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Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel During the Renaissance period, there were many great artistic achievements that were simply incredible. Leonardo da Vinci s Mona Lisa, Masaccio s Trinity, and Botticelli s Primavera are just examples of the exquisite works of art from that period. Michelangelo Buonarroti was one of the most famous personalities from that era. He was a true Renaissance man where he was a jack of all trades. He was an accomplished artist, sculptor, architect, and poet who demonstrated his great skill with the creation of many astounding works. He is remembered today as the man who had sculpted the David and the Pieta, which are two of the most stunning sculptures to come out of the Renaissance period.
He is probably most remembered for painting the ceiling at the Sistine Chapel in Rome. It has been called by many the most incredible achievement in the Western World and I feel that it was his greatest accomplishment. It was an endeavor that stretched from the years 1508 to 1512 with many extenuating circumstances that makes it s existence even more awe-inspiring. Pope Sixtus IV, of the della River family, is known throughout history as a great scholar who spurred humanistic and religious learning during his reign.
One of his greatest achievements was the decision to build a new papal Chapel that was as strong as a fortress. It was named the Sistine Chapel and it became the capital of Western Christendom. It was damaged in 1504 when a collapse in its structure caused a large crack to appear in the ceiling. Pope Julius II, Sixtus nephew, who succeeded him in 1503 had decided that the most important Chapel in Christendom must be renovated and the existing ceiling, a blue one decorated with a galaxy of silver stars, must be replaced. Julius II decided that Michelangelo would be the one that would repaint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A letter dated May 10, 1506 was the first evidence that Michelangelo was considered for the job.
By this time, Julius had basically decided that Michelangelo would repaint the ceiling. Bramante, Julius chief architect, discouraged the idea that Michelangelo be considered for the job. He questioned Michelangelo s lack of experience with painting figures and designing them in foreshortening, which he felt was essential for ceiling decoration. He also questioned whether Michelangelo had the courage to take on such a huge task.
It has been suggested that Bramante wanted Raphael of Urbino who was a fellow townsman of Bramante to paint the ceiling, but commitments in Florence prevented him from being seriously considered. After Michelangelo had received this letter and gotten word of Bramante s negative statements of his abilities and character, he dropped an important fresco commitment in Florence and took on the task of repainting the famed Sistine Chapel. This may have been the start of the Bramante-Michelangelo feud or rivalry that had spanned many years afterwards. Michelangelo worked on the ceiling from July of 1508 to October 31, 1512.
He had hired five assistants to aid him in painting process. All in all, Michelangelo had painted three hundred and thirty-six assorted figures on the Sistine ceiling. This was an incredible feat and in the present, three hundred thirty-five and one-half of these figures still remain. Michelangelo had proved Bramante to be wrong and turned the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to one of the greatest artistic feats of the Renaissance or any period in time. The paintings on the ceiling are done in fresco which is an incredibly difficult and daunting process.
It has been described by many artists to be the most macho and manly form of the great painting methods where only the most confident and talented artists could excel. In a way, the fresco method of painting is similar to the lore of Michelangelo, almost mythical and larger than life. The method of fresco painting is somewhat simplistic, but incredibly difficult to master. An area of wet plaster is laid down on a specifically prepared ground, and then the artists paints on it. The colors of the pigments applied to the plaster fuse together while it dries. The result is a beautiful union of colors and plaster that cannot be matched by any other method of painting.
Oil paints on canvas do bring out an inner glow, but it pails to the majestic quality of fresco. Each area of the plaster that is to be painted is called a giornale, a day s work. The problems of fresco painting are somewhat obvious. The time that the artist has to apply the paint is very limited and it usually means that the artist has only one attempt to successfully accomplish their objective before the plaster dries. The artist s first brushstroke is incredibly important because of this major time constraint. The penalty of not doing so means that the giornale must be destroyed and the whole process must be repeated all over again.
This happened to Michelangelo and he had to destroy one of Christ s ancestors in the Achim and Elite lunette. Fresco is obviously not suited for the faint hearted. The advantages of fresco must be seen first hand to truly understand its beauty. Michelangelo was a master of fresco painting because of the skill and efficiency of his technique. When the ceiling is analyzed, it is obvious that Michelangelo was incredibly efficient with his limited brushstrokes. For example, the famous reclining Adam took only four giornale while The God who made him only took three.
It was obvious that Michelangelo worked with great speed which is probably the most impressive aspect of the ceiling. One of the reasons that Michelangelo was able to paint so quickly was a result of things that he didn t paint such as the fact that he left the white of Adam s eye unpainted in order for the white color of the plaster to give it life. The famous little penis of Adam consisted of only two brushstrokes and must have taken him no more than a couple of seconds to complete. It only took Michelangelo a couple of seconds to paint something that has been and will continue to be admired by the whole world. That idea is just so unbelievable to comprehend.
The ceiling of the Chapel was painted in two parts. The first part of the ceiling took Michelangelo about three years to complete. By the end of August, 1510 the first half of the ceiling was finished and the second half took about fourteen months. This is quite a difference in time and a very interesting situation.
It seems that Michelangelo was able to finally view his masterpiece in the proper conditions after the first half of it was finished and have a better idea of how to make it better. He could see how the figures looked in the proper lighting and from the distance that other people would view the ceiling. It is here at this point that a radical change of style can be seen in the ceiling. One change is the discontinuation of the use of gold in the paintings. In the first half of the ceiling, Michelangelo used gold in many of the paintings. In the second half, no more gold was used at all and this can be seen between the Creation of Eve and the Creation of Adam.
The other obvious change was the time it took to paint the second half. It took him about half the entire time that it did for him to finish the first half. Michelangelo described his plans for the start of the paintings in a letter. He was to paint the whole ceiling which included the lunettes above the window arches and the vaulted triangles which connected the lunettes with the vault. This basically meant that there was no area of the ceiling of the Chapel that was to be uncovered with paint. Michelangelo did a lot of research into physical anatomy for his paintings in the Chapel.
There are various sketches around the world where it shows how Michelangelo did rough sketches of body parts or facial expressions that were later included in the ceiling. He did not just create these paintings with a free hand, he had a grand scheme for everything. Many factors were taken into account, most importantly the physical structure of the ceiling. It was not a flat surface, so preparations and planning must have been made in order for the figures to be correctly expressed His final decorative system included two types of figures in the paintings.
The first, put, served only a decorative function while the other, those on the thrones and those in the histories (the lunettes above the window arches and the vaulted triangles which connect these lunettes with the vault of the ceiling) which represented a theological programme. The latter contained two series of frescoes which detailed the events in the life of Moses on the left side and the events in the life of Christ on the other side. Theologically, these are two of the three main ages of history: the sub lege age and the sub great period. The sub lege being the period under which the Law was given to Moses by God and the sub great period which was the state of Divine Grace, the age since the establishment of Christianity. All the paintings on the ceiling were all connected to the Bible.
The idea of Salvation underlies the whole ceiling. The series of histories from Genesis represent the first age, the period called ante level, which refers to the time before the Law. This series included nine paintings which then consisted of three trilogies: the History of the Creation of the World, the History of Adam, and the History of Noah, the second Adam. The pictures in the lower spheres account the history of Man under the Law of God. On the thrones were the Prophets and Sibyls, who God chose to foresee and announce Salvation. The Ancestors of Jesus Christ were painted in the triangles of the lunettes which included the generations from Abraham to Joseph.
They were painted in the same order that was detailed in the Genealogy of Christ in Saint Matthew s Gospel. They were all connected with the Virgin Mary who the Sistine Chapel was actually dedicated to. In the last areas of the ceiling, the concave triangles in the corners, were the four miraculous salvation's of the Chosen People from great perils. These were the stories of David, Judith, Haman, and the Brazen Serpent which are all symbols of the promised Salvation. All of these paintings infer this religious idea of Salvation. This was basically the scheme of Michelangelo in his desire to decorate the ceiling. (Please see the layout of paintings of the ceiling) The histories that Michelangelo depicted on the ceiling were chosen for their relevant moral values.
The Sistine cycles depicted the stories of Moses and Christ and they were portrayed in a traditional medieval fashion so that they provided a concordance between the Old and New Testaments. This idea of Salvation was the key similarity between the two Testaments and it was what brought them together. These histories were called quattrocento picture qua omnia veterans nov ique Testaments mystery representantes which meant pictures which represent all the sacraments of the Old and New Testaments. These pictures were painted in the modern style of that era, but they were related to a more traditional system used in medieval times. The Old Testament scenes were placed on the north wall which was cold and dark if viewed inside the chapel.
This was a result of the fact that the Chapel was not oriented which meant that the altar wall faced west instead of facing east as it is the case with most chapels. The Old Testament scenes were placed liturgical north, which is the left side of the altar when one is facing it. This arrangement had the effect of having the light come from the south to illuminate the wall with the New Testament scenes opposite. So during the day, the sequence of paintings highlighted by the light went from the altar wall towards the entrance. It is obvious from the decoration scheme that Michelangelo stressed the concordance between the two Testaments of the Bible in the imagery of the histories of Pope Sixtus decoration. This is an understandable event due to the fact that Pope Sixtus preached religious and humanistic learning during his reign.
The fact remained that the Old Testament aspect of revelation was being emphasized more in the Chapel by Michelangelo and the way in which he designed it. This is a strong tie to Michelangelo s inspiration from the classical world. Much of the Sistine cycles were based on medieval ideas, but the way in which Michelangelo designed the ceiling was very different from any other preceding design. It presented a new sense of nature and the supernatural, of image-form and vision. The ceiling gave a sense of a totality of many diverse, but interconnected images, motifs, and shapes. It provides a sense of unity rather than an interchange between the Old and New Testaments that were on opposite sides of the Chapel.
When one enters the Sistine Chapel, the paintings on the ceiling do not follow a chronological order. Actually, the first image that comes to the eye is The Drunkenness of Noah which is last image of the sequence. The last composition that is seen is The Separation of Light and Dark which is the first image in the sequence of the Genesis. So what one sees is the reverse order of chronological events which eliminates the sense of time and focuses more on the context of ideas presented. This system gives the viewer a step by step account of a literary epic (the Bible), but does it in a way so that the person gets a sense of the motifs and messages in a unified whole. Time is not a factor so there is no end and no beginning, the viewer is just allowed to concentrate on the content of the paintings.
The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel took Michelangelo four years to complete. That just seems like too short a period of time for him to accomplish such a huge and remarkable feat. It is even more incredible if other factors are considered, such as the interruptions and delays that plagued the painting of the ceiling: the fresco method of painting which requires much patience and planning, accidents and their repair, illness of painters, the absence of the Pope from Rome such as in the fall of 1510, and Michelangelo stopping work in order to get the payment from his patron in February of 1511. Within the ceiling, there are subplots that can be seen. The first three Genesis histories seem to form a cohesive unit and there is a change of style starting at The Temptation of Eve and The Creation of Eve in the scale and color of the figures. This work of art was a collection of many different factors that lead to its creation.
The choosing of the artist to paint the ceiling was a major task to begin with. Bramante s discouraging remarks to Julius II actually aided the process of Michelangelo accepting the commission. The type of painting decided upon by Michelangelo was another important factor. The durability and almost mystical nature of fresco painting is very much a part of the essence of the ceiling. The efficiency of Michelangelo s painting technique is yet another factor. The whole basis for the content of the paintings and the system in which they would be arranged is a whole story in itself.
It is obvious though that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is one of the greatest works in the history of art. I feel that it is Michelangelo Buonarotti s greatest achievement considering that he also sculpted the Pieta and the David. I have seen the Chapel in person and it is an incredible sight to behold. In my opinion, it is the greatest artistic accomplishment in the Renaissance era and it is also a testament to the greatness of it s creator, Michelangelo.
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