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Sistine Chapel Challenges

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The Sistine chapel was built between the years of 1475 and 1483 in Vatican City and is named after the pope who had the chapel built, Sixtus IV. One of the most impressive things about the Sistine chapel and one of the most famous works of art in history is Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the chapel. The project was completed using fresco. In 1508 Michelangelo was requested by Pope Julius II to repaint the chapel. The Chapel at the time was painted with a blue sky and gold stars. Pope Julius II original request was to have the chapel painted with the twelve Christian Apostles and when the project was completed Michelangelo had created more than 3,000 figures. The ceiling was created depicting nine stories from the bible’s book of genesis, including the “The Creation of Adam”, the most famous panel of any. …show more content…

The first challenge and maybe the easiest for Michelangelo to overcome was the fact that he had no experience painting with fresco and he considered himself a sculptor. The next challenge was the sheer size of the painting at a whopping 14 meters by 40.5 meters. That is more than 132 square meters larger than a basketball court. Completing this large of painting was a monumental task enough even without all the other challenges faced by Michelangelo. Michelangelo accepted this commission regardless and would continue to face many more challenges over the next four years. One of the most obvious challenges that stood in the way of completing this challenging work of art was the fact that it was the ceiling that needed to be painted. A local townsman offered to manufacture scaffolding for Michelangelo that would hang from the ceiling, but Michelangelo refused because he did not want to leave holes in the ceiling from where the scaffolding would have hung. Michelangelo then created his own scaffolding that could be held in place by brackets in the

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