WTI Magazine #77 2016 March 18
Author : Giulia Carletti Translation by:
A long corridor to pass, then a magnificent spectacle. The Sistine Chapel is one of the most iconic buildings in the world, as well as a powerful work of art. The Chapel is 40.23 meters long, 13.40 meters wide, and 20.70 meters high (about 132 by 44 by 68 feet) and includes works by the most famous Renaissance artists, among which Michelangelo, who made it famous throughout the years.
The decoration of the Chapel was not an un-painful project to pursue. Place of quarrels, competitions, commissions, and propaganda, the Sistine Chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere (1471-1484), who restored it between 1477 and 1480, on the site of the old papal chapel. Originally, it was built as a private chapel for a small group of wealthy educated Christian priests, and destined to important ceremonies and it was divided in two by a marble transenna in order to separate the clergy from the faithful.
Even if the Sistine Chapel is inextricably bound to the name of Michelangelo, equally relevant artists frescoed the twelve panels of the chapel, way before Michelangelo was committed to fresco the vault. In 1481, talented and well-known Renaissance painters as Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Cosimo Roselli were committed to create a series of vignette-like frescos depicting the Life of Moses and – on the opposite wall – the Life of Christ: as if Jews' and Christians' histories mirrored each other. In August 1483, a great mass was celebrated and the chapel was consecrated to the Assunta Virgin Mary.
At the beginning, the vault did not look like it does today. Pier Matteo d'Amelia painted a deep-blue and gold-starred sky – in the Byzantine fashion – onto the vaulted ceiling.
In 1503, Pope Julius II (1503-1513) – nephew of Sixtus IV – wanted to renew the decoration of the chapel, aiming at rendering it a universal symbol of Christendom and at making the Vatican eternally relevant again, through beauty and grandeur. Julius II – also known as "the terrible pope" – saw the chapel as a medium to teach the Bible to the analphabet faithful (the so called "Biblia Pauperum" – Bible for the poor), a powerful means of propaganda, which worked effectively with Roman emperors. He sought to bring Rome back to its ancient splendor and grandeur, surpassing the work of the previous popes. To fulfill the task, Julius II could not but choose Italy's most renowned and talented artist of the time: Michelangelo Buonarroti, appointing him to paint the whole surface of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
A sculptor rather than a painter, Michelangelo had just been committed another grandiose project by Julius II himself: the construction of the pope's majestic tomb. The artist had thus to abandon such project, and was then brought to Rome for this new commission, which did not make him very happy. However, Michelangelo, who had no choice but to accept the commission, took it as a challenge.
The initial project was not the beautiful spectacle we confront with while entering the Chapel. Julius II wanted twelve Apostles and geometrical motifs to be painted. Michelangelo convinced him to change his mind, proposing a more grandiose and complex project: a theatrical corpus of stories from the Old Testament. He ended up painting more than 300 figures.
What did Michelangelo really have to come through?
First problem: dimensions. Forty meters long and 13 meters wide, the vault of the chapel measured about 5 thousand square meters! Second: a completely new technique to learn. Michelangelo had to discover fresco as well as all the "secrets" of two-dimensional perspective. Third one: humidity, mildew, and the ceiling's curvature. Contrarily to the common belief, Michelangelo did not lie on this scaffolding while painting, yet he invented a flat wooden platform on brackets built out from holes in the wall. Painting the Sistine vault was such a physically exhausting work that it permanently damaged his eyesight. However, he succeeded majestically.
The ceiling illustrates more than 70 picture units: nine scenes from Genesis, four Old Testament histories in the corners, seven prophets and five sibyls, forty ancestors of Christ, ten medallions depicting Old Testament events, and a large multitude of nude figures (yes, nudes, in one of the most sacred places in the world).
Curious enough is what Dr. Meshberger observed in 1990 in the Creation of Adam (1512-1. One of the most powerful paintings on earth, this fresco section reveals something curious to watchful eyes: the background shapes which God is depicted seems to resemble the human brain. The cerebrum, the brain stem, the pituitary stalk, the frontal lobe, and the basilar artery: it is all in there. Is it a symbol of the divine force as the all-encompassing Ratio? Or is Adam's brain... creating God? That caused a heated discussion among art historians. revealing how art, whether understandable or not, never ceases to amaze us.
If you think, after such a wearing project, the sculpture-turned-painter Michelangelo broke up with painting, you cannot be more wrong (and probably never entered the Sistine Chapel). After 25 years, he was committed by Pope Clement VII to fresco the altar wall of the chapel. At the age of 60, Michelangelo was working again on a huge project. These were the years of the Sack of Rome, of the Council of Trent, and, last but not least, of the discovery of the New World. New geopolitical frontiers were established, and that led Church and its credibility to undergo a period of extreme uncertainty. The original subject proposed by Clement VII was the resurrection, but his successor, Pope Paul III, believed the Last Judgment was a more fitting subject for 1530s Rome. As it often happens in art history, sufferance shaped excellence.
