Michelangelo – Ingliando

On this day, Michelangelo’s celebrated fresco painting of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling was finally unveiled to the general public when Pope Julius II celebrated mass in the chapel for the first time in four years. The ceiling, a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art, depicts nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, including The Creation of Adam and the Fall of Man, alongside Prophets, Sibyls, and the ancestors of Jesus in the lunettes. In the words of the Italian painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari, “When the chapel was uncovered, people from everywhere rushed to see it, and the sight of it alone was sufficient to leave them amazed and speechless.” At the age of 37, Michelangelo’s reputation rose such that he was called il divino, and he was regarded as the greatest artist of his time, a recognition that lasted the rest of his long life. The ceiling was immediately considered one of the greatest masterpieces of all time, a distinction which continues to endure.

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On this day, Michelangelo’s masterpiece David, a colossal 5.17 metre high marble statue, was unveiled in Piazza della Signoria next to the entrance to Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of Florence’s civic government. Rolled on fourteen greased logs by more than forty men, it took four days to complete the 0.8 km journey from the workshop. The statue was originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of twelve prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, but as it neared completion, the Florentine authorities realised there would be little possibility of raising the statue weighing approximately 8.5 tons to the roof of the cathedral. In later years, when speaking of his early commissions sculpting marble, Michelangelo declared that he was merely liberating figures that were already existent in the stone, and that he could see them in his mind’s eye.

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