Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling

by Ross King

Book Overview

In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel. With little experience as a painter (though famed for his sculpture "David"), Michelangelo was reluctant to begin the massive project. "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling" recounts the four extraordinary years Michelangelo spent laboring over the vast ceiling while the power politics and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0142003697
• ISBN13: 9780142003695
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 373 Pages
• Weight: 1.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Michelangelo and Pope - so fascinating

For past travelers and future dreaming visitors to the Sistine Chapel this book was so informative. Insights to popes of the period, conflicts and wars, all intertwined with this masterpiece and artist, what’s not to like?

Michelangelo and the pope's ceiling

New and interesting information about the painter, the pope and the chapel. Loved it!

Great Read

I had to buy this for a class but found it actually interesting. The story of Michelangelo's life reads like a novel. I found out things you never hear about him. Very good book.

"I live wearied by stupendous labors...a thousand anxieties"

In his masterful, well researched portrayal of Michelangelo's four-year (1508-1512) effort to fill the 12,000 square foot, vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with new frescoes for Pope Julius II, Ross King examines and places in context the known details of Michelangelo's life, the images he includes in the frescoes, and his relationship with Pope Julius II, called the "terrifying Pope." Michelangelo had tried to avoid this commission. He was a sculptor, not a painter, and Pope Julius II had angered him by postponing his commission to build the Pope's tomb after Michelangelo had bought all the marble. Unpracticed in the difficult technique of fresco, he accepted the commission reluctantly. Illustrating stories from Genesis in the brightest and most costly pigments available, he created powerful visions of a terrifying and vengeful God in twelve panels, which depict stories of crime and punishment, prophets crying in the wilderness, and doomed sinners facing hanging, beheading, flood, and plague. Halfway through his commission, Michelangelo decided that his earliest, most tumultuous panels were too "busy," with too many figures painted too small, and he changed his style significantly. Beginning with the famous Creation of Adam, he painted simpler, more powerful designs with larger figures, dramatically foreshortening and contorting them. God, who appears fully robed in classical attire in the early panels, becomes far more vigorous, muscular, and "human" in the later panels, appearing with his chest bare, his poses contorted and foreshortened. Eventually, he appears to "tumble down" toward the viewer from the ceiling. Full of fascinating, memorable details, King's text tells how Michelangelo constructed the scaffold for the fresco (which did not require him to lie on his back), how his first panel was ruined by the build-up of salts and efflorescence and six weeks' labor had to be laboriously chipped away, how a child in one panel is "making the fig"" (an obscene gesture), and how the fingers of God and Adam at the Creation are not the work of Michelangelo or of his assistants but complete restorations. A helpful "map" of the ceiling allows the reader to locate particular details, though the colored pictures of the ceiling itself, reproduced almost in its entirety, are extremely small. When the ceiling was completed in 1512, the world was dumbstruck, according to Vasari, and Michelangelo's figures were said to surpass those of the ancient Greeks. Never before had the human form been used with such "astonishing invention and aplomb...or with the brute force of Michelangelo's naked titans." Writing with enthusiasm and insight, in addition to careful scholarship, King tells the intriguing human story of this artwork, which is as fresh and relevant today as it was when it was painted almost six hundred years ago. Mary Whipple

Masterful Work of History and Art

The Sistine Chapel is probably the most recognizable piece of art in the entire western world. It defies so many conventions as to make it almost divine in nature. First, the pictures themselves are so lavish and monumental that they seem to defy terrestrial origin. In addition to this amazing display, the actual location of the artwork makes it even more amazing. For, this work of art is on a ceiling, hundreds of feet in the air. How could a human paint at that angle, in one of Christendom's holiest places, with such precision and beauty? Ross King's book seeks to answer this in a book that is a wonderful combination of history, art, and personal politics in Renaissance Italy. It is absorbing, enlightening, and eminently entertaining.Much of the book is centered on the amazing and fascinating life of Pope Julius II. Known for all time as the "Warrior Pope", Julius is probably one of the most influential Popes of all time. Managing to survive the murderous reign of the Borgias, Julius rose to power through his own cunning and guile. Once he was firmly installed at the Vatican, Julius went on a campaign of power consolidation. The papal states that had strayed from the Church's control, and the other powers of Europe would be brought in line with Julius' new Roman power base. To accomplish this expansion of Holy power, Julius, a very educated quasi-secularist, sought to improve the Vatican area of Rome. As part of this improvement, Julius sent for a whole host of artists and architects to build glorious new monuments to the power of the Catholic Church. As part of this grand plan, Julius sent for one of Europe's best known artist, Michelangelo.Michelangelo was given an extremely daunting task. Creating large frescoes was hard enough, but Michelangelo has to produce one on the ceiling of a building that was structurally weak in the first place. Together with a group of unheralded assistants, the master went to work. The project is far removed from many fictional propositions held by some modern people. Michelangelo did not lie on his back while painting, nor did he work alone. Even when this amazing work of art is being put together, King reminds us that this was an equally fascinating time. Nearby, a young artist known as Raphael was working hard on the glorious paintings that would decorate Julius' new apartments. The two artists were extremely different. Michelangelo was an anti social, unattractive, distant man, while Raphael was very handsome and a man about town. This contrast created a very real rivalry. Even more interesting than the actual painting was the politics of Italy, where Julius launched war after war to bring his empire together. He would lose, come close to death, but almost always rose up to meet the new challenge.This book is just a beautiful piece of literary art itself. It paints a wonderful picture of Italy at the time, describing how people lived and how nations clashed. We see into the inner wor

Superb author as engaging tour guide

Have you ever visited a landmark and had a tour guide who brought history to life - an engaging and entertaining person who had all the facts at his (or her) fingertips, but who delved beneath the facts to bring the participants to life? If so, you will understand the appeal of Ross King's "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling," for Mr. King is that kind of a tour guide. He takes us into the Sistine Chapel and fully explicates Michelangelo's masterpiece as a work of art, including everything from the technique of fresco to the kinds and colors of paint (and their origins) to the various challenges in the technique known as foreshortening. Although he liberally sprinkles the text with Italian and art terms, he explains each as he goes along. Along the way, he also drops in interesting bits of information, such as, which panels in the painting, Michelangelo first saw from the floor of the chapel and what stylistic and color changes he incorporated in the panels after that, or which poses must have been difficult for the models (and who some of the models may have been) or why the medallions are disproportionately small to the rest of the work. Mixed in with art history and art appreciation are relevant pieces of contemporary history: the debauched and demanding Pope Julius II and the state of the papacy during his reign, the wars and diseases that afflicted the various participants and hindered work on the chapel, and numerous other small details that enliven the narrative. King compares and contrasts Michelanglo with great rival, Raphael, who was painting the pope's private apartments at the same time Michelanglo was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Raphael, who died relatively young, was more attractive, more popular, more adept at fresco (at least more adept than Michelangelo was when he began the ceiling) and generally a more sympathetic character than Michelangelo who lived to be almost ninety, had disgusting personal habits, was really not much to look at, and who really wanted to sculpt, not paint. While Raphael had the characteristic Italians call sprezziatura (making the difficult look easy), Michelangelo seemed to find everything difficult, or make it so.King also debunks some of the more popular myths, particularly that Michelanglo painted the entire ceiling by himself, lying on his back. He had a host of helpers, some of whom also served as his teachers because he had minimal fresco experience when he began the chapel, and, while the scaffold was positioned so that neither he nor his assistants had to lie on their backs, the half squatting and bent-backward positions they did assume were equally uncomfortable, if not more so.Though longer than "Bruneleschi's Dome," "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling" moves just as quickly. King is never slow, dry or pedantic. He is, however, unfailingly informative. Should you be fortunate enough to visit the Vatican, this is obligatory preparatory reading. If you do not have that opport