Michelangelo's Burial Painting: The Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel was built within the Vatican between 1477 and 1480, under Pope Sixtus IV reign. Although the original name of the chapel was Cappella Magna, the chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who restored it. The chapel has been used as a place of both religious and official papal activity and has been for centuries. The Sistine Chapel is very famous due to the style of artwork that is shown in the inside. That style is called frescos. Frescos, is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid, or wet lime plaster. Frescos style decorated the interior of the chapel and especially played a part on the ceiling. Under the rule of Pope Julius II, the pope wanted the ceiling of the chapel to be painted. He demanded an
Michelangelo took the four episodes from the story in the book of Genesis, and put them in a sequence of three. The first picture of the three is the upmost famous painting in this chapel, The Creation of Adam. Michelangelo portrayed God as a muscular figure with long white hair; it was the first time God was depicted in such a way. The painting shows Adam and God reaching out towards each other with their hands. This is a symbol that shows that god is putting life into Adam. Where behind god in the painting, there are multiple other humans in a shape that many believe to be the shape of a human brain. Another big part of this picture is that God and Adam are not touching hands yet. Many people tend to thing that it gives the idea that God is reaching to Adam, who has yet to even receive that spark of life. The other two paintings from this first group consits of a scene where God creates Eve from the side of sleeping Adam. The last painting shows the act of Adam and Eve taking fruit from the forbidden tree from the serpent, then their banishment from the Garden of Eden. Other than the nine storys, another big part of the ceiling is the twelve prophetic figures. These twelve figures represent some part of the coming of christ. The figures were the largest ones on the ceilin in the chapel. Michaleangelo personally painted these twelve figures. Of the twelve, seven of them were Prophets of Israel and were male. The other five were Prophets of the classical world, called Sibyls and were female. These figures were painted on the five pendentives and its side. These prohetic figures were bigger than the rest of the paintings and had quite an intense amount of