Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER
How long did it take to paint the Sistine Chapel?
SHORT ANSWER
Four years and 300 figures later, Michelangelo created a transcendent masterpiece – and he wasn’t done there
LONG ANSWER
Michelangelo, the Italian artist, sculptor and architect, didn’t want the commission of painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, not considering himself up to the task of beautifying such a sacrosanct space. Besides, he was deep into another project. Still, Pope Julius II insisted and Michelangelo, to put it mildly, went above and beyond.
Starting in 1508, it took four years to complete the ceiling. Instead of the original plan of painting the 12 apostles, he filled more than 460 square metres with scenes from Genesis – including the creation of Adam and Eve, and the tales of Noah – and lined these dramatic scenes with prophets, sibyls (ancient Greek oracles) and the ancestors of Christ. In the end, there were more than 300 figures.
While he may have got carried away with the work, which remarkably he made up as he went along, Michelangelo suffered: craning his neck uncomfortably upwards for hours at a time from his specially designed scaffolding. But that didn’t stop the Renaissance master from returning to the Sistine Chapel in his sixties to add The Last Judgment (depicting the second coming of Christ) to the wall behind the altar. That took another five years.
2060 The year that Isaac Newton
