have described his physical discomfort in a poem, accompanied by a sketch in the margin, which was probably addressed to the humanist academician Giovanni di Benedetto da Pistoia, a friend with whom Michelangelo corresponded. Leonard Barkan compared the posture of Michelangelo's marginalia self-portrait to the Roman sculptures of Marsyas Bound in the Uffizi Gallery; Barkan further connects the flayed Marsyas with Michelangelo's purported self-portrait decades later on the flayed skin of St Bartholomew in his Last Judgment but cautions that there is no certainty the sketch represents the process of painting the chapel ceiling. Michelangelo wrote the poem describing the arduous conditions under which he worked. Michelangelo's illustrated poem reads:Jelbert has suggested that the physical pain described in this poem, and the pose of Michelangelo in his illustration for it, resonate with the agonised postures of the Vatican's 'Laocoön Group'. In the illustration, suggests Jelbert, Michelangelo appears to have drawn himself as the dying son on the right-hand side of the group (his arm sheered at the wrist), and the figure he is painting has the raised knees, wild eyes and broken right arm of Laocoön himself. Michelangelo's reference to the 'Laocoön Group' in the 'Brazen Serpent' has been noted above, but the artist also alluded to this sculpture in other areas of the Sistine ceiling, including the 'Punishment of Haman', and a pair of ignudi between the 'Sacrifice of Noah' and the 'Prophet Isiah'.

Hypothetical reconstruction of the first project for the tomb of Julius II (1505) according to an interpretation by Adriano Marinazzo (2018)<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal

The lunette of Jacob and his son [[Saint Joseph

:File:Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - Judah.jpg

title=La Tomba di Giulio II e l'architettura dipinta della volta della Sistina: Quell'idea di sepoltura che mai vide la luce

:File:The Creation of the Sun and the Moon, Michelangelo (1508-1512).jpg

Creation of the Earth and the celestial bodies

commonly depicted in Western Christian art

:File:Sacrifice of Noah michaelangelo.jpg

File:'Isaiah Sistine Chapel ceiling' by Michelangelo JBU36FXD.jpg

File:Cappella sistina, ricostruzione dell'interno prima degli interventi di Michelangelo, stampa del XIX secolo.jpg

Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament

Tree of the knowledge of good and evil#Christianity

Michelangelo's structural sketch (Archivio Buonarroti, XIII, 175v) overlaid on the Chapel ceiling<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal

The ceiling of the [[Stanza della Segnatura

title=Ipotesi su un disegno michelangiolesco del foglio XIII, 175v, dell'Archivio Buonarroti

The evidence of the plaster laid for a day's work can be seen around the head and arm of this ''ignudo''.

File:Adriano Marinazzo Michelangelo first drawing Sistine Ceiling.jpg

File:Tomb of Pope Julius II - Adriano Marinazzo.jpg

Medieval theology#Medieval Christian theology

Serpent (symbolism)#Judaic and Christian symbolism

The mark of the scaffolding used for painting the ceiling is evident on the lower right of this [[lunette

:File:Raphael School of Athens Michelangelo.jpg

Detail showing intersection of first and second registers, with: a prophet, a lunette, a sibyl, ''ignudi'', medallions, bronze figures, and ''telamones''

An ''ignudo'' commonly reproduced by other artists

God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam

s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Apocrypha of the New Testament/The Protevangelium of James

The ceiling as it may have looked before Michelangelo painted it

Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar - detail Eleazar with wife.jpg

The ceiling's west end (above the entrance)

title=Found? Michelangelo's Sistine Sketch

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar and Mathan - WGA.jpg

the unattainability of divine perfection by man

:File:Michelangelo, Separation of the Earth from the Waters 00.jpg

claimed in the New Testament to have been prophesied


Sistine Chapel ceiling

Prompt: Describe the characteristics of the Method in Sistine Chapel ceiling's Context and creation.

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, exempting 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 pendentives. 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 yearlong 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.The scaffolding needed to protect the chapel's existing wall frescoes and other decorations from falling debris and allow the religious services to continue below, but also to allow in air and some light from the windows below. The chapel's cornice, running around the room below the lunettes at the springing of the window arches themselves, supported the structure's oblique beams, while the carrying beams were set into the wall above the cornice using putlog holes. This open structure supported catwalks and the movable working platform itself, whose likely stepped design followed the contour of the vault. Beneath was a false ceiling that protected the chapel. Though some sunlight would have entered the workspace between the ceiling and the scaffolding, artificial light would have been required for painting, candlelight possibly influencing the appearance of the vivid colors used.Restoration overseer Fabrizio Mancinelli speculates that Michelangelo may have only installed scaffolding platforms in one half of the room at a time to cut the cost of timber and to allow light to pass through the uncovered windows. The areas of the wall covered by the scaffolding still appear as unpainted areas at the base of the lunettes.The entire ceiling is a fresco, which is an ancient method for painting murals that relies upon a chemical reaction between damp lime plaster and water-based pigments to permanently fuse the work into the wall. Michelangelo had been an apprentice in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the most competent and prolific of Florentine fresco painters, at the time that the latter was employed on a fresco cycle at Santa Maria Novella and whose work was represented on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. At the outset, the plaster, intonaco, began to grow mildew or mould because it was too wet. When Michelangelo despaired of continuing, the pope sent Giuliano da Sangallo, who explained how to remove the fungus.Because Michelangelo was painting alfresco, the plaster was laid in a new section every day, called a giornata. At the beginning of each session, the edges would be scraped away and a new area laid down.The work commenced at the end of the building furthest from the altar with the last chronological part of the narrative and progressed towards the altar with the scenes of the Creation. The first three scenes, from The Drunkenness of Noah, contain crowded compositions of smaller figures than other panels, evidently, because Michelangelo misjudged the ceiling's size. Also painted in the early stages was the Slaying of Goliath. After painting the Creation of Eve adjacent to the marble screen which divided the chapel, Michelangelo paused in his work to move the scaffolding to the other side. After having seen his completed work so far, he returned to work with the Temptation and Fall, followed by the Creation of Adam. As the scale of the work got larger, Michelangelo's style became broader; the final narrative scene of God in the act of creation was painted in a single day.According to Vasari, the ceiling was unveiled before it could be reworked with a secco and gold to give it "a finer appearance" as had been done with the chapel's wall frescoes. Both Michelangelo and Pope Julius II wanted these details to be added, but this never took place, in part because Michelangelo did not want to rebuild the scaffolding; he also argued that "in those days men did not wear gold, and those who are painted ... were holy men who despised wealth." Julius II died only months after the ceiling's completion, in February 1513.According to Vasari and Condivi, Michelangelo painted in a standing position, not lying on his back, as another biographer, Paolo Giovio, imagined. Vasari wrote: "These frescos were done with the greatest discomfort, for he had to stand there working with his head tilted backwards." Michelangelo may have described his physical discomfort in a poem, accompanied by a sketch in the margin, which was probably addressed to the humanist academician Giovanni di Benedetto da Pistoia, a friend with whom Michelangelo corresponded. Leonard Barkan compared the posture of Michelangelo's marginalia self-portrait to the Roman sculptures of Marsyas Bound in the Uffizi Gallery; Barkan further connects the flayed Marsyas with Michelangelo's purported self-portrait decades later on the flayed skin of St Bartholomew in his Last Judgment but cautions that there is no certainty the sketch represents the process of painting the chapel ceiling. Michelangelo wrote the poem describing the arduous conditions under which he worked. Michelangelo's illustrated poem reads:Jelbert has suggested that the physical pain described in this poem, and the pose of Michelangelo in his illustration for it, resonate with the agonised postures of the Vatican's 'Laocoön Group'. In the illustration, suggests Jelbert, Michelangelo appears to have drawn himself as the dying son on the right-hand side of the group (his arm sheered at the wrist), and the figure he is painting has the raised knees, wild eyes and broken right arm of Laocoön himself. Michelangelo's reference to the 'Laocoön Group' in the 'Brazen Serpent' has been noted above, but the artist also alluded to this sculpture in other areas of the Sistine ceiling, including the 'Punishment of Haman', and a pair of ignudi between the 'Sacrifice of Noah' and the 'Prophet Isiah'.

Hypothetical reconstruction of the first project for the tomb of Julius II (1505) according to an interpretation by Adriano Marinazzo (2018)<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal

The lunette of Jacob and his son [[Saint Joseph

:File:Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - Judah.jpg

title=La Tomba di Giulio II e l'architettura dipinta della volta della Sistina: Quell'idea di sepoltura che mai vide la luce

:File:The Creation of the Sun and the Moon, Michelangelo (1508-1512).jpg

Creation of the Earth and the celestial bodies

commonly depicted in Western Christian art

:File:Sacrifice of Noah michaelangelo.jpg

File:'Isaiah Sistine Chapel ceiling' by Michelangelo JBU36FXD.jpg

File:Cappella sistina, ricostruzione dell'interno prima degli interventi di Michelangelo, stampa del XIX secolo.jpg

Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament

Tree of the knowledge of good and evil#Christianity

Michelangelo's structural sketch (Archivio Buonarroti, XIII, 175v) overlaid on the Chapel ceiling<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal

The ceiling of the [[Stanza della Segnatura

title=Ipotesi su un disegno michelangiolesco del foglio XIII, 175v, dell'Archivio Buonarroti

The evidence of the plaster laid for a day's work can be seen around the head and arm of this ''ignudo''.

File:Adriano Marinazzo Michelangelo first drawing Sistine Ceiling.jpg

File:Tomb of Pope Julius II - Adriano Marinazzo.jpg

Medieval theology#Medieval Christian theology

Serpent (symbolism)#Judaic and Christian symbolism

The mark of the scaffolding used for painting the ceiling is evident on the lower right of this [[lunette

:File:Raphael School of Athens Michelangelo.jpg

Detail showing intersection of first and second registers, with: a prophet, a lunette, a sibyl, ''ignudi'', medallions, bronze figures, and ''telamones''

An ''ignudo'' commonly reproduced by other artists

God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam

s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Apocrypha of the New Testament/The Protevangelium of James

The ceiling as it may have looked before Michelangelo painted it

Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar - detail Eleazar with wife.jpg

The ceiling's west end (above the entrance)

title=Found? Michelangelo's Sistine Sketch

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar and Mathan - WGA.jpg

the unattainability of divine perfection by man

:File:Michelangelo, Separation of the Earth from the Waters 00.jpg

claimed in the New Testament to have been prophesied


Sistine Chapel ceiling

Prompt: Focus on Sistine Chapel ceiling and explain the Content.

Michelangelo's frescoes form the backstory to the 15th-century narrative cycles of the lives of Moses and Jesus Christ by Perugino and Botticelli on the chapel's walls. While the main central scenes depict incidents in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, much debate exists on the multitudes of figures' exact interpretation. The Sistine Chapel's ceiling is a shallow barrel vault around 35 metres (118 feet) long and around 14 m (46 ft) broad. The chapel's windows cut into the vault's curve, producing a row of lunettes alternating with spandrels.Though Michelangelo claimed he eventually had a free hand in the artistic scheme, this claim was also made by Lorenzo Ghiberti about his monumental bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery, for which it is known Ghiberti was constrained by stipulations on how the Old Testament scenes should appear and was able to decide merely the forms and number of the picture fields. It is likely that Michelangelo was free to choose forms and presentation of the design, but that the subjects and themes themselves were decided by the patron.The central, almost flat field of the ceiling is delineated by a fictive architectural cornice and divided into four large rectangles and five smaller ones by five pairs of painted ribs which cut laterally across the central rectangular field. Michelangelo painted these rectangles, which appear open to the sky, with scenes from the Old Testament.The narrative begins at the chapel's east end, with the first scene above the altar, focus of the Eucharistic ceremonies performed by the clergy. The small rectangular field directly above the altar depicts the Primal Act of Creation. The last of the nine central fields, at the west end, shows the Drunkenness of Noah; below this scene is the door used by the laity. Furthest from the altar, the Drunkenness of Noah represents the sinful nature of man.Above the cornice, at the four corners of each of the five smaller central fields, are nude male youths, called ignudi, whose precise significance is unknown. Close to the sacred scenes in the uppermost register and unlike the figures of the lower register shown in perspective, they are not foreshortened. They probably represent the Florentine Neoplatonists' view of humanity's ideal Platonic form, without the mar of Original Sin, to which the lower figures are all subject. Kenneth Clark wrote that "their physical beauty is an image of divine perfection; their alert and vigorous movements an expression of divine energy".Below the painted cornice around the central rectangular area is a lower register depicting a continuation of the chapel's walls as a trompe-l'œil architectural framework against which figures press, with powerful modelling. The figures are drastically foreshortened and are at larger scale than the figures in the central scenes, which according to Harold Osborne and Hugh Brigstocke creates "a sense of spatial disequilibrium".The ceiling at the chapel's four corners forms a doubled spandrel painted with salvific scenes from the Old Testament: The Brazen Serpent, The Crucifixion of Haman, Judith and Holofernes, and David and Goliath. On the crescent-shaped areas, or lunettes, above each of the chapel's windows are tablets listing the ancestors of Christ and accompanying figures. Above them, in the triangular spandrels, a further eight groups of figures are shown, but these have not been identified with specific biblical characters. The scheme is completed by four large corner pendentives, each illustrating a dramatic biblical story.Each of the chapel's window arches cuts into the curved vault, creating above each a triangular area of vaulting. The arch of each window is separated from the next by these triangular spandrels, in each of which are enthroned Prophets alternating with the Sibyls. These figures, seven Old Testament prophets and five of the Graeco-Roman sibyls, were notable in Christian tradition for their prophesies of the Messiah or the Nativity of Jesus. The lunettes above the windows are themselves painted with scenes of the "purely human" Ancestors of Christ, as are the spaces either side of each window. Their position is both the lowest in the vault and the darkest, in contrast with the airy upper vault.

Hypothetical reconstruction of the first project for the tomb of Julius II (1505) according to an interpretation by Adriano Marinazzo (2018)<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal

The lunette of Jacob and his son [[Saint Joseph

:File:Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - Judah.jpg

title=La Tomba di Giulio II e l'architettura dipinta della volta della Sistina: Quell'idea di sepoltura che mai vide la luce

:File:The Creation of the Sun and the Moon, Michelangelo (1508-1512).jpg

Creation of the Earth and the celestial bodies

commonly depicted in Western Christian art

:File:Sacrifice of Noah michaelangelo.jpg

File:'Isaiah Sistine Chapel ceiling' by Michelangelo JBU36FXD.jpg

File:Cappella sistina, ricostruzione dell'interno prima degli interventi di Michelangelo, stampa del XIX secolo.jpg

Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament

Tree of the knowledge of good and evil#Christianity

Michelangelo's structural sketch (Archivio Buonarroti, XIII, 175v) overlaid on the Chapel ceiling<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal

The ceiling of the [[Stanza della Segnatura

title=Ipotesi su un disegno michelangiolesco del foglio XIII, 175v, dell'Archivio Buonarroti

The evidence of the plaster laid for a day's work can be seen around the head and arm of this ''ignudo''.

File:Adriano Marinazzo Michelangelo first drawing Sistine Ceiling.jpg

File:Tomb of Pope Julius II - Adriano Marinazzo.jpg

Medieval theology#Medieval Christian theology

Serpent (symbolism)#Judaic and Christian symbolism

The mark of the scaffolding used for painting the ceiling is evident on the lower right of this [[lunette

:File:Raphael School of Athens Michelangelo.jpg

Detail showing intersection of first and second registers, with: a prophet, a lunette, a sibyl, ''ignudi'', medallions, bronze figures, and ''telamones''

An ''ignudo'' commonly reproduced by other artists

God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam

s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Apocrypha of the New Testament/The Protevangelium of James

The ceiling as it may have looked before Michelangelo painted it

Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar - detail Eleazar with wife.jpg

The ceiling's west end (above the entrance)

title=Found? Michelangelo's Sistine Sketch

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar and Mathan - WGA.jpg

the unattainability of divine perfection by man

:File:Michelangelo, Separation of the Earth from the Waters 00.jpg

claimed in the New Testament to have been prophesied


Sistine Chapel ceiling

Prompt: Explain the Content of this artwork, Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Michelangelo's frescoes form the backstory to the 15th-century narrative cycles of the lives of Moses and Jesus Christ by Perugino and Botticelli on the chapel's walls. While the main central scenes depict incidents in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, much debate exists on the multitudes of figures' exact interpretation. The Sistine Chapel's ceiling is a shallow barrel vault around 35 metres (118 feet) long and around 14 m (46 ft) broad. The chapel's windows cut into the vault's curve, producing a row of lunettes alternating with spandrels.Though Michelangelo claimed he eventually had a free hand in the artistic scheme, this claim was also made by Lorenzo Ghiberti about his monumental bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery, for which it is known Ghiberti was constrained by stipulations on how the Old Testament scenes should appear and was able to decide merely the forms and number of the picture fields. It is likely that Michelangelo was free to choose forms and presentation of the design, but that the subjects and themes themselves were decided by the patron.The central, almost flat field of the ceiling is delineated by a fictive architectural cornice and divided into four large rectangles and five smaller ones by five pairs of painted ribs which cut laterally across the central rectangular field. Michelangelo painted these rectangles, which appear open to the sky, with scenes from the Old Testament.The narrative begins at the chapel's east end, with the first scene above the altar, focus of the Eucharistic ceremonies performed by the clergy. The small rectangular field directly above the altar depicts the Primal Act of Creation. The last of the nine central fields, at the west end, shows the Drunkenness of Noah; below this scene is the door used by the laity. Furthest from the altar, the Drunkenness of Noah represents the sinful nature of man.Above the cornice, at the four corners of each of the five smaller central fields, are nude male youths, called ignudi, whose precise significance is unknown. Close to the sacred scenes in the uppermost register and unlike the figures of the lower register shown in perspective, they are not foreshortened. They probably represent the Florentine Neoplatonists' view of humanity's ideal Platonic form, without the mar of Original Sin, to which the lower figures are all subject. Kenneth Clark wrote that "their physical beauty is an image of divine perfection; their alert and vigorous movements an expression of divine energy".Below the painted cornice around the central rectangular area is a lower register depicting a continuation of the chapel's walls as a trompe-l'œil architectural framework against which figures press, with powerful modelling. The figures are drastically foreshortened and are at larger scale than the figures in the central scenes, which according to Harold Osborne and Hugh Brigstocke creates "a sense of spatial disequilibrium".The ceiling at the chapel's four corners forms a doubled spandrel painted with salvific scenes from the Old Testament: The Brazen Serpent, The Crucifixion of Haman, Judith and Holofernes, and David and Goliath. On the crescent-shaped areas, or lunettes, above each of the chapel's windows are tablets listing the ancestors of Christ and accompanying figures. Above them, in the triangular spandrels, a further eight groups of figures are shown, but these have not been identified with specific biblical characters. The scheme is completed by four large corner pendentives, each illustrating a dramatic biblical story.Each of the chapel's window arches cuts into the curved vault, creating above each a triangular area of vaulting. The arch of each window is separated from the next by these triangular spandrels, in each of which are enthroned Prophets alternating with the Sibyls. These figures, seven Old Testament prophets and five of the Graeco-Roman sibyls, were notable in Christian tradition for their prophesies of the Messiah or the Nativity of Jesus. The lunettes above the windows are themselves painted with scenes of the "purely human" Ancestors of Christ, as are the spaces either side of each window. Their position is both the lowest in the vault and the darkest, in contrast with the airy upper vault.

Hypothetical reconstruction of the first project for the tomb of Julius II (1505) according to an interpretation by Adriano Marinazzo (2018)<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal

The lunette of Jacob and his son [[Saint Joseph

:File:Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - Judah.jpg

title=La Tomba di Giulio II e l'architettura dipinta della volta della Sistina: Quell'idea di sepoltura che mai vide la luce

:File:The Creation of the Sun and the Moon, Michelangelo (1508-1512).jpg

Creation of the Earth and the celestial bodies

commonly depicted in Western Christian art

:File:Sacrifice of Noah michaelangelo.jpg

File:'Isaiah Sistine Chapel ceiling' by Michelangelo JBU36FXD.jpg

File:Cappella sistina, ricostruzione dell'interno prima degli interventi di Michelangelo, stampa del XIX secolo.jpg

Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament

Tree of the knowledge of good and evil#Christianity

Michelangelo's structural sketch (Archivio Buonarroti, XIII, 175v) overlaid on the Chapel ceiling<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal

The ceiling of the [[Stanza della Segnatura

title=Ipotesi su un disegno michelangiolesco del foglio XIII, 175v, dell'Archivio Buonarroti

The evidence of the plaster laid for a day's work can be seen around the head and arm of this ''ignudo''.

File:Adriano Marinazzo Michelangelo first drawing Sistine Ceiling.jpg

File:Tomb of Pope Julius II - Adriano Marinazzo.jpg

Medieval theology#Medieval Christian theology

Serpent (symbolism)#Judaic and Christian symbolism

The mark of the scaffolding used for painting the ceiling is evident on the lower right of this [[lunette

:File:Raphael School of Athens Michelangelo.jpg

Detail showing intersection of first and second registers, with: a prophet, a lunette, a sibyl, ''ignudi'', medallions, bronze figures, and ''telamones''

An ''ignudo'' commonly reproduced by other artists

God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam

s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Apocrypha of the New Testament/The Protevangelium of James

The ceiling as it may have looked before Michelangelo painted it

Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar - detail Eleazar with wife.jpg

The ceiling's west end (above the entrance)

title=Found? Michelangelo's Sistine Sketch

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar and Mathan - WGA.jpg

the unattainability of divine perfection by man

:File:Michelangelo, Separation of the Earth from the Waters 00.jpg

claimed in the New Testament to have been prophesied


Sistine Chapel ceiling

Prompt: How does Sistine Chapel ceiling explain its Content?

Michelangelo's frescoes form the backstory to the 15th-century narrative cycles of the lives of Moses and Jesus Christ by Perugino and Botticelli on the chapel's walls. While the main central scenes depict incidents in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, much debate exists on the multitudes of figures' exact interpretation. The Sistine Chapel's ceiling is a shallow barrel vault around 35 metres (118 feet) long and around 14 m (46 ft) broad. The chapel's windows cut into the vault's curve, producing a row of lunettes alternating with spandrels.Though Michelangelo claimed he eventually had a free hand in the artistic scheme, this claim was also made by Lorenzo Ghiberti about his monumental bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery, for which it is known Ghiberti was constrained by stipulations on how the Old Testament scenes should appear and was able to decide merely the forms and number of the picture fields. It is likely that Michelangelo was free to choose forms and presentation of the design, but that the subjects and themes themselves were decided by the patron.The central, almost flat field of the ceiling is delineated by a fictive architectural cornice and divided into four large rectangles and five smaller ones by five pairs of painted ribs which cut laterally across the central rectangular field. Michelangelo painted these rectangles, which appear open to the sky, with scenes from the Old Testament.The narrative begins at the chapel's east end, with the first scene above the altar, focus of the Eucharistic ceremonies performed by the clergy. The small rectangular field directly above the altar depicts the Primal Act of Creation. The last of the nine central fields, at the west end, shows the Drunkenness of Noah; below this scene is the door used by the laity. Furthest from the altar, the Drunkenness of Noah represents the sinful nature of man.Above the cornice, at the four corners of each of the five smaller central fields, are nude male youths, called ignudi, whose precise significance is unknown. Close to the sacred scenes in the uppermost register and unlike the figures of the lower register shown in perspective, they are not foreshortened. They probably represent the Florentine Neoplatonists' view of humanity's ideal Platonic form, without the mar of Original Sin, to which the lower figures are all subject. Kenneth Clark wrote that "their physical beauty is an image of divine perfection; their alert and vigorous movements an expression of divine energy".Below the painted cornice around the central rectangular area is a lower register depicting a continuation of the chapel's walls as a trompe-l'œil architectural framework against which figures press, with powerful modelling. The figures are drastically foreshortened and are at larger scale than the figures in the central scenes, which according to Harold Osborne and Hugh Brigstocke creates "a sense of spatial disequilibrium".The ceiling at the chapel's four corners forms a doubled spandrel painted with salvific scenes from the Old Testament: The Brazen Serpent, The Crucifixion of Haman, Judith and Holofernes, and David and Goliath. On the crescent-shaped areas, or lunettes, above each of the chapel's windows are tablets listing the ancestors of Christ and accompanying figures. Above them, in the triangular spandrels, a further eight groups of figures are shown, but these have not been identified with specific biblical characters. The scheme is completed by four large corner pendentives, each illustrating a dramatic biblical story.Each of the chapel's window arches cuts into the curved vault, creating above each a triangular area of vaulting. The arch of each window is separated from the next by these triangular spandrels, in each of which are enthroned Prophets alternating with the Sibyls. These figures, seven Old Testament prophets and five of the Graeco-Roman sibyls, were notable in Christian tradition for their prophesies of the Messiah or the Nativity of Jesus. The lunettes above the windows are themselves painted with scenes of the "purely human" Ancestors of Christ, as are the spaces either side of each window. Their position is both the lowest in the vault and the darkest, in contrast with the airy upper vault.

Hypothetical reconstruction of the first project for the tomb of Julius II (1505) according to an interpretation by Adriano Marinazzo (2018)<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal

The lunette of Jacob and his son [[Saint Joseph

:File:Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - Judah.jpg

title=La Tomba di Giulio II e l'architettura dipinta della volta della Sistina: Quell'idea di sepoltura che mai vide la luce

:File:The Creation of the Sun and the Moon, Michelangelo (1508-1512).jpg

Creation of the Earth and the celestial bodies

commonly depicted in Western Christian art

:File:Sacrifice of Noah michaelangelo.jpg

File:'Isaiah Sistine Chapel ceiling' by Michelangelo JBU36FXD.jpg

File:Cappella sistina, ricostruzione dell'interno prima degli interventi di Michelangelo, stampa del XIX secolo.jpg

Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament

Tree of the knowledge of good and evil#Christianity

Michelangelo's structural sketch (Archivio Buonarroti, XIII, 175v) overlaid on the Chapel ceiling<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal

The ceiling of the [[Stanza della Segnatura

title=Ipotesi su un disegno michelangiolesco del foglio XIII, 175v, dell'Archivio Buonarroti

The evidence of the plaster laid for a day's work can be seen around the head and arm of this ''ignudo''.

File:Adriano Marinazzo Michelangelo first drawing Sistine Ceiling.jpg

File:Tomb of Pope Julius II - Adriano Marinazzo.jpg

Medieval theology#Medieval Christian theology

Serpent (symbolism)#Judaic and Christian symbolism

The mark of the scaffolding used for painting the ceiling is evident on the lower right of this [[lunette

:File:Raphael School of Athens Michelangelo.jpg

Detail showing intersection of first and second registers, with: a prophet, a lunette, a sibyl, ''ignudi'', medallions, bronze figures, and ''telamones''

An ''ignudo'' commonly reproduced by other artists

God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam

s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Apocrypha of the New Testament/The Protevangelium of James

The ceiling as it may have looked before Michelangelo painted it

Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar - detail Eleazar with wife.jpg

The ceiling's west end (above the entrance)

title=Found? Michelangelo's Sistine Sketch

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar and Mathan - WGA.jpg

the unattainability of divine perfection by man

:File:Michelangelo, Separation of the Earth from the Waters 00.jpg

claimed in the New Testament to have been prophesied


Sistine Chapel ceiling

Prompt: In Sistine Chapel ceiling, how is the Content discussed?

Michelangelo's frescoes form the backstory to the 15th-century narrative cycles of the lives of Moses and Jesus Christ by Perugino and Botticelli on the chapel's walls. While the main central scenes depict incidents in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, much debate exists on the multitudes of figures' exact interpretation. The Sistine Chapel's ceiling is a shallow barrel vault around 35 metres (118 feet) long and around 14 m (46 ft) broad. The chapel's windows cut into the vault's curve, producing a row of lunettes alternating with spandrels.Though Michelangelo claimed he eventually had a free hand in the artistic scheme, this claim was also made by Lorenzo Ghiberti about his monumental bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery, for which it is known Ghiberti was constrained by stipulations on how the Old Testament scenes should appear and was able to decide merely the forms and number of the picture fields. It is likely that Michelangelo was free to choose forms and presentation of the design, but that the subjects and themes themselves were decided by the patron.The central, almost flat field of the ceiling is delineated by a fictive architectural cornice and divided into four large rectangles and five smaller ones by five pairs of painted ribs which cut laterally across the central rectangular field. Michelangelo painted these rectangles, which appear open to the sky, with scenes from the Old Testament.The narrative begins at the chapel's east end, with the first scene above the altar, focus of the Eucharistic ceremonies performed by the clergy. The small rectangular field directly above the altar depicts the Primal Act of Creation. The last of the nine central fields, at the west end, shows the Drunkenness of Noah; below this scene is the door used by the laity. Furthest from the altar, the Drunkenness of Noah represents the sinful nature of man.Above the cornice, at the four corners of each of the five smaller central fields, are nude male youths, called ignudi, whose precise significance is unknown. Close to the sacred scenes in the uppermost register and unlike the figures of the lower register shown in perspective, they are not foreshortened. They probably represent the Florentine Neoplatonists' view of humanity's ideal Platonic form, without the mar of Original Sin, to which the lower figures are all subject. Kenneth Clark wrote that "their physical beauty is an image of divine perfection; their alert and vigorous movements an expression of divine energy".Below the painted cornice around the central rectangular area is a lower register depicting a continuation of the chapel's walls as a trompe-l'œil architectural framework against which figures press, with powerful modelling. The figures are drastically foreshortened and are at larger scale than the figures in the central scenes, which according to Harold Osborne and Hugh Brigstocke creates "a sense of spatial disequilibrium".The ceiling at the chapel's four corners forms a doubled spandrel painted with salvific scenes from the Old Testament: The Brazen Serpent, The Crucifixion of Haman, Judith and Holofernes, and David and Goliath. On the crescent-shaped areas, or lunettes, above each of the chapel's windows are tablets listing the ancestors of Christ and accompanying figures. Above them, in the triangular spandrels, a further eight groups of figures are shown, but these have not been identified with specific biblical characters. The scheme is completed by four large corner pendentives, each illustrating a dramatic biblical story.Each of the chapel's window arches cuts into the curved vault, creating above each a triangular area of vaulting. The arch of each window is separated from the next by these triangular spandrels, in each of which are enthroned Prophets alternating with the Sibyls. These figures, seven Old Testament prophets and five of the Graeco-Roman sibyls, were notable in Christian tradition for their prophesies of the Messiah or the Nativity of Jesus. The lunettes above the windows are themselves painted with scenes of the "purely human" Ancestors of Christ, as are the spaces either side of each window. Their position is both the lowest in the vault and the darkest, in contrast with the airy upper vault.

Hypothetical reconstruction of the first project for the tomb of Julius II (1505) according to an interpretation by Adriano Marinazzo (2018)<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal

The lunette of Jacob and his son [[Saint Joseph

:File:Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - Judah.jpg

title=La Tomba di Giulio II e l'architettura dipinta della volta della Sistina: Quell'idea di sepoltura che mai vide la luce

:File:The Creation of the Sun and the Moon, Michelangelo (1508-1512).jpg

Creation of the Earth and the celestial bodies

commonly depicted in Western Christian art

:File:Sacrifice of Noah michaelangelo.jpg

File:'Isaiah Sistine Chapel ceiling' by Michelangelo JBU36FXD.jpg

File:Cappella sistina, ricostruzione dell'interno prima degli interventi di Michelangelo, stampa del XIX secolo.jpg

Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament

Tree of the knowledge of good and evil#Christianity

Michelangelo's structural sketch (Archivio Buonarroti, XIII, 175v) overlaid on the Chapel ceiling<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal

The ceiling of the [[Stanza della Segnatura

title=Ipotesi su un disegno michelangiolesco del foglio XIII, 175v, dell'Archivio Buonarroti

The evidence of the plaster laid for a day's work can be seen around the head and arm of this ''ignudo''.

File:Adriano Marinazzo Michelangelo first drawing Sistine Ceiling.jpg

File:Tomb of Pope Julius II - Adriano Marinazzo.jpg

Medieval theology#Medieval Christian theology

Serpent (symbolism)#Judaic and Christian symbolism

The mark of the scaffolding used for painting the ceiling is evident on the lower right of this [[lunette

:File:Raphael School of Athens Michelangelo.jpg

Detail showing intersection of first and second registers, with: a prophet, a lunette, a sibyl, ''ignudi'', medallions, bronze figures, and ''telamones''

An ''ignudo'' commonly reproduced by other artists

God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam

s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Apocrypha of the New Testament/The Protevangelium of James

The ceiling as it may have looked before Michelangelo painted it

Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar - detail Eleazar with wife.jpg

The ceiling's west end (above the entrance)

title=Found? Michelangelo's Sistine Sketch

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar and Mathan - WGA.jpg

the unattainability of divine perfection by man

:File:Michelangelo, Separation of the Earth from the Waters 00.jpg

claimed in the New Testament to have been prophesied


Sistine Chapel ceiling

Prompt: In the context of Sistine Chapel ceiling, explain the Interpretation and the Content.

The overt subject matter of the ceiling is the Christian doctrine of humanity's need for salvation as offered by God through Jesus. It is a visual metaphor of humankind's need for a covenant with God. The Old Covenant of the Children of Israel through Moses and the New Covenant through Christ had already  been represented around the walls of the chapel. Some experts, including Benjamin Blech and Vatican art historian Enrico Bruschini, have also noted less overt subject matter, which they describe as being "concealed" and "forbidden."The main scheme of the ceiling illustrates God creating the perfect world prior to creating humanity, which causes its own fall into disgrace and is punished by being made mortal; humanity then sinks further into sin and disgrace, and is punished by the Great Flood. The ceiling's creation narrative ends with Noah's drunkenness, which Jesuit theologian John W. O'Malley says could be interpreted as focusing on the separation of Gentiles from Jews as the chosen people. Then, through a lineage of ancestors – from Abraham to Joseph – God sends the saviour of humanity, Jesus, whose coming is claimed in the New Testament to have been prophesied by prophets of Israel (to whom Michelangelo adds sibyls of the Classical world) and whose second coming the same artist returned to paint on the altar wall in his Last Judgment. The prophet Jonah, recognizable over the altar by the great fish beside him, is cited by Jesus in the gospels as being related to his own coming death and resurrection, which Staale Sinding-Larsen says "activates the Passion motif". In the Gospel of John, moreover, Jesus compares his being raised (i.e. his crucifixion) to Moses lifting the Brazen Serpent to heal Israelites from fiery serpent bites; the latter is painted on the pendentive above the altar to the left, opposite the Punishment of Haman, depicted as a crucifixion instead of a hanging.Of the three Twelve Minor Prophets depicted on the ceiling, O'Malley discusses Jonah and Zechariah as carrying a particular significance. In addition to Jonah's connection to Jesus, O'Malley points out that he is a spokesman to the Gentiles. Zechariah prophesied that the Messiah would arrive on a donkey. His place in the chapel is directly above the doorway across from the altar, through which the pope is carried in procession on Palm Sunday, the day on which Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem.Much of the symbolism of the ceiling dates from the early church, but 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, Aristotle and other Classical writers. Michelangelo, as a young man, had spent time at the Platonic 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 della Signoria near the Palazzo Vecchio, the home of Florence's council. The humanist view of spirituality was that it is rooted in human nature and independent from intermediaries such as the Church, which emphasized humanity as essentially sinful and flawed. A synthesis, with man dignified and created in God's image, was epitomized by Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man, which was referenced in sermons given at the papal court.The iconography of the ceiling has had various interpretations in the past, some elements of which have been contradicted by modern scholarship. Others, such as the identity of the figures in the lunettes and spandrels poppets, continue to defy interpretation. Modern scholars have sought, as yet unsuccessfully, to determine a written source of the theological program of the ceiling and have questioned whether or not it was entirely devised by Michelangelo, who was both an avid reader of the Bible and is considered to be a genius. Art historian Anthony Bertram argues that the artist expressed his inner turmoil in the work, saying: "The principal opposed forces in this conflict were his passionate admiration for classical beauty and his profound, almost mystical Catholicism, his [presumed] homosexuality, and his horror of carnal sin combined with a lofty Platonic concept of love."Edgar Wind postulated that the ten medallions represented violations of the Ten Commandments, with the obscured one above the Persian Sibyl standing for adultery. O'Malley points out that, if this is the case, the infractions of the commandments are arranged out of order.

Hypothetical reconstruction of the first project for the tomb of Julius II (1505) according to an interpretation by Adriano Marinazzo (2018)<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal

The lunette of Jacob and his son [[Saint Joseph

:File:Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - Judah.jpg

title=La Tomba di Giulio II e l'architettura dipinta della volta della Sistina: Quell'idea di sepoltura che mai vide la luce

:File:The Creation of the Sun and the Moon, Michelangelo (1508-1512).jpg

Creation of the Earth and the celestial bodies

commonly depicted in Western Christian art

:File:Sacrifice of Noah michaelangelo.jpg

File:'Isaiah Sistine Chapel ceiling' by Michelangelo JBU36FXD.jpg

File:Cappella sistina, ricostruzione dell'interno prima degli interventi di Michelangelo, stampa del XIX secolo.jpg

Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament

Tree of the knowledge of good and evil#Christianity

Michelangelo's structural sketch (Archivio Buonarroti, XIII, 175v) overlaid on the Chapel ceiling<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal

The ceiling of the [[Stanza della Segnatura

title=Ipotesi su un disegno michelangiolesco del foglio XIII, 175v, dell'Archivio Buonarroti

The evidence of the plaster laid for a day's work can be seen around the head and arm of this ''ignudo''.

File:Adriano Marinazzo Michelangelo first drawing Sistine Ceiling.jpg

File:Tomb of Pope Julius II - Adriano Marinazzo.jpg

Medieval theology#Medieval Christian theology

Serpent (symbolism)#Judaic and Christian symbolism

The mark of the scaffolding used for painting the ceiling is evident on the lower right of this [[lunette

:File:Raphael School of Athens Michelangelo.jpg

Detail showing intersection of first and second registers, with: a prophet, a lunette, a sibyl, ''ignudi'', medallions, bronze figures, and ''telamones''

An ''ignudo'' commonly reproduced by other artists

God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam

s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Apocrypha of the New Testament/The Protevangelium of James

The ceiling as it may have looked before Michelangelo painted it

Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar - detail Eleazar with wife.jpg

The ceiling's west end (above the entrance)

title=Found? Michelangelo's Sistine Sketch

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar and Mathan - WGA.jpg

the unattainability of divine perfection by man

:File:Michelangelo, Separation of the Earth from the Waters 00.jpg


Sistine Chapel ceiling

Prompt: Explain the Interpretation about the Content of this artwork, Sistine Chapel ceiling.

The overt subject matter of the ceiling is the Christian doctrine of humanity's need for salvation as offered by God through Jesus. It is a visual metaphor of humankind's need for a covenant with God. The Old Covenant of the Children of Israel through Moses and the New Covenant through Christ had already  been represented around the walls of the chapel. Some experts, including Benjamin Blech and Vatican art historian Enrico Bruschini, have also noted less overt subject matter, which they describe as being "concealed" and "forbidden."The main scheme of the ceiling illustrates God creating the perfect world prior to creating humanity, which causes its own fall into disgrace and is punished by being made mortal; humanity then sinks further into sin and disgrace, and is punished by the Great Flood. The ceiling's creation narrative ends with Noah's drunkenness, which Jesuit theologian John W. O'Malley says could be interpreted as focusing on the separation of Gentiles from Jews as the chosen people. Then, through a lineage of ancestors – from Abraham to Joseph – God sends the saviour of humanity, Jesus, whose coming is claimed in the New Testament to have been prophesied by prophets of Israel (to whom Michelangelo adds sibyls of the Classical world) and whose second coming the same artist returned to paint on the altar wall in his Last Judgment. The prophet Jonah, recognizable over the altar by the great fish beside him, is cited by Jesus in the gospels as being related to his own coming death and resurrection, which Staale Sinding-Larsen says "activates the Passion motif". In the Gospel of John, moreover, Jesus compares his being raised (i.e. his crucifixion) to Moses lifting the Brazen Serpent to heal Israelites from fiery serpent bites; the latter is painted on the pendentive above the altar to the left, opposite the Punishment of Haman, depicted as a crucifixion instead of a hanging.Of the three Twelve Minor Prophets depicted on the ceiling, O'Malley discusses Jonah and Zechariah as carrying a particular significance. In addition to Jonah's connection to Jesus, O'Malley points out that he is a spokesman to the Gentiles. Zechariah prophesied that the Messiah would arrive on a donkey. His place in the chapel is directly above the doorway across from the altar, through which the pope is carried in procession on Palm Sunday, the day on which Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem.Much of the symbolism of the ceiling dates from the early church, but 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, Aristotle and other Classical writers. Michelangelo, as a young man, had spent time at the Platonic 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 della Signoria near the Palazzo Vecchio, the home of Florence's council. The humanist view of spirituality was that it is rooted in human nature and independent from intermediaries such as the Church, which emphasized humanity as essentially sinful and flawed. A synthesis, with man dignified and created in God's image, was epitomized by Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man, which was referenced in sermons given at the papal court.The iconography of the ceiling has had various interpretations in the past, some elements of which have been contradicted by modern scholarship. Others, such as the identity of the figures in the lunettes and spandrels poppets, continue to defy interpretation. Modern scholars have sought, as yet unsuccessfully, to determine a written source of the theological program of the ceiling and have questioned whether or not it was entirely devised by Michelangelo, who was both an avid reader of the Bible and is considered to be a genius. Art historian Anthony Bertram argues that the artist expressed his inner turmoil in the work, saying: "The principal opposed forces in this conflict were his passionate admiration for classical beauty and his profound, almost mystical Catholicism, his [presumed] homosexuality, and his horror of carnal sin combined with a lofty Platonic concept of love."Edgar Wind postulated that the ten medallions represented violations of the Ten Commandments, with the obscured one above the Persian Sibyl standing for adultery. O'Malley points out that, if this is the case, the infractions of the commandments are arranged out of order.

Hypothetical reconstruction of the first project for the tomb of Julius II (1505) according to an interpretation by Adriano Marinazzo (2018)<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal

The lunette of Jacob and his son [[Saint Joseph

:File:Abraham - Isaac - Jacob - Judah.jpg

title=La Tomba di Giulio II e l'architettura dipinta della volta della Sistina: Quell'idea di sepoltura che mai vide la luce

:File:The Creation of the Sun and the Moon, Michelangelo (1508-1512).jpg

Creation of the Earth and the celestial bodies

commonly depicted in Western Christian art

:File:Sacrifice of Noah michaelangelo.jpg

File:'Isaiah Sistine Chapel ceiling' by Michelangelo JBU36FXD.jpg

File:Cappella sistina, ricostruzione dell'interno prima degli interventi di Michelangelo, stampa del XIX secolo.jpg

Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament

Tree of the knowledge of good and evil#Christianity

Michelangelo's structural sketch (Archivio Buonarroti, XIII, 175v) overlaid on the Chapel ceiling<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal

The ceiling of the [[Stanza della Segnatura

title=Ipotesi su un disegno michelangiolesco del foglio XIII, 175v, dell'Archivio Buonarroti

The evidence of the plaster laid for a day's work can be seen around the head and arm of this ''ignudo''.

File:Adriano Marinazzo Michelangelo first drawing Sistine Ceiling.jpg

File:Tomb of Pope Julius II - Adriano Marinazzo.jpg

Medieval theology#Medieval Christian theology

Serpent (symbolism)#Judaic and Christian symbolism

The mark of the scaffolding used for painting the ceiling is evident on the lower right of this [[lunette

:File:Raphael School of Athens Michelangelo.jpg

Detail showing intersection of first and second registers, with: a prophet, a lunette, a sibyl, ''ignudi'', medallions, bronze figures, and ''telamones''

An ''ignudo'' commonly reproduced by other artists

God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam

s:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Apocrypha of the New Testament/The Protevangelium of James

The ceiling as it may have looked before Michelangelo painted it

Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar - detail Eleazar with wife.jpg

The ceiling's west end (above the entrance)

title=Found? Michelangelo's Sistine Sketch

:File:Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel - Lunette Eleazar and Mathan - WGA.jpg

the unattainability of divine perfection by man

:File:Michelangelo, Separation of the Earth from the Waters 00.jpg