Sistine Chapel ceiling

Michelangelo probably began working on the plans and sketches for the design from April 1508.[39] The preparatory work on the ceiling was complete in late July the same year and on 4 February 1510, Francesco Albertini recorded that Michelangelo had "decorated the upper, arched part with very beautiful pictures and gold".[39] The main design was largely finished in August 1510, as Michelangelo's texts suggest.[39] From September 1510 until February, June, or September 1511, Michelangelo did no work on the ceiling on account of a dispute over payments for work done; in August 1510 the pope left Rome for the Papal States' campaign to reconquer Bologna and despite two visits there by Michelangelo, resolution only came months after the pope's return to Rome in June 1511. On 14 August 1511, Julius held a papal mass in the chapel and saw the progress of the work so far for the first time.[39] This was the vigil for Assumption Day on 15 August, the Sistine Chapel's patronal feast.[39] The whole design was revealed to visitors on 31 October 1512 with a formal papal mass the following day, the feast of All Saints.[40] Clerical use of the chapel continued throughout, exempting when the work on the scaffolding necessitated its closure, and disruption to the rites was minimized by beginning the work at the west end, furthest from the liturgical centre around the altar at the east wall.[39] Debate exists on what sequence the parts of the ceiling were painted in and over how the scaffold that allowed the artists to reach the ceiling was arranged. There are two main proposals.

The mark of the scaffolding used for painting the ceiling is evident on the lower right of this lunette

The majority theory is that the ceiling's main frescoes were applied and painted in phases, with the scaffolding each time dismantled and moved to another part of the room, beginning at the chapel's west end.[40] The first phase, including the central life of Noah, was completed in September 1509 and the scaffolding removed; only then were the scenes visible from the floor level.[40] The next phase, in the middle of the chapel, completed the Creation of Eve and the Fall and Expulsion from Paradise. The Cumaean Sibyl and Ezekiel were also painted in this phase.[40] Michelangelo painted the figures at a larger scale than in the previous section; this is attributed to the artist's ability to effectively judge the foreshortening and composition from ground level for the first time.[40] The figures of the third phase, at the east end, were at still grander scale than the second; The Creation of Adam[3] and the other Creation panels were finished at this stage, which took place in 1511.[40] The lunettes above the windows were painted last, using a small movable scaffold.[40] In this scheme, proposed by Johannes Wilde, the vault's first and second registers, above and below the fictive architectural cornice, were painted together in stages as the scaffolding moved eastwards, with a stylistic and chronological break westwards and eastwards of the Creation of Eve.[39] After the central vault the main scaffold was replaced by a smaller contraption that allowed the painting of the lunettes, window vaults, and pendentives.[40] This view supplanted an older view that the central vault formed the first part of the work and was completed before work began on the other parts of Michelangelo's plan.[39]

Another theory is that the scaffolding must have spanned the entire chapel for years at a time.[39] To remove the existing decoration of the ceiling, the entire area had to be accessible for workmen to chisel away the starry-sky fresco before any new work was done.[39] On 10 June 1508, the cardinals complained of the intolerable dust and noise generated by the work; by 27 July 1508, the process was complete and the corner spandrels of the chapel had been converted into the doubled-spandrel triangular pendentives of the finished design.[39] Then the frame of the new designs had to be marked out on the surface when frescoeing began; this too demanded access to the whole ceiling.[39] This thesis is supported by the discovery during the modern restoration of the exact numbers of the giornate employed in the frescoes; if the ceiling was painted in two stages, the first spanning two years and extending to the Creation of Eve and the second lasting just one year, then Michelangelo would have to have painted 270 giornate in the yearlong second phase, compared with 300 painted in the first two years, which is scarcely possible.[39] By contrast, if the ceiling's first register – with the nine scenes on rectangular fields, the medallions, and the ignudi – was painted in the first two years, and in the second phase, Michelangelo painted only their border in the second register with the Prophets and Sibyls, then the giornate finished in each year are divided almost equally.[39] Ulrich Pfisterer, advancing this theory, interprets Albertini's remark on "the upper, arched part with very beautiful pictures and gold" in February 1510 as referring only to the upper part of the vault – the first register with its nine picture fields, its gnudi, and its medallions embellished with gold – and not to the vault as a whole since the fictive architectural attic with its prophets and prophetesses were yet to be started.[39]

The scaffolding needed to protect the chapel's existing wall frescoes and other decorations from falling debris and allow the religious services to continue below, but also to allow in air and some light from the windows below.[39] The chapel's cornice, running around the room below the lunettes at the springing of the window arches themselves, supported the structure's oblique beams, while the carrying beams were set into the wall above the cornice using putlog holes.[39] This open structure supported catwalks and the movable working platform itself, whose likely stepped design followed the contour of the vault. Beneath was a false ceiling that protected the chapel.[39] Though some sunlight would have entered the workspace between the ceiling and the scaffolding, artificial light would have been required for painting, candlelight possibly influencing the appearance of the vivid colors used.[39]

Restoration overseer Fabrizio Mancinelli speculates that Michelangelo may have only installed scaffolding platforms in one half of the room at a time to cut the cost of timber and to allow light to pass through the uncovered windows.[41] The areas of the wall covered by the scaffolding still appear as unpainted areas at the base of the lunettes.[42]

The evidence of the plaster laid for a day's work can be seen around the head and arm of this ignudo.

The entire ceiling is a fresco, which is an ancient method for painting murals that relies upon a chemical reaction between damp lime plaster and water-based pigments to permanently fuse the work into the wall.[43] Michelangelo had been an apprentice in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the most competent and prolific of Florentine fresco painters, at the time that the latter was employed on a fresco cycle at Santa Maria Novella and whose work was represented on the walls of the Sistine Chapel.[44][45] At the outset, the plaster, intonaco, began to grow mildew or mould because it was too wet.[46] When Michelangelo despaired of continuing, the pope sent Giuliano da Sangallo, who explained how to remove the fungus.[47] Because Michelangelo was painting alfresco, the plaster was laid in a new section every day, called a giornata. At the beginning of each session, the edges would be scraped away and a new area laid down.[48]

The work commenced at the end of the building furthest from the altar with the last chronological part of the narrative and progressed towards the altar with the scenes of the Creation.[49] The first three scenes, from The Drunkenness of Noah, contain crowded compositions of smaller figures than other panels, evidently, because Michelangelo misjudged the ceiling's size.[50] Also painted in the early stages was the Slaying of Goliath.[51] After painting the Creation of Eve adjacent to the marble screen which divided the chapel,[lower-alpha 8] Michelangelo paused in his work to move the scaffolding to the other side. After having seen his completed work so far, he returned to work with the Temptation and Fall, followed by the Creation of Adam.[52][53] As the scale of the work got larger, Michelangelo's style became broader; the final narrative scene of God in the act of creation was painted in a single day.[54]

According to Vasari, the ceiling was unveiled before it could be reworked with a secco and gold to give it "a finer appearance" as had been done with the chapel's wall frescoes. Both Michelangelo and Pope Julius II wanted these details to be added, but this never took place, in part because Michelangelo did not want to rebuild the scaffolding; he also argued that "in those days men did not wear gold, and those who are painted ... were holy men who despised wealth."[35] Julius II died only months after the ceiling's completion, in February 1513.[40]

According to Vasari and Condivi, Michelangelo painted in a standing position, not lying on his back, as another biographer, Paolo Giovio, imagined.[55] Vasari wrote: "These frescos were done with the greatest discomfort, for he had to stand there working with his head tilted backwards."[56] Michelangelo may have described his physical discomfort in a poem, accompanied by a sketch in the margin, which was probably addressed to the humanist academician Giovanni di Benedetto da Pistoia, a friend with whom Michelangelo corresponded.[55] Leonard Barkan compared the posture of Michelangelo's marginalia self-portrait to the Roman sculptures of Marsyas Bound in the Uffizi Gallery; Barkan further connects the flayed Marsyas with Michelangelo's purported self-portrait decades later on the flayed skin of St Bartholomew in his Last Judgment but cautions that there is no certainty the sketch represents the process of painting the chapel ceiling.[57] Michelangelo wrote the poem describing the arduous conditions under which he worked. Michelangelo's illustrated poem reads:

Michelangelo's illustration to his poem shows him painting the ceiling.

Jelbert has suggested that the physical pain described in this poem, and the pose of Michelangelo in his illustration for it, resonate with the agonised postures of the Vatican's 'Laocoön Group'.[60] In the illustration, suggests Jelbert, Michelangelo appears to have drawn himself as the dying son on the right-hand side of the group (his arm sheered at the wrist), and the figure he is painting has the raised knees, wild eyes and broken right arm of Laocoön himself. Michelangelo's reference to the 'Laocoön Group' in the 'Brazen Serpent' has been noted above, but the artist also alluded to this sculpture in other areas of the Sistine ceiling, including the 'Punishment of Haman',[61] and a pair of ignudi between the 'Sacrifice of Noah' and the 'Prophet Isiah'.[62]

The overt subject matter of the ceiling is the Christian doctrine of humanity's need for salvation as offered by God through Jesus. It is a visual metaphor of humankind's need for a covenant with God. The Old Covenant of the Children of Israel through Moses and the New Covenant through Christ had already been represented around the walls of the chapel.[65] Some experts, including Benjamin Blech and Vatican art historian Enrico Bruschini, have also noted less overt subject matter, which they describe as being "concealed" and "forbidden."[66]

The main scheme of the ceiling illustrates God creating the perfect world prior to creating humanity, which causes its own fall into disgrace and is punished by being made mortal;[36] humanity then sinks further into sin and disgrace, and is punished by the Great Flood. The ceiling's creation narrative ends with Noah's drunkenness, which Jesuit theologian John W. O'Malley says could be interpreted as focusing on the separation of Gentiles from Jews as the chosen people.[67] Then, through a lineage of ancestors – from Abraham to Joseph – God sends the saviour of humanity, Jesus, whose coming is claimed in the New Testament to have been prophesied by prophets of Israel (to whom Michelangelo adds sibyls of the Classical world) and whose second coming the same artist returned to paint on the altar wall in his Last Judgment. The prophet Jonah, recognizable over the altar by the great fish beside him,[Fig 1] is cited by Jesus in the gospels as being related to his own coming death and resurrection,[68][Src 1] which Staale Sinding-Larsen says "activates the Passion motif".[69] In the Gospel of John, moreover, Jesus compares his being raised (i.e. his crucifixion)[70] to Moses lifting the Brazen Serpent[Src 2] to heal Israelites from fiery serpent bites;[Src 3] the latter is painted on the pendentive above the altar to the left, opposite the Punishment of Haman, depicted as a crucifixion instead of a hanging.[70]

Of the three Twelve Minor Prophets depicted on the ceiling, O'Malley discusses Jonah and Zechariah as carrying a particular significance.[71] In addition to Jonah's connection to Jesus, O'Malley points out that he is a spokesman to the Gentiles.[68] Zechariah prophesied that the Messiah would arrive on a donkey.[Src 4][72] His place in the chapel is directly above the doorway across from the altar, through which the pope is carried in procession on Palm Sunday, the day on which Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem.[73]

Much of the symbolism of the ceiling dates from the early church, but the ceiling also has elements that express the specifically Renaissance thinking that sought to reconcile Christian theology with the philosophy of Renaissance humanism.[74] During the 15th century in Italy, and in Florence in particular, there was a strong interest in Classical literature and the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle and other Classical writers. Michelangelo, as a young man, had spent time at the Platonic Academy established by the Medici family in Florence. He was familiar with early humanist-inspired sculptural works such as Donatello's bronze David and had himself responded by carving the enormous nude marble David, which was placed in the Piazza Della Signoria near the Palazzo Vecchio, the home of Florence's council.[75] The humanist view of spirituality was that it is rooted in human nature and independent from intermediaries such as the Church,[76] which emphasized humanity as essentially sinful and flawed. A synthesis, with man dignified and created in God's image, was epitomized by Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man, which was referenced in sermons given at the papal court.[77]

The iconography of the ceiling has had various interpretations in the past, some elements of which have been contradicted by modern scholarship.[lower-alpha 9] Others, such as the identity of the figures in the lunettes and spandrels poppets, continue to defy interpretation.[80] Modern scholars have sought, as yet unsuccessfully, to determine a written source of the theological program of the ceiling and have questioned whether or not it was entirely devised by Michelangelo, who was both an avid reader of the Bible and is considered to be a genius.[81] Art historian Anthony Bertram argues that the artist expressed his inner turmoil in the work, saying: "The principal opposed forces in this conflict were his passionate admiration for classical beauty and his profound, almost mystical Catholicism, his [presumed] homosexuality, and his horror of carnal sin combined with a lofty Platonic concept of love."[82]

Edgar Wind postulated that the ten medallions represented violations of the Ten Commandments, with the obscured one above the Persian Sibyl standing for adultery. O'Malley points out that, if this is the case, the infractions of the commandments are arranged out of order.[67]

Along the central section of the ceiling, Michelangelo depicted nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, organized into three groups of three related scenes. The scenes alternate between smaller and larger pictures, with the former framed by two pairs of ignudi flanking a medallion.[89] The first group depicts God creating the Heavens and the Earth. The second group shows God creating the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, and their disobedience of God and consequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The third group shows the plight of humanity and in particular the family of Noah.

Separation of Light from Darkness

Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Plants

Separation of Land and Water

The pictures within the three groups link to one another, in the same way as was usual in Mediaeval paintings and stained glass.[lower-alpha 14] The nine scenes are oriented to be viewed while facing the altar, chronologically unfolding towards the chapel entrance[89] (except for the second and third scenes, and the seventh and eighth, which are each transposed).[67][Src 5] John T. Paoletti and Gary M. Radke suggest that this reversed progression symbolises a return to a state of grace.[89] The scenes, from the altar towards the main door, are as follows:

1. The Separation of Light from Darkness
2. The Creation of the Sun, Moon and Plants
3. The Separation of Land and Water
4. The Creation of Adam
5. The Creation of Eve
6. The Fall and Expulsion
7. The Sacrifice of Noah
8. The Great Flood
9. The Drunkenness of Noah

The three creation pictures show scenes from the first chapter of Genesis, which relates that God created the Earth and its inhabitants in six days, resting on the seventh day. In the first scene, the First Day of Creation, God creates light and separates light from darkness.[Fig 2] Chronologically, the next scene takes place in the third panel, in which, on the Second Day, God divides the waters from the heavens.[Fig 3] In the central scene, the largest of the three, there are two representations of God: on the Third Day, God creates the Earth and makes it sprout plants; on the Fourth Day, God puts the Sun and the Moon in place to govern the night and the day, the time and the seasons of the year.[90][Fig 4][lower-alpha 15]

These three scenes, completed in the third stage of painting, are the most broadly conceived, the most broadly painted and the most dynamic of all the pictures. Of the first scene Vasari says, "Michelangelo depicted God dividing the light from the darkness ... where He is seen in all His majesty as He sustains Himself alone with open arms in a demonstration of love and creative energy."[91]

Creation of Adam

Creation of Eve

The Fall and Expulsion from Paradise

For the central section of the ceiling, Michelangelo took four episodes from the story of Adam and Eve as told in the first, second and third chapters of Genesis. In this sequence of three, two of the panels are large and one small.

In the first of the pictures, one of the most widely recognized images in the history of painting, Michelangelo shows God reaching out to touch Adam. Vasari describes Adam as "a figure whose beauty, pose, and contours are of such a quality that he seems newly created by his Supreme and First Creator rather than by the brush and design of a mere mortal."[79] From beneath the sheltering arm of God, Eve looks out somewhat apprehensively.[92] Correspondingly, Adam reaches out to the creator, who Walter Pater states "comes with the forms of things to be, woman and her progeny, in the fold of his garment".[15] Pater wrote of the depiction of Adam in the Creation:[15]

Fair as the young men of the Elgin marbles, the Adam of the Sistine Chapel is unlike them in a total absence of that balance and completeness which express so well the sentiment of a self-contained, independent life. In that languid figure there is something rude and satyr-like, something akin to the rugged hillside on which it lies. His whole form is gathered into an expression of mere expectation and reception; he has hardly strength enough to lift his finger to touch the finger of the creator; yet a touch of the finger-tips will suffice.

The central scene, of God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam[Fig 5] has been taken in its composition directly from another creation sequence, the relief panels that surround the door of the Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna, by Jacopo della Quercia, whose work Michelangelo had studied in his youth.[49][93] In the final panel of this sequence, Michelangelo combines two contrasting scenes into one panel,[Fig 6] that of Adam and Eve taking fruit from the forbidden tree (a fig and not an apple tree as commonly depicted in Western Christian art),[94] Eve trustingly taking it from the hand of the Serpent (depicted as Lilith) and Adam eagerly picking it for himself, as well as their banishment from the Garden of Eden, where they have lived in the company of God, to the world outside where they have to fend for themselves and experience death.[21][Src 7]

Sacrifice of Noah

The Flood

Drunkenness of Noah

As with the first sequence of pictures, the three panels concerning Noah, taken from the sixth to ninth chapters of Genesis are thematic rather than chronological. In the first scene is shown the sacrifice of a sheep.[Fig 7] Both Vasari and Condivi mistake this scene for the sacrifices by Cain and Abel, in which Abel's sacrifice was acceptable to God and Cain's was not.[78][79] What this image almost certainly depicts is the sacrifice made by the family of Noah, after their safe deliverance from the Great Flood which destroyed the rest of humanity.[67]

The central, larger, scene shows the Great Flood.[Fig 8] The Ark in which Noah's family escaped floats at the rear of the picture while the rest of humanity tries frantically to scramble to some point of safety. A lightning bolt, which according to Condivi illustrated God's wrath, was smitten from the ceiling when the chapel was damaged in 1797.[95]

The final scene is the story of Noah's drunkenness.[Fig 9] After the Flood, Noah tills the soil and grows vines. He is shown doing so in the background of the picture. He becomes drunk and inadvertently exposes himself. His youngest son, Ham, brings his two brothers Shem and Japheth to see the sight but they discreetly cover their father with a cloak. Ham is later cursed by Noah and told that the descendants of Ham's son Canaan will serve Shem and Japheth's descendants forever.[Src 8]

Since Michelangelo executed the nine biblical scenes in reverse chronological order, some analyses of the frescoes of the vault commence with the Drunkenness of Noah. Charles de Tolnay's neoplatonic interpretation sees the story of Noah at the beginning and the act of creation by God as the conclusion of the process of deificatio and the return from physical to spiritual being.[96][97]

Detail of The Idol of Baal, showing the linear use of black paint and gold leaf defining forms

Adjacent to the smaller biblical scenes in the first register and supported by the paired ignudi are ten medallions. In four of the five most highly finished, the space is crowded with figures in violent action, similar to Michelangelo's cartoon for the Battle of Cascina. The subjects depicted are somewhat ambiguous,[98] with Vasari merely saying they are taken from the Book of Kings.[99] According to Ulrich Pfisterer, Michelangelo adapted the medallions from woodcut illustrations in the 1490 Malermi Bible, the first Italian-language Bible, named after its translator, Nicolò Malermi.[100] The medallions have been interpreted as depicting:

• Abraham about to sacrifice his son Isaac[99]
• The Destruction of the Statue of Baal
• The worshippers of Baal being brutally slaughtered
• Uriah being beaten to death[Fig 10]
• Nathan the priest condemning King David for murder and adultery
• King David's traitorous son Absalom caught by his hair in a tree while trying to escape and beheaded by David's troops
• Joab sneaking up on Abner to murder him
• Joram being hurled from a chariot onto his head
• Elijah being carried up to Heaven[99]
• A subject which was either obliterated or left incomplete[67][Fig 11]

The Prophet Jonah

The Prophet Isaiah

On the five pendentives along each side and the two at either end, Michelangelo painted the largest figures on the ceiling: twelve people who prophesied a Messiah. These twelve are seven male prophets of Israel and five Sibyls, prophetesses of classical mythology. Jonah is placed above the altar and Zechariah at the opposite end. The other five Prophets and Sibyls alternate down each long side, each being identified by an inscription on a painted marble tablet supported by a putto.[101]

• Jonah (IONAS) – above the altar[Fig 1]
• Jeremiah (HIEREMIAS)[Fig 12]
• Persian Sibyl (PERSICHA)[Fig 13]
• Ezekiel (EZECHIEL)[Fig 14]
• Erythraean Sibyl (ERITHRAEA)[Fig 15]
• Joel (IOEL)[Fig 16]
• Zechariah (ZACHERIAS) – above the main door of the chapel[Fig 17]
• Delphic Sibyl (DELPHICA)[Fig 18]
• Isaiah (ESAIAS)[Fig 19]
• Cumaean Sibyl (CVMAEA)[Fig 20]
• Daniel (DANIEL)[Fig 21]
• Libyan Sibyl (LIBICA)[Fig 22]

Seven prophets of Israel are depicted on the ceiling, including the four so-called major prophets – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel[102] – and three of the Twelve Minor Prophets: Joel, Zechariah, and Jonah.[103] The Book of Joel prophesies the triumph of Judah over its enemies, and includes the words, "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams [and] your young men shall see visions."[104][Src 9] Zechariah was the first Prophet to be painted.[72]

Condivi praises Jonah, including its foreshortening.[105] In Vasari's description of the Prophets and Sibyls he is particularly high in his praise of Isaiah, saying, "anyone who examines this figure will see details taken from Nature herself, the true mother of the art of painting, and will see a figure that with close study can in broad terms teach all the precepts of good painting."[106]

The Libyan Sibyl

The Sibyls were prophetic women who were resident at shrines or temples throughout the Classical world. The papal court generally regarded antiquity as setting the stage for Christianity. For example, the Cumaean Sibyl is quoted by 1st-century BC Roman poet Virgil in his Fourth Eclogue as declaring that "a new progeny of Heaven" would bring about a return of the "Golden Age". Many people during the Renaissance interpreted this as foretelling the birth of Jesus.[107]

There was an increasing interest in the remains of Rome's pagan past within the Catholic Church; scholars had turned from reading Mediaeval ecclesiastical Latin texts to classical Latin and the philosophies of the Classical world were studied along with the writings of St Augustine. Thus, the presence of five pagan prophets in the Sistine Chapel is not surprising.[108]

It is not known why Michelangelo selected the five particular Sibyls that were depicted, given that there were ten possibilities. O'Malley suggests that the four besides the Cumaean Sibyl were selected for a wide geographic coverage, as they come from Africa, Asia, Greece and Ionia.[109]

Vasari says of the Erythraean Sibyl:[Fig 15] "This figure is extraordinarily beautiful owing to the expression of its face, the arrangement of its hair, and the style of its garments, not to mention its bare arms, which are as beautiful as the rest of the body."[106]

Punishment of Haman (east end, left)

The Brazen Serpent (east end, right)

Judith and Holofernes (west end, left)

David and Goliath (west end, right)

In each corner of the chapel is a triangular pendentive filling the space between the walls and the arch of the vault and forming a doubled spandrel above the windows nearest the corners. On these curving shapes Michelangelo has painted four scenes from biblical stories that are associated with the salvation of Israel by four great male and female heroes of the Jews: Moses, Esther, David and Judith.[89] The first two stories were both seen in Mediaeval and Renaissance theology as prefiguring the Crucifixion of Jesus. The other two stories, those of David and Judith, were often linked in Renaissance art, particularly by Florentine artists as they demonstrated the overthrow of tyrants, a popular subject in the Republic.

• The Punishment of Haman – seen to the left when facing east, towards the altar
• The Brazen Serpent – seen to the right when facing east, towards the altar
• Judith and Holofernes – seen to the left when facing west, towards the rear
• David and Goliath – seen to the right when facing west, towards the rear[70]

In the Book of Esther, it is related that Haman, a public servant, plots to get Esther's husband, the king of Persia, to slay all the Jewish people in his land. The king, who is going over his books during a sleepless night, realizes something is amiss. Esther, discovering the plot, denounces Haman, and her husband orders his execution on a scaffold he has built. The king's eunuchs promptly carry this out.[Src 10] Michelangelo shows Haman crucified (instead of hung as in the original story)[70] with Esther looking at him from a doorway and the king giving orders in the background.[Fig 23] The composition shows Haman at the table with Esther, as well as being crucified.[110] Mordechai sits on the steps, linking the scenes.[111]

In the story of the Brazen Serpent, the people of Israel become dissatisfied and grumble at God. As punishment, they receive a plague of venomous snakes. God offers the people relief by instructing Moses to make a snake of brass and set it up on a pole, the sight of which gives miraculous healing.[Src 3] The composition is crowded with figures and separate incidents as the various individuals who have been attacked by snakes struggle and die or turn toward the icon that will save them. This is the most Mannerist of Michelangelo's earlier compositions at the chapel.[110]

Writing in the 19th century, English art critic John Ruskin compares The Brazen Serpent[Fig 24] favourably to the canonical classical statue group Laocoön and His Sons, which Michelangelo saw upon its discovery in 1506.[112][113] Both works are crowded compositions of figures attacked by supernatural reptiles: the "fiery serpents" of the book of Numbers and the sea monsters of Virgil's Aeneid. Ruskin states that he prefers the sublimity expressed by Michelangelo's "gigantic intellect" in "the grandeur of the plague itself, in its multitudinous grasp, and its mystical salvation" and his "awfulness and quietness" to the "meagre lines and contemptible tortures of the Laocoön" and argued that "the grandeur of this treatment results, not merely from choice, but from a greater knowledge and more faithful rendering of truth".[112] Attacking the sculpture's unnaturalistic snakes as "pieces of tape with heads to them" and criticizing the unrealistic struggle, he praises the painting[112]

in the rendering of these circumstances; the binding of the arms to the body, and the knotting of the whole mass of agony together, until we hear the crashing of the bones beneath the grisly sliding of the engine folds. Note also the expression in all the figures of another circumstance, the torpor and cold numbness of the limbs induced by the serpent venom, which, though justifiably over-looked by the sculptor of the Laocoön, as well as by Virgil – in consideration of the rapidity of the death by crushing, adds infinitely to the power of the Florentine's conception.

Judith and Holofernes depicts the episode in the Book of Judith. As Judith loads the enemy's head onto a basket carried by her maid and covers it with a cloth, she looks towards the tent,[110] apparently distracted by the limbs of the decapitated corpse flailing about.[Fig 25] The composition is vertically split, not unlike the Punishment of Haman at the opposite corner of the chapel.

In David and Goliath, the shepherd boy, David, has brought down the towering Goliath with his sling, but the giant is alive and is trying to rise as David forces his head down to chop it off.[110][Fig 26] David and Goliath is a relatively simple composition, with the two protagonists centrally placed and the only other figures being background observers.

The lunette of Jacob and his son Joseph, the husband of Mary. The suspicious old man is thought to be Jacob,[114] but resembles depictions of Joseph.[lower-alpha 16]

Ezekias spandrel

Either side of the chapel has six windows, as well as two closed windows at the rear, and two above the altar which were covered by The Last Judgment. Above each window is an arched shape, referred to as a lunette. Above each of the eight most central side lunettes is a triangular spandrel (topped by symmetrical pairs of bronze nudes);[115] the other six lunettes are below the corner pendentives. These regions link the walls and the ceiling;[116] the figures painted on them are intermediate in size (approximately 2 m tall), between the very large prophets on the ceiling and the much smaller papal portraits which had been painted on either side of each window in the 15th century.[117] Michelangelo chose the ancestors of Christ as the subject of these images,[118] thus juxtaposing Jesus' physical lineage with the popes, his spiritual successors according to the Church.[119]

Centrally placed above each window is a faux marble tablet with a decorative frame. On each is painted the names of the male line by which Jesus, through his earthly father, Joseph, is descended from Abraham, according to the Gospel of Matthew.[Src 11][lower-alpha 17] However, the genealogy is now incomplete, since the two lunettes of the windows in the altar wall were destroyed by Michelangelo when he returned to the chapel in 1537 to paint The Last Judgment.[120] Only engravings, based on a drawing that has since been lost, remain of them.[Fig 27] The sequence of tablets seems somewhat erratic as one plaque has four names, most have three or two, and two plaques have only one. Moreover, the progression moves from one side of the building to the other, but not consistently, and the figures the lunettes contain do not coincide closely with the listed names. These figures vaguely suggest various family relationships; most lunettes contain one or more infants, and many depict a man and a woman, often sitting on opposing sides of the painted plaque that separates them. O'Malley describes them as "simply representative figures, almost ciphers".[118]

The figures in the lunettes appear to be families, but in every case they are families that are divided. The figures in them are physically divided by the name tablet but they are also divided by a range of human emotions that turn them outward or in on themselves and sometimes towards their partner with jealousy, suspicion, rage or simply boredom. In them Michelangelo has portrayed the anger and unhappiness of the human condition, painting, in Andrew Graham-Dixon's words, "the daily round of merely domestic life as if it were a curse".[121] In their constraining niches, Gabriele Bartz and Eberhard König say, the ancestors "sit, squat and wait".[122] Of the 14 lunettes, the two that were probably painted first,[123] the families of Eleazar and Mathan[Fig 28][lower-alpha 18] and of Jacob and his son Joseph, are the most detailed. They become progressively broader towards the altar end, as Michelangelo painted faster and more furiously.[124]

Because of the constraints of the triangular shape, in each spandrel the figures are seated on the ground. Six include groups of figures, mostly adults with a child. Of the two remaining, one shows a woman with shears trimming the neck of a garment she is making while her toddler looks on.[Fig 29] The biblical woman who is recorded as making a new garment for her child is Hannah, the mother of Samuel, whose child went to live in the temple; the male figure in the background is wearing a distinctive hat that might suggest that of a priest.[Src 12] Another female figure sits staring out of the picture.[Fig 30]

Prior to restoration, of all the paintings in the chapel, the lunettes and spandrels were the dirtiest.[125] Added to this, there has always been a problem of poor daytime visibility of the panels nearest the windows because of halination, the effect of bright areas blurring over less bright ones.

An ignudo commonly reproduced by other artists

The ignudi[lower-alpha 19] are the 20 athletic, nude males that Michelangelo painted as supporting figures at each corner of the five smaller creation scenes on the ceiling, each pair enclosing a medallion supported by ribands above the Prophets and Sibyls.[126] The figures hold, are draped with, or lean on items like ribbons, pillows, and large garlands of acorns,[lower-alpha 12] in widely varying postures.[126] Mostly decorative, they provided Michelangelo a prime opportunity to express himself.[115] The poses were copied by other Renaissance artists, including Bartolommeo Bandinelli and the workshop of Raphael (for The Baptism of Constantine).[127]

Some have suggested that the ignudi could represent angels, similar to cherubs.[128][129][lower-alpha 20] O'Malley compares them to sculptures of Atlas or Michelangelo's Slaves from Julius II's tomb.[115] In their reflection of classical antiquity they resonate with Pope Julius's aspirations to lead Italy towards a new 'age of gold'; at the same time, they staked Michelangelo's claim to greatness.[130] Contrarily, a number of critics were angered by their presence and nudity, including Pope Adrian VI.[131]

Unless stated otherwise, sourced from The Holy Bible, King James Version.