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The Sistine Chapel
By peace | September 13, 2010
Michelangelo painting The Sistine ceiling
Pope Julius II wanted Michelangelo to paint the 12 apostles, or the men who followed Jesus, on the ceiling of a church called the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo did not want the job. He preferred sculpting.
Michelangelo was 33 years old when he began to paint the ceiling. Instead of painting the apostles, Michelangelo decided to paint Bible scenes. “Painting is not just line and light,” he thought. The method he used was called fresco. “Fresco” is the italian word for “fresh”. In fresco painting, special paints are made and mixed with water or egg. The paint is applied to the surface of a wet wall or ceiling. In the 1500s, the surface was plaster that had lime added to it. The lime was a powder that caused the paint to bind with the surface. Fresco artists had to work quickly before the surface dried. Michelangelo did not have much practice with this style of painting, but he had learned it when he was an apprentice in Ghirlandaio’s workshop. At first Michelangelo used apprentices, but he soon fired them. He painted standing up on scaffolds 50 feet (15m) high, leaning backward, drops of paint falling in his face. It took him 4 years to complete the Sistine ceiling.
On 31 October 1512, the chapel opened to the public. Thousands of people came to see the ceiling. The Sistine Chapel frescoes brought even more fame to Michelangelo. He was considered a great painter as well as a great sculptor.
Michelangelo wrote a poem describing his experience:
This comes from dangling from the ceiling–
I’m goitered like a Lombard cat (or wherever else their throats grow fat) –
It’s my belly that’s beyond concealing,
It hangs beneath my chin like peeling.
My beard points skyward,
I seem like a bat upon its back, I’ve breast and splat!
On my face, the paint’s congealing.
Loins concertina’d in my gut
I drop my butt as counterweight and move without the help of eyes
Like a skinned martyr I abut on air, and wrinkled show my fate.
Bow-like, I strain towards the skies.
No wonder then I size things crookedly; I’m on all fours
Bent blowpipes send their darts off-course.
Defend my labour’s cause,
Good Giovanni, from all strictures;
I live in hell and paint its pictures.
When the first half of the ceiling was finished, the Pope announced eagerly that he wanted to be the first to see it. He could not wait for the platform to be moved away or the rubbish to be removed. The curtain was drawn away to reveal a sight so majestic it flooded the room. Michelangelo had applied the techniques of sculpture to painting, creating huge, lifelike figures that filled the air, joyous, angry, moving, still, enacting the age-old story of the creation and drawing sighs of amazement from the viewers.
In the second part of the ceiling took another year to complete. The impatient Pope asked so often about when it would be finished that Michelangelo snapped,”It will be finished when I’ve finished.” The angry Pope banged his staff on the ground and shouted,”What do you mean by it will be finished when you’ve finished? Stop wasting time and get on with it or I’ll throw you off the platform!”
On the morning of All Saint’s Day 1512, Julius II said mass in the Sistine Chapel and the ceiling was unveiled to the people of Rome. They were the first to see a masterpiece that surpassed anything that had been done before, a masterpiece whose fame, and that of its creator, would live on forever.
“After four tortured years and over 400 more than life-sized figures, I felt as old and weary as Jeremiah. I was only 37, yet friends did not recognize the old man I had become.”
1n 1506, a man digging in Rome found Laocoon, an ancient Greek sculpture. It shows the Trojan Priest Laocoon and his sons being attacked by snakes. The priest went against the gods by warning the Trojans about the danger of bringing a wooden horse inside Troy. The energy Michelangelo saw in the sculpture affected his later works.
More Links About Michelangelo
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Artist of The Body
Michelangelo’s Pieta
The Giant
Michelangelo and The Pope
Topics: All Posts, Arts, christian, Famous People, Gallery, Medieval | 1 Comment »
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