The Sistine Chapel

Still used today to ordain Popes, the 12 panels on the  side walls of the chapel feature biblical scenes -some painted by Botticelli including the parting of the Red Sea by Moses  and The Last Supper.

The famed Michaelangelo painted the ceiling using a scaffold over a period of four years from 1508 to 1512.

After the work was finished, there were more than three hundred figures. His figures showed the creation, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and the Great Flood.

The Creation of Adam illustrates the Biblical creation narrative from the Book of Genesis in which God gives life to Adam, the first man. The fresco is part of a complex iconographic scheme and is chronologically the fourth in the series of panels depicting episodes from Genesis.

Twenty five years later he finished another great work on the chapel’s main wall . The Day of Judgement used a rare lapis pigment from Afghanistan to colour the brilliant blue in the sky in the giant work .It features 90 figures and cautions against the abandonment of belief .

. The dead rise and descend to their fates, as judged by Christ who is surrounded by prominent saints . Nearly  all the males and angels originally shown as nudes; many were later partly covered up by painted draperies, of which some remain after recent cleaning and restoration.

Thework took over four years to complete between 1536 and 1541 (preparation of the altar wall began in 1535). Michelangelo was nearly 67 at its completion.He had originally accepted the commission from Pope Clement VII, but it was completed under Pope Paul III whose stronger reforming views probably affected the final treatment.