page_title: Sistine Chapel ceiling
section_title: Method
hierarchical_section_title: Sistine Chapel ceiling / Method
caption_attribution_description: Vatican Museums
context_page_description: The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art. The ceiling is that of the Sistine Chapel, the large papal chapel built within the Vatican between 1477 and 1480 by Pope Sixtus IV, for whom the chapel is named. It was painted at the commission of Pope Julius II. The chapel is the location for papal conclaves and many other important services.
  The ceiling's various painted elements form part of a larger scheme of decoration within the Chapel, which includes the large fresco The Last Judgement on the sanctuary wall, also by Michelangelo, wall paintings by several leading painters of the late 15th century including Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Pietro Perugino, and a set of large tapestries by Raphael, the whole illustrating much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
  Central to the ceiling decoration are nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, of which The Creation of Adam is the best known, having an iconic standing equalled only by Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the hands of God and Adam being reproduced in countless imitations.
context_section_description: Michelangelo probably began working on the plans and cartoons 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 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, on which day Pope Julius held a papal mass in the Chapel and the Pope saw the progress of the work so far for the first time. This was the vigil for Assumption Day on the 15 August, the patronal feast on the Sistine Chapel. 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 take 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 contraction 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 the 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
caption: View of the Chapel's west end from beside the door.
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