MICHELANGELO - THE GENIUS (BBC)

The Sistine Restored

The Sistine Chapel: a glorious restoration/ Michael Hirst...(et al.). Abrams, Inc. 1994.

We have arrived at the Sistine Chapel with all those other tourists. And we have our binoculars. I'm told that small, inexpensive ones (or very old opera glasses?) are the way to go. The chapel contains Michelangelo's ceiling and his huge "Last Judgement." When Pope Julius II asked Michelangelo to paint 12 apostles along the sides of the ceiling, he replied, "no." But it didn't work, and Michelangelo consented to do it on his own terms. What resulted was 5,900 square feet of "the entire history of the world until Jesus," and it took him four years (1508-1512) craning his neck on scaffolding six stories up, covering the ceiling with frescoes of biblical scenes.

"The ceiling both caps the Renaissance and turns it in a new direction. In perfect Renaissance spirit, it mixes Old Testament prophets with classical figures (remember that when we get to the prophets). But the style is more dramatic, shocking, and emotional than the balanced Renaissance works before it."

Here is a diagram showing what are standing under...

In the center are the nine scenes from Genesis...we can figure those out pretty easily.
Surrounding those (the squares) are the prophets....and they include not only people like Isaiah, but also classical figures like Delphica. We can google them all as we go, but I do have trouble remembering all these bizarre stories.
And in the triangles on the outside are the ancestors. Lots of them I don't know, but we'll be able to identify "David and Goliath," and "Judith and Holofernes."

That's Holofernes' head on the platter.
Maybe we should assign each of us three (or more) names to research. Now I wish I'd paid more attention to Gaga's Bible lessons (did she talk about Judith and Holofernes?)

I hope they have chairs so we can sit as we crane our necks. Otherwise, I'll probably fall over.

The Last Judgement.... "When Michelangelo returned to paint the altar wall 23 years later (1535), the mood of Europe - and the artist - was completely different. The Protestant Reformation had forced the Catholic Church to clamp down on free thought, and religious wars raged...Michelangelo himself had begun to question the innate goodness of mankind." And it shows. It's a grim picture as the dead righteous (skeletons or cadavers) rising and the wicked tortured by gleeful demons."

And on that happy note, we can try to take the shortcut directly to St. Peter's Basicilica. Exit at the far-right corner of the Sistine Chapel (your back to the altar). This saves us a 30 minute walk and the wait in the St. Peter's security line, but you can't get back to the main entrance/exit or the Pinacoteca. This exit may be marked "for private tour groups only," so we'll say our group has left us behind.