The “Sistine Chapel“, dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption, is one of the most famous cultural and artistic treasures of the Vatican City, inserted in the path of the Vatican Museums. The chapel was built in 1479 under the direction of Pope Sixtus IV, who gave it his name. The location of the building is very close to St. Peter’s Basilica and one of the functions of the space was to serve as the gathering place for cardinals of the Catholic Church to gather in order to elect a new pope. Even today, it is used for this purpose. The Sistine Chapel is considered perhaps the most complete and important than visual theology, which has been called “Biblia pauperum”, the Bible of the poor. In 1508, Pope Julius II hired Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the chapel. He was not, however, highly esteemed for his work with the brush. The reason why Julius gave such a lofty task to Michelangelo Buonarroti was because of the instigation of two artistic rivals of his, the painter Raphael and the architect Bramante. Do not forget, coming into this marvel of human creativity, that the walls of the Sistine Chapel also preserved a series of frescoes by some of the greatest Italian artists of the second half of the fifteenth century (Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Luca Signorelli, Piero di Cosimo and others). The frescoes by Michelangelo Buonarroti, cover the vault and the back wall (of Judgement), above the altar. Michelangelo began painting in 1508. Two of the most important scenes on the ceiling are his frescoes of the Creation of Adam and the Fall of Adam and Eve/Expulsion from the Garden. It has been said that when Michelangelo painted, he was essentially painting sculpture on his surfaces, and this is the case, in the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
