Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling

The extraordinary story behind Michelangelo’s masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel – from the author of the acclaimed Brunelleschi’s Dome.

In 1508 Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Though he considered himself primarily a sculptor not a painter, he laboured over it for the next four years and the result was one of the greatest masterpieces of all time.

Ross King’s fascinating new book tells the story of those four extraordinary years. Battling against ill health, financial difficulties, domestic problems and inadequate knowledge of the art of fresco, Michelangelo created figures so beautiful that, when they were unveiled in 1512, they stunned the onlookers. From Michelangelo’s experiments with the composition of pigment and plaster to his bitter rivalry with Raphael, who was working on the neighbouring Papal Apartments, Ross King paints a magnificent picture of day-to-day life on the Sistine scaffolding and outside in the upheaval of early sixteenth-century Rome.