Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling
Author | : Ross King |
Publisher | : Random House |
Total Pages | : 398 |
Release | : 2012-10-31 |
ISBN-10 | : 9781446418833 |
ISBN-13 | : 1446418839 |
Rating | : 4/5 (33 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The thirty-three-year-old Michelangelo had very little experience of the physically and technically taxing art of fresco; and, at twelve thousand square feet, the ceiling represented one of the largest such projects ever attempted. Nevertheless, for the next four years he and a hand-picked team of assistants laboured over the vast ceiling, making thousands of drawings and spending back-breaking hours on a scaffold fifty feet above the floor. The result was one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. This fascinating book tells the story of those four extraordinary years and paints a magnificent picture of day-to-day life on the Sistine scaffolding - and outside, in the upheaval of early sixteenth-century Rome.