Italy #1: Sistine Chapel

Michelangelo did not like to paint; he considered sculptures the superior art form. So how did he end up painting the famous Sistine Chapel? Short answer: Michelangelo was forced to paint, since Pope Julius II insisted he do it, explained our guide.

 

There were other reasons why Michelangelo wasn’t keen to paint the Sistine Chapel. What was asked for sounded impossible: (1) paint all the major themes of Christianity on a single painting; (2) not on a canvas, but on a huge room (ceiling + walls). Plus, he feared that if he failed to do justice to it, it would be a very public failure that would tar his reputation.

 

Plus, the work was literally backbreaking. So much so Michelangelo even wrote a poem on how he suffered (“hunched up here like a cat”, “My brush, above me all the time, dribbles paint so my face makes a fine floor for droppings” and ends by saying “My painting is dead. Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor. I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.”).

 

Michelangelo put several terms before he agreed to paint. It was too huge (131 x 43 feet), so the ceiling would have to be split into smaller “panels”. The Pope agreed. Notice how seamlessly the ceiling has been split into panels, with decorative columns and pillars serving as separators: 


Michelangelo had no way of knowing how a panel would appear… when viewed from the floor. So he painted panel #2 first, as a test drive. Oops! While awesome for a canvas that could be viewed from up close, it had too much info that could not be seen from the floor. Worse it looked very cluttered from the floor! So he reduced the details and people in panel #3. Better, but still too detailed. From here on, in all the other panels, he knew the right level of detail and people per panel (less than 5-6).

 

In the famous “Creation of Adam” panel, our guide told us to notice two things: (1) the fingers of God and Adam do not touch; and (2) while God’s finger is outstretched and straight, Adam’s finger is bent and not stretched.

This was deliberate, she told us. It conveys that God is willing to reach out to humans, but humans have free will – they have the choice to stretch (or not) and make (or not make) contact with the divine.

 

The art of the Sistine Chapel isn’t just the ceiling, it is also in the walls (frescoes). The most famous of the frescoes is the Last Judgment:


This one depicts the second coming of Christ and the final judgment of humanity to either heaven or damnation to hell (Unlike the ceiling painting, this one is very detailed as it is on the wall and thus closer to the viewer’s eye). Our guide told us that Mary (woman at top center, next to Christ, in blue dress) has her eyes closed and looking away to signify that as the mother of all humanity, she cannot bear to see any of her children being sent to hell.

 

There were many such nuggets about each of the paintings, some which I didn’t register, others which our guide couldn’t possibly cover.

 

One session is nowhere near enough to appreciate the Sistine Chapel…

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