Michelangelo e la Cappella Sistina
Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel
In 1508, Pope Julius II summoned Michelangelo to Rome with an assignment that would have changed the history of art: to fresco the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Sistine.
Michelangelo was primarily of all a sculptor, not a painter, and accepted the work reluctantly reluctantly. But once once he had started, he threw himself into it threw into the endeavour with his entire soul.
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The conditions of work were terrible. Michelangelo painted lying on a scaffold, with the paint that would drip dripped onto his face. Years later he wrote that that position had damaged had ruined his eyesight.
The programme iconographic was enormous: scenes from the Genesis, prophets, sibyls and ancestors of Christ. At the centre of everything, the scene of the Creation of Adam: two fingers that almost touch touch.
Four years after, in 1512, the ceiling was completed. When the chapel was opened to the public, Julius II himself knelt down to pray.
Today about six million of people a year visit the Sistine Chapel Sistine. Many remain in silence, overwhelmed by what that they see.