Today in History
November 01, 1512
The Genius of Michelangelo
Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, begun in 1508, is revealed publicly during an official inauguration mass on this day in 1512. The central panels of the fresco portray several episodes in the Book of Genesis, from the creation of man and earth, to man's fall from grace to his rebirth. When Pope Julius II gives him the commission, Michelangelo is already revered for sculptural masterpieces, including Pietà and David, and he tries in vain to decline the arduous job. Once reconciled to the task, the sculptor designs and produces some of the most magnificent works in visual arts history. He crosses the entire central section of the ceiling with painted arches that divide the space into nine pictorial fields. He organizes the fields into sequences in which a large picture is flanked by two smaller ones, thus adding dramatic emphasis to the main scenes. His paintings, such as God Creating Adam, become some of the most iconographic images in the Western world. But the physical toll the work takes on Michelangelo's body is unavoidable. After enduring four years of torturous positions on his self-designed scaffold while painting the ceiling, the 37-year-old writes that friends would not recognize the old man he has become. Even so, an adage coined by the artist, "Genius is eternal patience," hints at the sacrifice that greatness demands.
November 2009
Today's Feature History Article
The Measure of Genius: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel at 500
Half a millennium later, the story of the painting of the Sistine Chapel is as fascinating as Michelangelo’s masterpiece itself
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