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Michelangelo: Sistine Chapel

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Michelangelo: Sistine Chapel
Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel The Sistine Chapel is a chapel in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican City. It is one of the most famous and memorable pieces of art in the history of art. This beautiful piece of art history took a little over four years to complete. He started this project in July of 1508 and finished in October of 1512. Pope Julius II had requested Michelangelo paint the ceiling in the chapel. The Pope was strong-minded that Rome should be renovated to show its prior exaltation. He was on a mission to show this by painting the ceiling of the chapel and he wanted the very best painter complete it, which he believed to be Michelangelo. Julius II assumed that if he had the ceiling painted that it would glorify his name and he would become more popular with the people under him. Pope Julius II wanted to make sure that every job he did for the Vatican City was more impressive than Pope Alexander VI, which was Julius’s rival. The ceiling to this day is 131 feet long by 43 feet wide which means that Michelangelo painted roughly 5,000 square feet of the ceiling. There were questions such as why was Michelangelo painting when he was a sculptor and the answer was that the Pope believed he would be the best for the job, even though that Michelangelo had only painted one other painting in his career because he worked mostly with sculptures. The start to this painting was slow simply because Angelo had never painted frescoes before. Angelo had to learn many new techniques for this painting but once he understood what he was doing his pace of painting sped up quite a bit. (Esaak.)
Many questions were asked about the painting and about Michelangelo while the painting was going on and many, many years afterwards. There are still questions going on to this day. One questions asked was why it took four years to paint the ceiling and there were many various reasons as to why this was. There were many setbacks such as mold, which made the painter and some of



Cited: Esaak, Shelley. "Michelangelo - The Sistine Chapel Ceiling." About.com Art History. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. Fields, Douglas R. "Michelangelo Secret Message in the Sistine Chapel: A Juxtaposition of God and the Human Brain | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network." Michelangelo Secret Message in the Sistine Chapel: A Juxtaposition of God and the Human Brain. N.p., 27 May 2010. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. Katz, Jamie. "Smithsonian.com." Smithsonian Magazine. N.p., 10 Apr. 2009. Web. 22 Sept. 2012. "The Last Judgement.Images of a Masterpiece." Last Judgement, Michelangelo 's Sistine Masterpiece. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2012. "The Last Judgment (Michelangelo)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Nov. 2012. Web. 27 Sept. 2012. "Sistine Chapel Ceiling." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Nov. 2012. Web. 26 Sept. 2012.

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