In 1502 he was again recalled to Florence. In 1504 took place the competition with Leonardo of the cartoons for the Palazzo Vecchio, already spoken of.
In 1506 Michael Angelo was called to Rome by Pope Julius II. The pope employed him to design the sumptuous sculptural monument destined for his own tomb, for which the famous colossal Moses was executed, and the slaves or prisoners, but these, like the tomb, never were finished.
But his great work in Rome, the great work of his life, was the decoration of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the walls of which had been painted by earlier artists of the Florentine school: Signorelli, Cosimo Rosselli, Perugino, Ghirlandajo, Botticelli. The ceiling remained unadorned, and now Michael Angelo was called upon to design his great sacred epic of painting, having to deal with a space 150 feet in length by 50 feet in breadth, upon the concave surface of a round vault, without any architectural or structural enrichment or division save the windows. The theme was the fall and redemption of mankind according to the Bible history.
MICHAEL ANGELO. CEILING OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL.
At first it appears that Michael Angelo, as it is said, doubtful of his own skill in fresco, called in the aid of painters from Florence to aid him in carrying out his design, but was so disappointed with their work that he effaced it and dismissed them. He then shut himself up and proceeded to devote himself to the gigantic work alone, preparing the colours with his own hands, showing how thorough an individualist he must have been, contrary to the practice of his own time, which was to work with pupils and assistants. He began with the end towards the door, and in two compartments first painted "The Deluge" and "The Vineyard of Noah"; the figures are on a smaller scale, which he afterwards abandoned for a larger, bolder treatment. He spent twenty-two months in painting the ceiling, exclusive of the time spent in preparing the cartoons. The work was uncovered to the public view on All Saints' Day, 1512.
The sculpturesque and architectural feeling which, really stronger in Michael Angelo's work than that of the painter, is very decidedly manifested both in the general plan of the design and in individual figures and details. In order to bring so great a scheme into comprehensive form it was necessary to divide and subdivide the blank ceiling with painted architectural mouldings and ribs into spaces and panels. The titanic youthful figures placed between, upon the ledges and brackets of the framework of the subjects, are very fine and characteristic in style, and essentially sculptors' designs; each would work out as a separate statue, though for all that each single figure, as each figure of every group, bears a certain relation to the rest and fills a harmonious and necessary place in the scheme. The colour is subdued and quiet. It has a gray, cool effect in the chapel, gray blues, pale greens and whites being much used in the draperies, and the chief decorative effect being gained by the opposition of brown flesh tones to the broad, light marble-like framework, or the landscape and sky backgrounds of the subject panels. This great work was completed by Michael Angelo in his thirty-ninth year.
Alinari Photo.]
MICHAEL ANGELO. "THE DELPHIC SIBYL" (SISTINE CHAPEL).