In 1477, Pope Sixtus IV initiated the construction in the Vatican of a new chapel for the Papal court on the foundations jjf jge-existing structure.

THE SISTINE CHAPEL

In 1477, Pope Sixtus IV initiated the construction in the Vatican of a new chapel for the Papal court on the foundations jjf jge-existing structure.

It is from his name that we know it today as the Sistine Chapel.

Pope Sixtus could not have imagined then that this chapel would eventually become world famous for its fresco cycles visually recounting the history of salvation as recorded in the Bible.

Within an incredibly short time from 1480 until the year of its consecration in 1483 the
greatest artists of the late 15* century frescoed the lateral walls: Perugiho, Botticelli,
Ghirlandaio.

It was however only towards the end of 1541, 58 years later, that the interior of the Sistine Chapel took on the appearance it has today with Michelangelo's frescos on the vaulted ceiling and the altar wall.

Like the mosaic cycles of the ancient basilicas, the Sistine Chapel is a comprehensive example of art at the service of God's word revealed to humanity, a universal expression of Christian faith which translates abstract theological formulas comprehensible only to the learned into a concrete visual form accessible to all.

The artists, who embellished the Sistine Chapel, and in a special way Michelangelo, through their artistic intuition, were both effective interpreters and servants of the saving Word of God that comes from divine revelation.

When in 1480, Perugino, to whom the organization of the Chapel decoration was entrusted, visited the Chapel, it appeared as an enormous empty rectangular space some 50 meters long, 13 meters wide and 20 meters high.

According to one tradition, these are the same measurements as the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and, hence, emphasize the ideal historical continuity between the people of Israel and the new people of God - the Church.

In Perugino's time the Chapel was already divided by the marble screen adorned with delicate reliefs which was the work of Mino of Fiesole.

The lateral wall on the north side illustrates the history of Moses, the prophet sent by God to free the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt.

On the south wall the frescoes recount the story of Christ, the new and definitive prophet of whom Moses was the precursor.

Christ frees humanity from the slavery of sin and leads the redeemed to their final reconciliation with God.

The visible and privileged sign of reconciliation between God and man was realized in the Church particularly in the figure of the Pope, Vicar of Christ on earth as the guardian and guarantee of the truth of revelation.

Moses appears as the leader, legislator and precursor of Christ who in turn confers on Peter, the first Pope and his successors, the same power.

This explains why the figure of Peter emerges jas the most important of the apostles and why Perugino gives such importance to Peter in his fresco of the Consignment of the Keys.

The transfer of the focus from Peter to his successors was also illustrated by these artists of the 15^th century through the series of Popes placed in the spaces between the windows above their frescoes.

The parallel relationships between the story of Moses and that of Christ is evident even at a superficial glance.

Thus Perugino depicts the beginning of the liberating mission of the Hebrew people by Moses and the same painter realized on the opposite wall the baptism of Christ, the solemn beginning of Jesus saving mission.

Cosimo Rosselli paints The Miracle of the Parting of the Parting of the Red Sea, a tangible sign of Egyptian slavery and the bedinning of the road to freedom in the Promised Land.

Ghirlandaio, as in a symphony of alternating choruses the Calling of the Aposteles in the history of the announcement of the good news of the Gospel.

All these frescoes illustrate parallel events with salvation as the single unifying theme.

And so this first fresco cycle in the Sistine Chapel beyond the historical and political emphases, in fact, in the end tells us about the whole history of humanity.

The underlying factor is redemption which was promised in the Old Testament and realized in the New Testament.

This is the story of God, who created man out of love, and for man's salvation, always out of love, he became a man himself, he died like all men, and in virtue of his human nature ever after involves all persons in his resurrection.

In addition to these artists who first worked in the Sistine Chapel another was needed who would complete in his comprehensive vision their intuition.

This person, a true artistic genius, is Michelangelo.

Julius II, a Pope of indomitable and authoritative character, asked the young and already well known Michelangelo to fresco the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with the figures of the apostles.

In fact, the painted starry sky which previously filled the vault of the Chapel was unworthy of the paintings below.

The year was 1508, and Michelangelo was only thirty-three years old. In four years of relentless and mostly solitary work he finished the ceiling.

Michelangelo received from the Pope complete freedom of design, thus Abandoning the initial project and conceived a grand synthesis of the history of salvation.

That which impressed us "even today is the rich creative imagination of Michelangelo and his profound knowledge of both the Bible and contemporary culture.

His ceiling is a perfect harmony with more than three hundred figures of model volumes and dazzling colors framed within painted architecture and free from the rigid adherence to Renaissance perspective.

At the center in nine episodes divided in groups of three the First Book of the Bible is narrated.

God the Creator is the central person in the first three panels depicting the creation of light, the planets and the separation of the earth from the water.

The second group of episodes concerns humanity, the creation of Adam, the creation of Eve, and Original Sin.

All this is the creation story of Genesis.

The nakedness of Adam and Eve is a clear reference to their first innocence before disobeying God.

The connection between fault and punishment is manifested in the last three frescoes: the Sacrifice of Noah, the Universal Flood, and Noah Drunk and Derided - symbol of a humanity inescapably enslaved to sin.

At the corners of five of the central panels the artist depicts ten pairs of naked men: exasperated vitality, expressions of mute contemplation, a desperate cry, images j)f humanity created in tJieJmage of God but reduced to the slavery of sin.

The theme of hope is taken up by Michelangelo in "the persons just below the painted comers.

Here are the figures of the Old Testament prophets and the Sibyls witnesses of humanity's longing for redemption.

The Sibyls, mythical figures of the pagan world, by their ability to foresee the future further emphasize the hope of salvation not only for the people of Israel, but, indeed, for all humanity.

In the eight spandrels which flank the prophets and the Sibyls and in the lunettes above the windows Michelandgelo paints the series of Christ ancestors.

Each ancestor is a chapter in a history of salvation beginning from the moment of Adam and Eve's original sin.

What is most impressive about these figures is their facial expressions, their haunted looks and the attitudes of despondency.

All of these are in contrast with the virile energy and, hence, the certitude of the prophets.
Michelangelo illustrates in the ancestors the sorrow of the human condition after original sin and in the prophets |and sibyls there are awareness and certainty of future redemption.
In the pendentives of the ceiling the artist paints four particularly significant moments in the history of Israel...

These realized in the corners of the vault are the links with the walls below and the theme that they express.

The Punishment of Haman, the Bronze Serpent, and the stories of Judith and Holofernes and of David and Goliath which both the New Testament and the fathers of the Church interpret as prefigurations of the Messiah are signs of the continual presence of God in the life of his people and the renewal of his promises.

God intervenes in particularly dramatic circumstances with extraordinary deeds to renew their faith in redemption.

With this work the Sistine Chapel seemed to have assumed its logical and definitive composition: the whole history of salvation is told here.

In fact with Michelangelo this story was given a more complete interpretation and ends by coinciding with the course of the human adventure itself.

In 1535, twenty years later, another Pope, Paul III of the Farnese family^ again called Michelangelo to work in the Sistine Chapel. •

The artist was doubtful and reluctant since he believed that his artistic impulse could better express itself in sculpture.

The theme of the Last Judgment, intended as a warning of the temporary mirth of life, was an exciting one but at the same time fraught by the unknown.

Finally, the decision was made and work began.

Six years later The Last Judgment was finished, and the Chapel was opened to the public for viewing.

From that moment millions of visitors would come to see it.

With the exceptions of the recent restoration and the reconstruction of the entrance wall partly collapsed in 1522 with the need to repaint the two fifteenth century frescoes entrusted to two rather unskilled painters Matteo da Leche and Hendrik van den Broeck, when Michelangelo removed the scaffolding from The Last Judgment, the Sistine Chapel had much the appearance it has today.

/ In The Last Judgment Michelangelo revealed himself once again as a man of great culture and learning.

The originality of the artist manifests itself, above all, in an artistic conception outside the norm and in solutions that disconcerted and scandalized many of his contemporaries - angels without wings, saints without haloes, demons deformed beyond the imagining - all these became occasions for a warning about the vanity of worldly things and the definitive irreversibility of The Last Judgment.

The fresco in its totality gives the impression of an immense void in which a mysterious whirlwind causes an irresistible movement to the bodies.

Christ is at the center, powerful in his presence, dramatic in gesture, with his mother at his right side - the new Eve - Mother of the redeemed, herself astonished about the moment about to come to pass.

Christ's body, notwithstanding the signs of the Passion, does not appear humiliated but in the fall strength of the resurrection by force of which he has freed the world from sin and death.

With the gesture of his right hand and his body turned slightly to the left Christ seems to give voice to the words of the Gospel, "Away from me, you, evil doers, into the eternal fire prepared for you for all eternity!"

The other hand extended in a sign of welcome is turned to the just who're taken up as in a spiral as he draws them on high.

By these gestures of command all is set in motion as if by two opposing whirlwinds.

The first involves the saints who encounter the central figure of Christ, the second is a fluctuating movement taking within it angels and damned, demons and the resurrected.

Among the saints some are recognizable by symbolic elements linked to their martyrdoms. Peter is shown with the keys, Andrew with the cross, Catharine of Alexandria with the spiked wheel, Sebastian with the arrows.

Of special note is the representation of the apostle Bartholomew portrayed with a knife in one hand while with the other he holds up a human skin.

Tradition, in fact, tells us that the Saint was skinned alive.

The uniqueness of the painting is in the barely emphasized face painted on the skin in which many critics have distinguished the self-portrait of Michelangelo himself.

Further down, nearly outside of the whirlwind, Michelangelo paints at the left the resurrection of the dead and on the other side the bark of Charon a clear allusion to the inferno described by Dante.

In the violent gesture of the Ferry-man with the raised oar and in the anonymous and tormented mounds of bodies is depicted the complete desperation of the place from which there is no return - Hell.

It is the moment of truth in which all things are manifest in all their true nature.

The complex, iconography and the whirl of the bodies in a variety of positions have as their focal point the central circle of the composition, and above all the figure of Christ who together with his Mother dominates all.

The son of man who comes on the clouds of heaven with his imperial gesture brings the facts of history to their finality.

And the veil of appearances is about to be lifted: the gentleness of the redeemer will be substituted by the perfect objectivity of the judge.

And yet Michelangelo despite the apparent evidence remains strongly linked to the virtue of hope.

The subtle thread which runs through his every work, that which is capable of dissolving the desperation and installing a positive vision of redemption, is the body.

In his full and vigorous way of representing the body Michelangelo has concentrated the
theological sense of incarnation which St. John, the Evangelist, synthesizes in the central
passage of the poem to this Gospel. "The Word of God was made flesh and dwelt among us".
/ Michelangelo is not therefore only a great artist but a theological artist who synthesizes and
visualizes in the most expressive way the meaning of salvation /

The body becomes the interpretive and manifested figure of hope.

The Christ of The Last Judgment is depicted with the body similar to that of Adam, the first man, which he depicted in the Creation on the vault of the Sistine Chapel.

The scene of Adam and Eve humiliates the body rendering it a slave to Death.

Finally, another man raises the body to the dignity of its original glory.

This man is the son of God incarnate.

With his body Christ will have to experience the whole human adventure already present in his body, in the divine nature of the son of God is the seed of the resurrection.

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