Scaffolding Down! Pope Says Mass Under Michelangelo's Ceiling; Painter Asked to Finally Come Down
Rome looked up this morning, and Rome has not yet looked back down. On this Feast of All Saints, Pope Julius II celebrated Mass in the papal chapel beneath the newly finished ceiling painted by Michelangelo Buonarroti, ending four years in which the chapel's most-used furniture was a scaffold.
The commission, signed on May 8, 1508, originally called for twelve apostles and some tasteful decoration. Michelangelo reportedly called that plan "a poor thing" and proposed something more ambitious, which in Michelangelo's case means the entire Book of Genesis plus supporting cast.
Down the center of the vault run nine scenes from Genesis, from the separation of light and darkness to the story of Noah. Around them sit seven prophets and five sibyls on enormous thrones, attended by muscular youths holding medallions. Witnesses report the overall effect as "astonishing," "crowded," and "a great deal of anatomy for a chapel."
The painter, by long tradition a sculptor who repeatedly insisted he was not a painter, finished the first half of the vault by August 1510 and pressed on toward the altar. The relationship between artist and patron has been, sources say, energetic. Accounts circulating in the city claim His Holiness asked more than once when the work would be done, and that the answer was always some version of "when it is finished." Today, it is finished.
The old ceiling, a blue sky dotted with gold stars, had been damaged when a crack opened across the vault in 1504. Few are mourning it. One cardinal, asked whether he missed the stars, gestured upward at the Creation of Adam and asked if this reporter was serious.
Michelangelo was not available for comment. He is believed to be resting, facing up, out of habit.
Frankly, I Preferred the Stars
For four years I have swept plaster off these pews every evening. For four years I have conducted the sacred liturgy around a wooden tower and a Florentine who shouts at it. Now the tower is gone and I am told to look up.
I have looked up. It is magnificent. Every figure is alive. I fear, however, that no visitor will ever again look at anything else in this room, including the floor, which I mopped, and which nobody will ever paint.
Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo in 1508 (contract signed May 8) to repaint the Sistine Chapel vault, originally with just the twelve apostles. Michelangelo instead painted nine Genesis scenes, seven prophets, five sibyls, the Ancestors of Christ and the ignudi, finishing by October 31, 1512. Julius II celebrated Mass beneath the completed ceiling on All Saints' Day, November 1, 1512. The popular image of Michelangelo painting lying on his back is a myth; he worked standing on a scaffold he designed, head tilted back.