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The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is a shallow barrel vault, about 40 m long by 13 m wide, the central part of which is almost flat, and it was probably because of this that Michelangelo defined the centre by means of a painted cornice which appears to be cut by five pairs of painted ribs running from side to side. The spaces so obtained form five small and four large rectangles, and these were filled with scenes from the Old Testament. The choice of subject was conditioned by the existence of the two series of frescoes painted in 1481-82 on the lower part of the walls; these consist of scenes from the life of Moses and the life of Christ, treated as parallels from the Old law and the New. The obvious choice, therefore, was of scenes from the history of the world before the Mosaic Dispensation, beginning with the Creation. The sequence of the frescoes runs from the altar to the entrance wall, whereas the order in which they were painted is the reverse, so that the most important scene, from the standpoint of iconography - the Primal Act of Creation, which occupies the small rectangle immediately above the altar - was almost the last to be painted. At the opposite end, over the entrance used by the laity, the first small rectangle to be painted contains the Drunkenness of Noah, symbolic of man in his lost state wholly unconcious of God, and the Biblical order of the narrative is slightly adjusted, partly to enable the complex scene of the Deluge to occupy a large rectangle, and also to obtain a progressive ascent, spiritually, from the pit of man's degradation to the ultimate splendour of God. |
Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 12 minutes):Joseph Haydn: The Creation, introduction and aria |