If you’re not a Catholic, this just might make you one. It’s the work of Michelangelo, well, at least the ceiling is, but it’s the music that stirs your soul and makes it more than just a trip through reality distorted by software.
You can literally tour the Sistine Chapel without flying to Rome. Without even getting out of your seat for that matter. This is the kind of software, or at least it appears to be, that real estate agents use to provide virtual tours of single family homes in Eldersburg, Maryland. Not this time. Here’s it’s put to sublime use. As long as you’ve got your sound on.
Michelangelo, actually has a last name. It’s Buonarroti, and he did his famous work on the chapel from 1508 to 1512. He did not enjoy it, saying: “After four tortured years, more than 400 over life-sized figures, I felt as old and as weary as Jeremiah. I was only 37, yet friends did not recognize the old man I had become.”
In this excellent write-up at michelangelo.com you’ll learn that:
Working high above the chapel floor, on scaffolding, Michelangelo painted, between 1508 and 1512, some of the finest pictorial images of all time. On the vault of the papal chapel, he devised an intricate system of decoration that included nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, beginning with God Separating Light from Darkness and including the Creation of Adam and Eve, the Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve, and the Flood. These centrally located narratives are surrounded by alternating images of prophets and sibyls (Libyan, Erythraean) on marble thrones, by other Old Testament subjects, and by the ancestors of Christ. In order to prepare for this enormous work, Michelangelo drew numerous figure studies and cartoons, devising scores of figure types and poses. These awesome, mighty images, demonstrating Michelangelo’s masterly understanding of human anatomy and movement, changed the course of painting in the West.
