LIFE: THE SISTINE CHAPEL

ROME, Italy - It’s not an exaggeration to say that a visit to the Sistine Chapel is a moving experience. Of all the museums at the Vatican, it is the most popular. About 25,000 people a day, five million people a year, visit the Chapel.

Entrance to the Sistine Chapel

First time visitors may be a little surprised by its size. It’s comparatively small, but when you look up for your first glimpse of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, all thoughts of size are forgotten.

At first, all you see is a jumble of color, after all the famous ceiling is 60 feet above your head. But then, after a second or two, the images start to come into focus. What you are looking at is 1,200 square feet of more than 300 individual figures, and over 150 separate pictorial works that come together to tell a story.

 Michelangelo

The chapel was originally called the Cappella Magna, and was renamed Cappella Sistina in 1480 after Pope Sixtus IV had it restored. In 1482, the Pope called together a team of Renaissance painters, including Sandro Botticelli, to create a series of frescos showing the Life of Moses and the Life of Christ. Above the frescoes they painted a set of papal portraits, and the ceiling was painted a brilliant blue, with a sprinkling of yellow stars.

Twenty-four years later, when there was a new pope, Julius lI, the ceiling cracked. Julius had it repaired, but then he decided to have it repainted, and he chose Michelangelo for the job. The Pope wanted to do away with the blue ceiling with yellow stars, and decorate it with the figures of the 12 apostles. In the middle section he wanted a design. He didn’t know what that design would be, however, he was sure he would figure it out by the time Michelangelo finished working on the apostles.

Portion of Sistine Chapel Ceiling

Michelangelo was furious. He was furious at being summoned, furious because he was a sculptor, not a painter and furious with the Pope’s suggestion to paint 12 apostles. It was a pathetic choice, he said, dull, ordinary and above all unworthy of the space.

In the end he knew he couldn’t turn down God’s representative on earth, after all it was the Pope’s private chapel, but he could insist on deciding what he would paint. He chose the Old Testament as his theme, and divided the space into sections. He planned to begin with three panels on the Creation.

 God Creating the Sun and the Moon

This was a risky choice because it meant painting the figure of God. No one had ever dared to paint God before, He had always been shown as a hand reaching through the clouds. As God has neither form or gender nor age, it was impossible to imagine how the artist was going to do this. It is also impossible to know how the he decided on the image of God, but it was Michelangelo who decided that God would have a muscular figure, long white hair and a white beard.

The artist knew he couldn’t show six full days of the Creation in three images, so he decided it was better to show the great events and leave the part about the fish, birds and animals to the viewer’s imagination. As he had to paint the story backwards, he began with God bringing order out of chaos, separating light from darkness

God Reaching Out to Adam

In the last image, he shows the first stages of creation: God separating the seas from the earth, and land from the sky, preparing the world for its final purpose, the creation of man. As God reaches out one life-giving finger to Adam, who is still half asleep, slowly lifts one drooping finger. It is enough. He will soon become fully alive both in mind and spirit.

It had taken Michelangelo four years to complete the ceiling and he thought his work was finished. But in 1535, a full 25 years later, much to his surprise, a new Pope, Pope Clement VII summoned him to return to the Sistine Chapel. He couldn’t imagine why.

The Prophet Jeremiah

Michelangelo was sixty years old, suffering with arthritis and not anxious to spend his last years clinging to a scaffold 50 feet in the air. The story that he had painted the ceiling of the Chapel lying down was simply a myth, but there was no denying the fact that it had been hard work. It turned out what the Pope wanted was for him to paint the Resurrection above the altar of the Chapel.

The trouble was that there already were frescoes behind the altar, and Michelangelo did not want to disturb them. He tried to negotiate his way out of the project, but history repeated itself as it often does, and in the end he gave in. As before, he did insist that the Pope agree to let him paint what he wanted in that space, and he wanted the Last Judgment.

The Last Judgment

It took five and a half years to complete the Last Judgment, but when a tired, and work weary Michelangelo stepped away for the last time, what he saw is what we see today, a Sistine Chapel transformed, a masterpiece that will live forever.

Copyright © 2016, Phyllis Macchioni

Photos: Holy See Press Office

LIFE: The Vatican's: Raphael Stanzas

SARONNO, Italy - There are four rooms known as the Stanze of Raphael that form the public part of the Papal apartment at the Palace of the Vatican. They were commissioned by a man who was called the ‘Terrible Pope’, and the ‘Warrior Pope’, a man who had little sympathy for his enemies but who also was one of the Renaissance’s most influential patrons of the arts, Pope Julius II.  

Vatican City

When Julius II became Pope in 1503, he fervently wanted to restore Rome to its former glory was singularly blessed in having two of the greatest architects of all time at his disposal. The first, Michelangelo, whom he  put to work on the Sistine Chapel in spite of his furious objections, and the second, a young painter from Urbino, Rafaello Sanzio, known simply as  Raphael, who had no objections to working for the Pope at all.

 Pope Julius II The Terrible

It was Donato Bramante, a famous Italian architect and painter best known for his work on St. Peter's Basilica, who told Julius about Raphael’s genius. He said the young painter was equal in every way to Michelangelo, which piqued the Pope’s interest.  Julius, who genuinely loved art, had inherited a set of rooms that had been beautifully frescoed, but unfortunately they bore the imprint of his arch enemy, the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI.  

Pope Julius decided to move to another floor and be free of the Borgia influences. With Michelangelo totally immersed in the Sistine Chapel, the Pope turned to the young Raphael, realizing that with the talented young painter he had a real opportunity to make his own mark on the Vatican and possibly eclipse  the fame of the Borgia. The pope offered Raphael the opportunity to fresco his newly chosen private apartment never imagining that his painter would become far more famous than he.

Detail of the Disputa

 The first room in the papal apartments to be decorated by Raphael was the study in which the "Signatura Gratiae" tribunal was originally located (Stanza della Segnatura). Each wall is decorated with an allegorical painting of one of the four elements that make up the universe: air, water, fire and earth.  The first, started sometime in 1508, is the Disputa, or Disputation of the Holy Sacrament, an Adoration of the Sacrament. Then, toward the end of 1509, Raphael began work on the second fresco, the School of Athen, which represents the truth acquired through reason. One year later he began the third composition which represents Parnassus, the dwelling place of Apollo and the Muses and, according to classical myth, the birthplace of poetry, while the two scenes  on the fourth wall  contain the Cardinal Virtues. 

 Expulsion of Heliodorus

The room  known as the Stanza d'Eliodoro, was painted sometime around 1511, after Raphael had seen the first half of the Sistine Chapel. This is a political work, reflecting Julius' obsessive hatred of the French and his determination to drive them out of Italy. Julius appears in person at the left, a majestic figure, while his enemies ore destroyed by heavenly intervention.   

In The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, Raphael illustrated the biblical episode from II Maccabees (3:21-28), the story of Heliodorus who was sent to seize the treasure kept in the Temple of Jerusalem but was stopped when the prayers of the temple priest were answered by angels who flogged the intruder and chased him from the temple.

The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila illustrating the legendary encounter between the Pope and Hun conqueror, and the Deliverance of Saint Peter, showing how Saint Peter was liberated from prison by an angel, and symbolizes the power of the Vicar of Christ to escape human restraints  are shown on the other two walls.

Vision of the Cross

The fresco of The Vision of the Cross in the Sala di Constantino tells the legendary story of a great cross appearing to Constantine as he marched to confront his pagan rival Maxentius, son of the Roman Emperor Maximian and his wife Eutropia. 

The other frescoes in the Sala are The Donation of Constantine, inspired by the famous forged documents that granted the Popes sovereignty over their territorial dominions, and The Baptism of Constantine, which was not painted by Raphael but by Gianfrancesco Penni, and shows the emperor on his deathbed.

Fire in the Borgo

The Stanza of the Fire in the Borgo was named for an event documented in the Liber Ponticalis regarding a fire that broke out in a Borgo near the Vatican in 847. The fire was contained by Pope Leo IV when he made the sign of the cross and the raging fire was extinguished. This room was orignially prepared as a music room for Julius' successor, Leo X which is why the frescos depict events from the lives of Popes Leo III and Leo IV.

The other paintings in the room are The Oath of Leo III, an oath of purgation which he took on December 23, 800 AD, in connection with charges brought against him by the nephews of his predecessor Pope Hadrian I, The Coronation of Charlemagne by Leo III, showing Charlemagne being crowned Imperator Romanorum (Roman Emperor) on Christmas Day in the year 800, and The Battle of Ostia, celebrating the naval victory of Leo IV over the Saracens at Ostia in 849.

While this is only the most superficial of explanations for these wondrous works of art, I hope that in some small way they tweak your interest to explore their stories and other treasures found not only at the Vatican, but throughout Italy.