Florentine painting
In 1508 Pope Julius II succeeded in getting the sculptor Michelangelo to agree to continue the decorative scheme of the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel ceiling was constructed in such a way that there were twelve sloping pendentives supporting the vault that formed ideal surfaces on which to paint the Twelve Apostles. Michelangelo, who had yielded to the Pope's demands with little grace, soon devised an entirely different scheme, far more complex both in design and in iconography. The scale of the work, which he executed single handed except for manual assistance, was titanic and took nearly five years to complete.
Bufalini Chapel
The chapel was commissioned by Niccolò dei Bufalini (~1450 - 1506) for his mortuary chapel in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli. Bufalini was a prelate, citizen of Città di Castello, who worked as abbreviator "" and consistorial lawyer in Rome. His family coat of arms (a bull with a flower) appears widely in the chapel. Several important painters, including Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Luca Signorelli, and Pinturicchio, had finished the wall decoration of the Sistine Chapel (1482), and had returned to their hometowns, with the exception of Pinturicchio, who had formed a workshop including some of the collaborators in that work. Pinturicchio, who had been so far outshone by Perugino's fame, could exploit his presence in Rome to obtain the commission of his first great work, the Bufalini Chapel, also favored by the common origin with Riccomanno Bufalini. The painter had already executed at least one work for the latter's family, a "Madonna" now in the Municipal Gallery of Città di Castello (c. 1480).