SISTINE CHAPEL, ROME (_By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence_)
When Pope Julius prevented Michael Angelo from going on with his beloved project of the Tomb and made him paint the vault, the master set to work to produce a similar conception to the Tomb in a painted form. The vault became a great temple of painted marble and painted sculptures raised in mid-air above the walls of the chapel. The cornices and pilasters are of simple Renaissance architecture, the only ornaments he allowed himself to use being similar to those he would have used as a sculptor. Acorns, the family device of the della Rovere, rams' skulls, and scallop shells, and the one theme of decoration that Michael Angelo always delighted in--the human figure. The Prophets and Sibyls took the positions occupied by the principal figures designed for the Tomb, like the great statue of Moses. The Athletes at the corner of the ribs of the roof were in place of the bound captives, two of which are now in the Louvre, and the nine histories of the Creation and the Flood fill the panels like the bronze reliefs of the Tomb. The detail and completeness of this fresco are the best refutation of the frequent criticism that Michael Angelo did not finish his work. The fact is, that he finished more than any one. Had Michael Angelo done no work but this vault of the Sistine Chapel, it would have represented an output equal in quantity alone to that of the most prolific of his brother Italian artists. It is veritably a large picture-gallery of his works in itself. An idea of its numerical magnitude may be got by dividing it up into its component units and making an inventory of them. The vault itself, according to Heath Wilson, is one hundred and thirty-one feet six inches long, by forty-five feet two and a half inches wide at the large door end, and forty-three feet two and a half inches at the altar end, an area of nearly six thousand square feet, which apparently does not represent the arch measurement but only the plane covered by the arch, nor does it take account of the triangular and semicircular spaces above the windows. This vast surface is divided into:--
Four large pictures stretching over more than one-third of the width of the roof, and containing from five to more than forty-five figures, some of them twelve feet in height.