Ebook: Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling
Author: King Ross
- Tags: ART--History--Renaissance, ART--Subjects & Themes--Religious, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY--General, History of art--art & design styles, Religious subjects depicted in art, Renaissance art, ART -- Subjects & Themes -- Religious, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- General, ART -- History -- Renaissance, History of art -- art & design styles
- Year: 2012
- Publisher: Random House
- City: London
- Language: English
- epub
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.