1. Michelangelo wanted nothing to do with the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.
.jpg)
In 1508, 33-year-old Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo was hard at work on Pope Julius II's marble tomb, a relatively obscure piece of sculpture now located in Rome's San Pietro in Vincoli church. When Julius asked the esteemed artist to switch gears and decorate the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, Michelangelo balked. For one thing, he considered himself a sculptor rather than a painter, and he had no experience whatsoever with frescoes (wall paintings). He also had his heart set on finishing the tomb, even as funding for the project dwindled. However, Michelangelo reluctantly accepted the fresco commission, spending four years of his life perched on scaffolding with his brush in hand. He would return intermittently to Julius’ monumental tomb over the next few decades.
2. Contrary to popular belief, Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel in a standing position.
When they picture Michelangelo creating his legendary frescoes, most people assume he was lying down. But in fact, the artist and his assistants used wooden scaffolds that allowed them to stand upright and reach above their heads. Michelangelo himself designed the unique system of platforms, which were attached to the walls with brackets. The impression that Michelangelo painted on his back might come from the 1965 film The Agony and the Ecstasy, in which Charlton Heston portrayed the genius behind the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.
3. Working on the Sistine Chapel was so unpleasant that Michelangelo wrote a poem about his misery.
In 1509, an increasingly uncomfortable Michelangelo described the physical strain of the Sistine Chapel project to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia. “I’ve already grown a goiter from this torture,” he wrote in a poem that was surely somewhat tongue-in-cheek. He went on to complain that his “stomach’s squashed under my chin,” that his “face makes a fine floor for droppings,” that his “skin hangs loose below me” and that his “spine’s all knotted from folding myself over.” He ended with an affirmation that he shouldn't have changed his day job: “I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.”
4. Michelangelo's masterpiece has proven highly resilient.
The Sistine Chapel’s frescoed ceiling has held up remarkably well in the five centuries since its completion. Only one small component is missing: part of the sky in the panel depicting Noah's escape from the great biblical flood. The section of painted plaster fell to the floor and shattered following an explosion at a nearby gunpowder depot in 1797. Despite the ceiling's apparent hardness, experts worry that foot traffic from the millions of people who visit the Sistine Chapel each year continues to pose a serious problem. threat.
5. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel art was touched up—and stripped down—in the 1980s and 1990s.
Between 1980 and 1999, experts restored selected artwork in the Sistine Chapel, including Michelangelo’s ceiling and his famous fresco known as “The Last Judgment,” which he created in his later years. Specialists meticulously dissolved layers of grime, soot and deposits, substantially brightening the colors of the centuries-old paintings. The restoration also undid the work of Pope Pius IV, who ordered the placement of fig leaves and loincloths on Michelangelo's nudes during the 1560s.