Sistine Chapel

• 1. Introduction

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  The Sistine Chapel stands inside the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City, the pope's official residence, and for more than five centuries it has been one of the most visited rooms on earth. Its ceiling alone, painted by a single artist between 1508 and 1512, is regarded as one of the major artistic accomplishments of human civilization. But how did a chapel with an unadorned exterior, no grand facade, and no street entrance become the place where the Catholic Church elects its leaders and where millions of visitors still crane their necks in silence? And who were the painters, patrons, and critics whose ambitions, rivalries, and arguments shaped what hangs on those walls today? The answers stretch from a Renaissance pope's building campaign in the 1470s all the way to a rock concert held inside the chapel in 2016.

• 2. A Pope Builds His Chapel

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  Pope Sixtus IV ordered the construction of the present chapel between 1473 and 1481, replacing an older structure called the Cappella Maggiore that had stood on the same site since at least 1368. By the time Sixtus ordered it demolished, the Cappella Maggiore was in a ruinous state; its walls were leaning. The architect Baccio Pontelli designed the replacement, and construction was supervised by Giovannino de Dolci. The new chapel was built to proportions that appear to follow those of its predecessor closely, and those proportions were deliberate: Renaissance architects used defined ratios as a reflection of classical Roman heritage.

  The building is about 35 metres long and 14 metres wide, with the ceiling rising to roughly 20 metres above the main floor. Its exterior is bare of decoration, as was common in Italian churches of the medieval and Renaissance periods. There is no exterior facade and no processional doorway facing the outside; entry has always been through the internal rooms of the Apostolic Palace. Because of subsidence and cracking, very large buttresses were added to brace the exterior walls.

  On the 15th of August 1483, the Feast of the Assumption, Sixtus IV celebrated the first mass in the newly built chapel. At that same ceremony the chapel was consecrated and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The original ceiling at that point was painted brilliant blue and dotted with gold stars, a design attributed to Piermatteo Lauro de' Manfredi da Amelia.

• 3. The Renaissance Painters

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  Before Michelangelo arrived, the walls of the Sistine Chapel were already covered in remarkable work. Sixtus IV commissioned the frescoes in 1480, bringing in Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, and Cosimo Rosselli along with their workshops. It is probable that the commission of the Florentine painters was tied to a political reconciliation between Sixtus IV and Lorenzo de' Medici, the de facto ruler of Florence. The Florentines began work in the spring of 1481.

  The central tier of the walls was given over to two parallel narrative cycles: the Life of Moses along the southern wall and the Life of Christ along the northern wall. Perugino, who arrived at the chapel before the Florentines, likely supervised the overall project. Each panel is attributed to a specific master and workshop. Botticelli painted the Trials of Moses and the Temptations of Christ. Ghirlandaio handled the Vocation of the Apostles. Perugino contributed the Delivery of the Keys. The cycles were completed in 1482.

  Below these narrative frescoes, the lower walls were painted with trompe-l'oeil silver and gold drapery. Above the narrative tier, a Gallery of Popes ran along both sides. In 1515 Pope Leo X gave Raphael a further commission: ten tapestries designed to hang in the lower tier, depicting the Life of St. Peter in four panels and the Life of St. Paul in six. The tapestries were made in Brussels in the workshop of Pieter van Aelst and took four years to complete. During the Sack of Rome in 1527 they were looted and scattered across Europe, some burned for their precious metal content. A set was reassembled in the late twentieth century and displayed again in the Sistine Chapel in 1983.

• 4. Michelangelo and the Ceiling

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  Michelangelo was suspicious of the ceiling commission from the start. He considered himself a sculptor, not a painter, and he worried that such a large project was being offered to him by enemies hoping he would fail. Pope Julius II pressed him anyway, and in 1508 Michelangelo began work on the vault.

  The first scaffold was designed by Donato Bramante, Julius's favoured architect, who proposed suspending a platform from the vault using ropes. The plan required perforating the ceiling to anchor the ropes. Michelangelo found the structure flawed and asked Bramante what would happen once the painter reached the holes; the architect had no answer. Julius referred the matter back to Michelangelo, who built his own flat wooden platform on brackets inserted into holes high in the walls near the tops of the windows. Contrary to what many people assume, Michelangelo painted standing up, not lying down.

  The original commission was modest: twelve apostles on the triangular spandrels supporting the vault. Michelangelo rejected it. The Pope offered him free choice of biblical subjects as a compromise. What Michelangelo painted was far more ambitious. He laid out nine scenes from the Book of Genesis along the highest section of the ceiling: the Creation of the World, God's relationship with mankind, and mankind's fall from grace. On the four large corner sections he painted twelve biblical and classical figures who had prophesied the coming of Christ. Around the upper parts of the windows he placed the Ancestors of Christ. When the work was finished there were more than three hundred figures across a painted area roughly 40 metres long and 13 metres wide. The project was completed in late 1512.

• 5. The Last Judgment

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  More than two decades after finishing the ceiling, Michelangelo returned to the Sistine Chapel. The Last Judgment was painted between 1535 and 1541, bracketed by two historic events: the Sack of Rome in 1527 and the opening of the Council of Trent in 1545. It covers the entire wall behind the altar.

  The painting depicts Christ's second coming as described in the Book of Revelation, chapter 20. The heroic figure of Christ dominates the upper section, surrounded by clusters of saints. At the lower left the dead rise from their graves; to the right, demons drag the condemned downward into hell. The scale and the nudity of the figures immediately drew protests. Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini, the ambassador of Mantua, organized what became known as the Fig-Leaf Campaign to have the frescoes removed on grounds of immorality.

  The Pope's own Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, declared it was most disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures exposing themselves so shamefully, and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather for the public baths and taverns. Michelangelo's response was direct: he painted da Cesena's likeness into the scene as Minos, judge of the underworld. When da Cesena complained to the Pope, the pontiff replied that his jurisdiction did not extend to hell, so the portrait would have to remain. Michelangelo also painted his own portrait on the flayed skin held by St. Bartholomew. The genitalia in the fresco were later covered by Daniele da Volterra, whom history remembers by the derogatory nickname Il Braghettone, or the breeches-painter.

• 6. Electing a Pope

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  The first papal conclave held in the Sistine Chapel was the conclave of 1492, which ran from the 6th to the 11th of August and produced the election of Pope Alexander VI. Before that, conclaves had been held at the Dominican convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva; from 1455 onward they were held at the Vatican Palace.

  The ritual signals of the conclave are among the best-known features of the chapel. A chimney is installed in the roof; black smoke means no candidate has received the required two-thirds vote, and white smoke means a new pope has been elected. Black smoke is produced by burning the ballots with wet straw; white smoke by burning the ballots alone. Chemical additives are used for both colors to sharpen the signal.

  Conclaves once employed elaborate canopies over each cardinal-elector's seat, color-coded by the pope who had appointed them, as a sign of equal dignity. When a new pope accepted his election, the other cardinals tugged ropes to lower their canopies. Paul VI abolished the canopies entirely; by his papacy, the College of Cardinals had grown so large that seating in rows of two against the walls left the canopies blocking the view of cardinals in the back row. Since 1996, John Paul II's Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici gregis requires cardinals to lodge at the Domus Sanctae Marthae during a conclave, while continuing to vote in the chapel. Carpenters install a raised wooden floor before each conclave to protect the original marble pavement; beneath that floor sits electronic signal-jamming equipment to prevent any messages from entering or leaving.

• 7. Music Inside the Walls

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  The Sistine Chapel Choir has sung without instrumental accompaniment since the chapel's beginning, because instruments were not permitted inside. This created a practical problem: there was no way to give the choir its starting pitch. The solution, formalized in an instruction recorded after an apostolic visitation in 1630, was to let the eldest singer choose the opening pitch.

  On the 19th of February 2014, Canadian violinist Rosemary Siemens became the first solo instrumentalist to perform in the chapel. The event, titled Spiritual Elevation, was organized as part of the Fondazione Pro Musica e Arte Sacra. Siemens performed alongside vocalist Mary Zilba and harpist Mark Edward Spencer, with a Symphonic Chorus led by conductor Candace Wicke. The programme included the hymns Amazing Grace and Be Thou My Vision, as well as a Requiem composed by Stephen Edwards.

  On the 29th of April 2016, The Edge of U2 became the first rock artist to hold a contemporary music concert at the chapel, performing at a conference on regenerative medicine called Cellular Horizons. He played Walk On, Yahweh, and Ordinary Love, and added a Leonard Cohen cover, If It Be Your Will, backed by an Irish choir. In 2017, Cecilia Bartoli became the first woman to perform alongside the all-male Sistine Chapel Choir, singing Beata Viscera by the medieval composer Perotin. The first live-streamed concert at the chapel followed on the 22nd of April 2018, when The Sixteen and the Britten Sinfonia performed Scottish composer James MacMillan's setting of the Stabat Mater before an audience of more than three hundred people.