The Sistine Chapel
When you think of famous buildings you might think of the Sistine Chapel, what most people didn’t know is that it was constructed during the Renaissance Period. Although people have heard of it a lot of you might’ve easily mistaken the name to be the 16th Chapel instead of the Sistine Chapel. This building was made in August 15th, 1483, in the Vatican City in Italy. There were two main guys who constructed this famous structure, Baccio Pontelli and Giovanni de Dolci. These might have been the two people who constructed the building, but most people haven’t even heard of them and can only think of the famous artists who painted the inside of the Chapel.
The building was painted by one of the most well-known artists ever, Michelanglelo, and a couple other people, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pintruicchio and others. This chapel is in the Apostolic Palace, which is the official residence of the Pope in the Vatican City, so they had to make this place special. They asked Michelangelo to paint the inside, he didn’t really want to because in all essence he preferred to sculpt, but he wasn’t going to say no the Pope. So he began one of his most famous works in 1508, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. This wasn’t any small ceiling though; it was 12,000 square feet or 1,100 square meters.
It was the first painting Michelangelo had done since being a student in Ghirlandaio’s workshop. This behemoth task took him (Michelangelo) around whopping 10 years to completely finish. About 4 years for the chapel ceiling, and about 6 years for the other part of the ceiling called The Last Judgment. It was a monster task for anyone, and luckily rose up and completed it. He had some complications along the way, for instance he couldn’t just paint the ceiling from the ground, this wasn’t any normal house ceiling today, so he had to attach wooden platform to the walls so that he could stand on them to be closer to the ceiling. One of the reasons it took so long was because each day he worked on it he had to lay new plaster onto the ceiling in order to be able to paint on it.
Even though Michelangelo gets credit and probably deserves it for doing the Sistine Chapel project, he wasn’t the only who did it, he had many assistants. Michelangelo made the complete design, sketches, cartoons, and performed most of the painting himself. He needed his assistants though, to mix his paints, go up and down ladders, and prepare plaster. Not very often, but sometimes he would trust an assistant enough to let him paint a patch of sky, a bit of landscape, or other small and minor things that would be barely noticeable from down below. The last reason why not many of the assistants could claim any credit for helping make the celling was because Michelangelo was temperamental and fired and hired assistants on a regular basis.
The ceiling depicts a lot of different thing. The center shows scenes from the Book of Genesis, from the Creation, to the Fall, and the last part is after Noah’s flood. Next to each of these scenes on each side are humungous pictures of prophets and sibyls who told of the coming of the Messiah. All together there are more than 300 painted figures on the ceiling. Most of the pictures are 2-D and were painted by the famous artist and sculptor, Michelangelo. Michelangelo painted in all over 5,000 square feet of frescoes (murals or paintings).
Sources:
http://arthistory.about.com/od/famous_paintings/a/sischap_ceiling.htm
http://artsmarts4kids.blogspot.com/2007/09/michelangelos-sistine-chapel-ceiling.html
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