Eight triangular spaces above the windows, representing the Ancestors of Christ, containing from two to four colossal figures.
Twenty-four groups in the semicircular spaces above the windows, also of the Ancestors of Christ, of from one to four colossal figures.
Ten large figures of children forming brackets under the figures of Prophets and Sibyls, at the springing of the arches between the windows.
Twenty-four bronze-coloured colossal figures filling up the spaces in the architectural framework.
Thus, the vault may be regarded as a gallery of one hundred and forty-five separate pictures by Michael Angelo. There is one reservation, and that is, that the twenty-four groups of two children forming pilasters are in pairs, of the same outline but reversed; as they are differently lighted they may still be taken as different pictures. These pilasters form the sides of the thrones of the Prophets and Sibyls, and repeating them in reversed outline on either side of the same throne has a very valuable decorative effect, well known to the old Italian workmen, who frequently repeated the forms of their fruit and flower decorations in this manner, by the expedient of reversing the paper-pricking from one and the same cartoon. It is interesting to find Michael Angelo resorting to this simple trick to get the effect of balance in figure decoration. The light and shade of the reversed figures follow the general scheme of the illumination, so that the figures traced from the same cartoons look very dissimilar when painted, but if the [pg 170]outlines are traced from a photograph, and reversed on the corresponding figures, they will be seen to coincide. It seems impossible to explain the exactness in any other way, a few measurements on the vault itself would make it certain. Probably the same method was employed in transferring the twenty-four bronze-coloured decorative figures also.
The historical sequence of the events in the nine pictures on the central space of the vault represents the Story of the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and the second entry of Sin into the world, demonstrating the need for a scheme of Salvation, promised by the Prophets and Sibyls in the second part of the decoration. The series represented is an old invention, and all the scenes may be found in Byzantine and early Italian works; but the new treatment gives them a character of grandeur only equalled by the Old Testament narrative which they illustrate. All the human figures and most of the angels appear to be dominated by an idea of impending doom, but they nobly act their part in a fateful present, although they know that the future cannot be changed by any effort of theirs, however noble it may be. They are all fatalists, but all noble in their pessimism; they reflect the mind of the artist. The individual motives of the figures, their grouping and their action, are frequently taken from earlier art, especially sculpture, and they show how carefully and reverently Michael Angelo studied the works of his predecessors, Massaccio, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, and Jacopo della Quercia.
THE LIBYAN SIBYL
SISTINE CHAPEL, ROME
(Reproduced by permission from a Photograph by Sig. Anderson, Rome)