Original subtitles

Good afternoon. In our last lecture, we blithely skipped right past the Sistine Chapel in order to

finish up the deterioration, as it were, of the plans for the tomb of Julius II, and now it is

time to go back to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and discuss it in today's talk. You have

a view of the Sistine to look at while I give you a bit of the description of it and a little

background. In 158, the Sistine Chapel, which is the Papal Chapel, the private Papal Chapel, on the

north side, the north flank of St. Peter's, parallel to it, parallel to the church, still featured the

decoration of 1481-82, which we've had occasion to mention before, a belt of frescoes just below

the windows, painted by five artists, including Perugino, Botticelli, Cosimo Rosselli, Piero di Cosimo,

and Ghirlandaio, and at a slightly later date, joined by Luca Signorelli. We've seen two of these works.

The vault did not look as it does today, of course. The vault in 158 was still painted with the 1482

decoration. It was painted blue and decorated with gold stars, a blue and gold heaven, a starry heaven,

by an artist named Pier Matteo D'Amelia. What you see as you look at this, and I do want you to take

a good look at it, the long image. We are standing at the east end of the chapel, looking toward the west.

This chapel, like the Basilica of St. Peter's, is oriented, is occidented, you might say. It's turned

to bound. The east end would normally be the apse. Instead, it's the west end for some complicated

reasons, but in any event, we are looking toward the west, and the 1481 two frescoes originally went

all the way around, including on the altar wall and the wall behind us in this photograph. The windows

are directly above them, and of course, the Sistine ceiling by Michelangelo starts above the windows in

these areas of spandrels, and moves on up into the cove of the ceiling, and continues the full

length of the chapel. In addition, and something we will see much later in the course, is the later

last judgment painted on the altar wall by the very old Michelangelo himself.

On the floor level, a little way down, you have a screen, and this is important. It is a screen that

divides the chapel between, if you will, the area that the laity could be in, and that's where we're

standing in this photograph. Everything on this side of it was permitted for those laypersons who were

allowed to enter the chapel for whatever reason. Everything beyond it was reserved for the clergy and

the papal throne is far down at the end on the left-hand side on a little dais here with its back to the

wall on the left, which is to say the south wall. The altar, of course, at the very end. Just remember

this screen and its relationship to the chapel. We'll be referring to it when we talk about the ceiling above it.

On May 10th, 158,

obeying the orders of Pope Julius II,

Michelangelo finally began to fresco the ceiling with Old Testament scenes from the creation to the flood.

The artist is said to have protested. He did protest, but he is said to have protested first

he was a sculptor, not a painter. And second, that he wouldn't be able to continue work on the papal tomb,

which we discussed in the last lecture, and which indeed he was not able to continue on for more

than four years. The pope insisted, and Michelangelo obeyed, visualizing a program

that must have been worked out by a Vatican theologian. It was not put in Michelangelo's hands to decide what

program on the ceiling. But it is in keeping with what we know of the artist's own intellectual and

spiritual bent and capacity. This was somebody who would have understood fully the implications of the

ceiling. I think that's very important to insist on. In this lecture, we will focus equally on the narrative

and symbolic subjects, and their theological thrust, and on the unparalleled formal inventiveness that

Michelangelo brought to the Herculean task of designing and painting, in great part single-handedly,

more than 5,700 square feet of ceiling surface in four years, between 158 and 1512. It is the story

of the most famous painted ensemble in European art. Michelangelo, as I said, considered himself a

sculptor, not a painter. And indeed, although he had apprenticed briefly to one of the busiest fresco

painters in Florence, Domenico Ghirlandaio, he had never completed a fresco of his own.

When Julius II ordered him to set aside work on the project for the pope's tomb,

although the marble had already arrived in Rome and was just waiting to be carved,

and to prepare instead to paint the vault of the Sistine Chapel, the artist was incensed and probably,

and probably very concerned about the difficulties he faced in an unfamiliar medium. Michelangelo

designed an entirely new and very efficient system of scaffolding, which allowed the chapel to continue

in use while the campaign, the very long campaign of decoration, was in progress. This was necessary.

You couldn't build scaffolding from the floor up, and he designed his own scaffolding.

Although popular legend, especially in the movies, has Michelangelo working all alone on the scaffolding,

lying on his back and somehow managing all the plastering and painting by himself, he was,

in fact, assisted by a team of Florentine artists experienced in fresco and hired by him.

There was sufficient space for the artist to stand up, although plenty of opportunity for aching neck

and back as well. As the project progressed, and as Michelangelo gained experience and confidence in

the medium, his speed increased, and his reliance on his assistance decreased. Nonetheless, the physical

preparation of the surface of the ceiling was a workshop effort. The team began by removing the old

layer of plaster frescoed with the gold stars on a blue ground that had been there for 30 years,

and then they, of course, had to proceed by preparing the plaster surface for the new painting.

It was a tremendous amount of work. Just imagine you not only remove all that plaster from the old plaster

from the ceiling, you then have to cart it out of the Sistine Chapel as well.

I'm giving you a direct view of the ceiling, straight up on it, so that you can read it. The bottom is the

altar end, the west end, the top, the door into the chapel, the main door.

In brief, the design that Michelangelo developed is as follows. The central spine of the ceiling,

as eventually painted by him, consisted of nine narrative scenes from Genesis, chronologically

beginning at the bottom here, the west, with the separation of light from darkness, right here,

which is above the altar, and concluding at the far end with the drunkenness of Noah at the entrance end

of the chapel. Three general subjects comprise the nine scenes. The first three are scenes of creation,

God creating actively and in a great hurry. Then there are three scenes of Adam and Eve,

or three scenes from the Garden of Eden. The creation of Adam, the creation of Eve,

and the temptation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Finally, we have the third group, a destruction and salvation, and a second fall from grace. That

sounds a little awkward, but right at this point, we have three scenes from the story of Noah. They're

not in strict sequence, I'll mention that later, but the largest central one is the flood, the deluge,

which the Lord wished on everyone except Noah and his family. Noah, a just and honest man, and 600 years

to prove it, by the way, he was 600 years old at the time, in biblical years. And after the flood,

there was a sacrifice of Noah and his sons to God, and after that is a second fall from grace, in which

Noah, having planted a vineyard, grows grapes, makes wine, drinks too much of it, and falls into a drunken

sleep. It is symbolically a second fall from grace, and we may return to it briefly. These scenes are

designed as if they were easel paintings mounted on the ceiling. That is to say, they're not illusionistic.

They don't suggest that the ceiling opens up to the sky, as in Mantegna's ceiling, which we will be

looking at later at Mantua. They simply look like normal paintings, if I can say it that way, a painting

you might see on the wall or on an easel, which instead are on the ceiling. They're framed, but not by

picture frames, but by the architectural framework that Michelangelo also invented and painted on the

ceiling. All of that framework, all of this, that looks like architecture, is painted. It is his

invention to subdivide the ceiling. It corresponds to the structure of the vault, but it is not actual

architecture. There are four of these nine panels, these scenes we have just looked at from the altar

to the east. There are four large panels and five smaller ones. You see how they alternate, small, large,

small, large, small, large, etc. At the corners of each small scene are male nudes, four male nudes, one at

each corner of each small scene. They are painted as if they were real figures. That is to say, not pictures of

figures, but real figures. And they're much larger than the figures in the biblical scenes. The scale switches

completely. To state it another way, the scenes are treated as paintings with subjects and the large

nudes as if they were actual human figures. There are, in other words, two levels of reality here, two levels

of painted reality. On the area of the vault that curves down toward the walls, on the sides, and you can

see it clearly, Michelangelo had 26 additional fields to paint. In the ten largest fields flanking the

biblical narratives, he introduced seven Old Testament prophets alternating with five pagan sybils. Here

is one of the sybils, and they alternate on each side and at the end. They are also painted as if they

were real figures, three-dimensional figures. They are the largest figures on the ceiling, larger again than

the prophets and larger again than the nudes, nude figures. In the spandrels and lunettes above the

windows. He painted the ancestors of Christ, a subject which had been painted before, but never in this

one after another in a whole series of frescoes manner. He painted them in a very unusual fashion.

We won't be dealing with them, but they're along the sides in these pendentive areas and the spandrel,

the area around the window and the spandrel above. Now, pendentive is a curved triangular

architectural shape. It is as if you cut a triangle out of the skin of an orange and you have a curved

triangle. That's a pendentive shape. And those at the four corners are painted with four narrative

scenes from the Old Testament, all of which were interpreted as prefiguring Christian salvation.

There are, in addition, many decorative figures, cherubs and the like, which brings the total number of

figures on the Sistine ceiling to around 300. Michelangelo began painting near the east or

entrance end of the chapel and proceeded toward the altar. In other words, he painted in the opposite

way of the narrative sequence. He's painting against the narrative sequence. This, however, is also the

sequence in which the narrative scenes are oriented, that is, right side up. When you walk back from the

altar to the door, you see them upside down. So they are meant to be seen in the procession from the door

toward the altar, which is the reverse of the narrative progression found in Genesis. This will become,

I hope, clearer. Let me show you one of them, The Flood. The Flood, after painting some smaller spandrel

areas, Michelangelo turned to the narrative scenes. And the first scene that he painted of these major

narratives was the flood, which is actually the second scene from the entrance door, as I pointed

out on the ceiling. The two smaller scenes that flank the flood, the sacrifice of Noah and the

drunkenness of Noah, are both shown, they both occur after the flood. But Michelangelo needed the larger

field for this very large landscape and waterscape scene of the flood, and the other two scenes could be

put into smaller areas. Let me describe the flood to you for a moment. It has many figures,

more than any of the other compositions. As you can see, there is a great deal of chaos within it.

Because of the flood, the ark is in the background here, a temple-like structure floating in the

background. There is an island on the right with a kind of tent on it, and people gathered under it

for safety. Some men are carrying older or weaker people on their backs to safety. And here on high ground,

what's left of it to the left, people are trying to, on the left-hand side, people are trying to make it

to safety. There is also a rowboat in the middle, which is about to overturn because too many people

are trying to get into it. It is, there are some quotations here, by the way, from the Battle of

Cascina, which he had been working on in Florence. And you will find, if you look closely at it, certain

figures which have been used from one to the other, a logical thing to do and a saving of time

in this, in this painting. Of all the narratives on the ceiling, the flood contains far the greatest

number of figures. It's the only one with a comprehensive landscape setting. And since its

figures are smaller in scale than others on the ceiling, it is the least legible, the least easily

red from the floor of the chapel. And when the first section of scaffolding was taken down,

Michelangelo recognized the visibility problem and increased the size of his figures in the next

frescoes that he did. You can imagine that he couldn't tell. He was right on top of them and they

were covered by scaffolding. He couldn't tell until the scaffolding was removed how well they would work.

The next scene toward the altar, walking toward the altar, is the sacrifice of Noah. And I want you to

remember that screen in the chapel below, because the sacrifice of Noah is directly above the screen

in the chapel below, which divides the chapel into those two sections which we described before,

the larger one being the sacred area, the smaller one being the the lay area. Now it's it's the scene

immediately after that is the fall of man. It's no accident that the depiction of man's expulsion from

paradise into the world of suffering and sin, of the knowledge of good and evil, takes place above

this division between sacred and secular within the chapel. It's right at that point when he's when

man is thrust out that we pass from the sacred part of the chapel into that where the laity could gather.

This also demonstrates that the chronological progression of the Genesis scenes is not the

theological progression. The theologically significant movement in this ceiling is toward the altar,

toward the miracle of creation, toward a time before sin, away from the earthly labors and sorrows

expressed in the Noah story. The fall of man consists of two parts, the temptation

and the expulsion painted in a single composition. You have a tree in the middle and it divides the two

scenes, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Michelangelo greatly enlarged his figures here. He

simplified his composition. It is eminently readable from the floor. Eden seems rather stark. It's still a

telling contrast to the barren plane into which the first couple is driven on the right. Eden to your left

here. The tree of knowledge divides the scene precisely. It is shared, as it were, by the tempter. You see this

tempter here, a female tempter, I believe, who hands the apple to Eve. And the angel, which comes, as it were,

grows from the other side of the tree in almost a mirror image, the angel, sword in hand, who expels Adam

and Eve from paradise on the right-hand side. Between the flood and the fall of man and flanking the

sacrifice of Noah is one of the immense prophets, Isaiah, who prophesies, a virgin shall conceive and

bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel, Messiah. And this prefigured the birth of Christ. And perhaps

it's Isaiah's perceived connection with the salvation of the New Testament that dictated his placement

between the destruction of sinful mankind in the flood and the salvation of Noah and his family,

to whom the Lord of the Old Testament announced a new covenant of salvation between

God and man, a covenant which followed the sacrifice of Noah to God.

The creation of Adam is so ingrained in the visual memory of Western culture that it is, like most icons,

difficult to see freshly. But one must realize that nothing really like it had ever been seen before.

A learned contemporary who visited the chapel saw only an old man flying through the air.

He didn't recognize him as God and he didn't mention Adam. To us it's the most familiar image of the

creation of man and we might not instantly recognize, we might not instantly recognize some of the earlier

types such as those on Ghiberti's bronze doors. The composition shows two ovoid shapes, an incomplete

one suggesting the curve of the earth on the left with Adam lying upon it, and the other more complete

oval representing a great cloak in which God, amid small angels, floats rather than flies. The famous

point of contact between the two outstretched hands, gods and Adams, placed against the spatial void between

them and understood as the passing of the life force from the creator to his creation, now so pre-focuses our

attention when we look at this image that we see little else. But the greater miracle of the artist's

interpretation here is in the rest of Adam, in the lassitude of his outstretched leg, that long leg, the

whole side of this body from shoulder to leg in one long curve of of lifelessness really, and the equally

passive or inert quality of his right arm, which hardly seems to support the body. Even the left arm has to

be supported by his left knee. His face is essentially expressionless, yet the head is pulled forward

involuntarily, and there is a sense of stirring life of the animation of inert clay in this figure. That's the

miracle. This part from head through this arm becoming alive, and in contrast to the rest of the body.

The innudi, and while you're looking at this, the Italian word for nudes, I-g-n-u-d-i, nudes or innudi on the

Sistine ceiling are famous, and I wanted to show you while we're looking at this the four corner figures. They are at the four corners of all the large,

uh, of all of these, uh, every other figure, every other scene, as we have it here. And I want to show

you a detail of one of them. This is the, uh, the nude that flanks the separation of, uh, that is by the

separation of light from darkness, which we will see later, uh, on one corner there. The famous nudes remain

a mystery in a sense. They were unprecedented in sacred decoration. It's been seen that Michelangelo

turned increasingly to the nude male figure as the expressive core of his art, especially in the

battle of Kishina. On the Sistine ceiling this continued, sometimes with clear justification,

as in the creation of Adam, and sometimes with little, as in the twenty nudes who flanked the small

biblical scenes. These nudes have been called Christian athletes, but they are derived from

the secular sculpture of antiquity. The Laocoon group, which we've seen, contributed to their poses,

but the most important source was the Belvedere Torso, the famous Belvedere Torso, a majestic fragment

by the Hellenistic sculptor Apollonius, which was and is in the Vatican collection. The nude we had been

looking at is obviously related to this view of the Belvedere Torso. Many of the Sistine nudes are

brilliant variations on the Belvedere Torso, with reinvented limbs. He's obviously armless and mostly

legless, and so those could be added, uh, in expressive and inventive ways. They're superbly expressive figures

that he, uh, derived from the torso, and they have had, and still do have, a canonic authority whenever the

human body is considered a principal wellspring of motion and emotion. At such a time, the nudes of

Michelangelo, the annuity of the ceiling, are looked at closely. Now, Michelangelo's presumed homosexuality

is relevant here, of course, but just as relevant is the likelihood that he suppressed all sexual impulses,

and that his known erotic or amorous passions remained platonic, unacted upon except in his poems,

his drawings, his other art. He may well have been abstinent, as many clerics of his day were not.

Above all, we must not make the mistake of considering his nudes as poster boys.

Homosexuality was widespread in the Renaissance, especially so in Florence, but the modern

understanding of homosexuality bears little relation to the Renaissance context, and it should not be

interpreted beyond the obvious, an idealization of the male body. And that idealization connects equally

to the Renaissance sense of the dignity and potential of man, and to the Christian sense of man created in

the image of God. Two of the most memorable of the Sibyls and prophets are the last two at the altar end,

the Libyan Sibyl, which you see, and Jeremiah. The Sibyls were pagan women of antiquity who had the gift of

prophecy. Their prophecies, which were interpreted by the Church as foretelling the coming of Christ,

were recorded in the so-called Sibylline books. In this fresco, the Libyan Sibyl has turned

to replace her great volume on its lectern. The superb turning posture of her body, which seems to

pirouette on her toes, look at the bottom, is one of Michelangelo's most magnificently conceived figures.

She looks not at the book, but downward, toward the altar, as though toward the culmination of her

prophecy, which is in the book that she lays behind her. Opposite her, on the south wall, the lamenting

Jeremiah, is a total contrast to the elegant, dynamic Libyan Sibyl. Facing forward, his massive figure is

heavily draped. He holds no book, and his feet, crossed at the ankles, do not support his body.

Yet he himself is the absolute expression of weight, not physical, but emotional. His entire body droops

under this weight. It is the weight of his sorrow over the destruction of Jerusalem. Quote,

For this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above be black. Let mine eyes run down with tears night

and day and day and let them not cease. Like the Sibyl, Jeremiah looks down, but not at the altar.

He sits above and looks directly down upon the papal throne. The pope, like the prophet, carries the

weight of the world's sorrow alone in this conception. The two scenes from Genesis nearest the altar,

as one approaches, are the creation of the sun and moon, followed by the separation of light from

darkness. The creation of the sun and the moon is the most dynamic tour de force among all the biblical

narratives imagined by Michelangelo. Out of the void, God rushes into the picture in a whirlwind of creation.

With his right hand, he creates the sun, with the same gesture that made Adam. While extending his left hand

behind him, he creates the moon. There's clearly no time to waste, so to the left, he rushes off into space,

still creating since we see plants, earthly vegetation appearing in the lower left-hand corner of the tableau.

This awesome creator, Michelangelo's astonishing invention, is the god that has dominated the western

imagination of the divinity ever since. Above the altar is a mysterious form revolving in a more

constricted space in which light and dark are in flux. Please do not make the mistake, as some literal

minds have, of trying to imagine a model assuming this pose. This is not a studio pose. This is an

idiotated pose. It's an invention of Michelangelo's astonishing imagination. And by the way, it was painted in a single

giornata. You remember one day's work in fresco? One day he created this work. And here we do not see the face of God,

only his spiraling body as he looks upward into the void. And with his outstretched arms begins the separation of light from

darkness. Immediately below this primal mystery, on the curve of the vault, is yet another prophet, Jonah.

It is Jonah, of course, whose allegorical three days in the belly of the whale, the great fish of the Bible,

was understood to refer to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, and therefore the resurrection

of all Christian souls. Here, freed from the belly of hell, you see the fish behind him which has cast him

up. Freed from the belly of hell, Jonah looks straight up in amazement, for above his head, the first moment of

creation is in progress. His astonishment is our astonishment. Below Jonah, and below the creation,

is the papal altar, where the Christian mystery of the mass, the symbolic ritual of the sacrifice of

Christ, is daily enacted. The vertical iconography, this tower of theological significance, is perhaps

the most potent congregation of visual images to have ever summed up the Christian faith. And it's

here in the private papal chapel, at the physical, emotional, and symbolic core of Roman Catholicism.