_______ was a sculptor and painter who who created the sistine chapel
Spare a thought for the man who created the Sistine Chapel. BY ANDREW GRAHAM-DIXON. Last updated at 19:36 21 March 2008. As he hears the footsteps on the cold marble floor of the Sistine Chapel, 70ft below the scaffolding on which he was perched, Michelangelo hid himself in the shadows and prepared his attack. For months after he finished, his sight was so impaired he could not read letters or look at drawings, except with his head tilted backwards. While Michelangelo laboured away in the chapel, there was much gossip about the sexuality of the artist, who was in his 30s and unmarried. One observer pointed to one of the first statues he had carved, a life-size incarnation of Bacchus, the ancient god of wine, revelry and mystic orgies. Between 1980 and 1999, experts restored selected artwork in the Sistine Chapel, including Michelangelo’s ceiling and his famed fresco known as “The Last Judgment,” which he created in his later years. I already have a wife who is too much for me; one who keeps me unceasingly struggling on, he told a friend. It is my art, and my works are my children.. Certainly he approached his work in the Sistine Chapel with almost monastic devotion. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was to have a profound effect upon other artists, even before it was completed. Vasari, in his Life of Raphael, tells us that Bramante, who had the keys to the chapel, let Raphael in to examine the paintings in Michelangelo's absence. The impression that Michelangelo painted on his back might come from the 1965 film “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” in which Charlton Heston portrayed the genius behind the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. Sections of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. 1. Michelangelo wanted nothing to do with the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. In 1508, 33-year-old Michelangelo was hard at work on Pope Julius II’s marble tomb, a relatively obscure piece now located in Rome’s San Pietro in Vincoli church. When Julius asked the esteemed artist to switch gears and decorate the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, Michelangelo balked. For one thing, he considered himself a sculptor rather than a painter, and he had no experience whatsoever with frescoes. Originally known as the Cappella Magna, the chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who restored it between 1477 and 1480. Since that time, the chapel has served as a place of both religious and functionary papal activity. Today it is the site of the Papal conclave, the process by which a new pope is selected. The fame of the Sistine Chapel lies mainly in the frescos that decorate the interior, and most particularly the Sistine Chapel ceiling and The Last Judgment by Michelangelo. 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 important services. One of the functions of the Sistine Chapel is as a venue for the election of each successive pope in a conclave of the College of Cardinals. On the occasion of a conclave, a chimney is installed in the roof of the chapel, from which smoke arises as a signal.
Michelangelo