The Sistine Chapel ceiling, and how to read it from the floor

The Sistine Chapel ceiling is the most photographed ceiling on earth and, oddly, one of the hardest to see in person, because inside you can’t use your phone or listen to a guide. Whatever you haven’t learnt beforehand, you won’t work out up there. The chapel overview lives in my Sistine Chapel guide. This page is something else, a plan of the ceiling to read from the floor, one scene at a time.

From a starry sky to nine scenes from Genesis

Before Michelangelo, the vault was a blue sky scattered with stars by Pier Matteo d’Amelia. In May 1504 a long crack opened, Bramante fitted iron ties in the space above, and the damage forced a redecoration. Julius II gave the job to Michelangelo, and the contract was signed on 8 May 1508.

What that contract said is, to me, the most revealing part of the whole story. It called for twelve apostles in the pendentives and ornament elsewhere. Michelangelo dismissed it as «cosa povera», a poor thing, asked for a new commission, and the Pope gave him a free hand. In a letter of 1523 he put it simply, the Pope gave him a new commission to do as he wished. Treccani notes that this freedom may have concerned the area and payments more than the subject, and the Museums suggest court theologians probably helped. Even so, going from twelve apostles to more than a thousand square metres of plaster, as Benedict XVI described it in 2012, is quite a leap.

How is the Sistine Chapel ceiling laid out?

Within a painted architectural frame, the central band holds nine Genesis scenes, grouped in threes as the origin of the universe, of mankind and of evil. The biblical order starts above the altar with the Separation of Light and Darkness and ends by the entrance with the Drunkenness of Noah. The table above lists them one by one.

One detail helps me enormously when looking. Michelangelo painted them backwards, beginning with the three Noah scenes by the entrance and finishing above the altar. Walk the band from the door towards the far end and you’re watching his painting develop over four years. Another quirk is that the Sacrifice of Noah comes before the Flood, though in the Bible it follows it, and that’s the order on the ceiling and on the official site.

Around the band sit four further layers. Twelve enthroned prophets and sibyls, the ignudi with their medallions, the lunettes and webs with Christ’s ancestors, and the pendentives in the four corners.

The Creation of Adam, up close

It’s the fourth scene from the altar. The Museums describe it as the creation of man in God’s image, with the breath of life passing through the touch of the fingers. God leans towards Adam, carried by angels in flight and wrapped in a cloak that Treccani describes as crowded with heavenly spirits. Adam is painted like an athlete at rest, waking into life and holding out his left forefinger.

I’m very taken with Condivi’s reading. He was the biographer guided by Michelangelo himself, and he saw a command in the gesture too, as though God were handing Adam the rules of what he should and shouldn’t do. Only one preparatory drawing is known for Adam’s body, plus several studies of the hands, one of them in the British Museum.

A word of warning. There are theories about a brain hidden in God’s cloak and about who the figure under his arm might be. The official site mentions neither, and I’d leave them as what they are, interpretations.

Seven prophets, five sibyls and Jonah leaning back

Prophets and sibyls alternate along the long sides, with Zechariah over the entrance and Jonah over the altar on the short ends. The prophets are Zechariah, Joel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Jeremiah and Jonah, and the sibyls the Delphic, Erythraean, Cumaean, Persian and Libyan. Beneath each throne, children hold a tablet bearing the name, so you can identify them without a guide. Treccani measures them at between 2.60 and nearly 3 metres, and you can see them grow as Michelangelo worked along the vault.

If I had to keep one figure from the whole ceiling, it would be Jonah. He’s painted leaning back against the curve of the wall, and from below he seems to lurch out of the vault. Joel has been proposed as a portrait of Bramante, though that’s only a hypothesis.

His own scaffold, mould in the Flood and four years

Bramante had designed a scaffold hung from ropes that meant drilling holes in the vault, and Michelangelo turned it down. He built his own in timber, resting on the sides of the windows, with a large sheet stretched beneath it, so the Pope couldn’t see the work until it was unveiled. The idea that he painted lying flat on his back is a cliché I haven’t found in any reliable source, so I won’t pass it on as fact.

What is documented is the early stumble. In the Flood, mould appeared because he was new to fresco, and he had to redo much of it, with the islet on the right surviving from the first attempt. By August 1510 half was done, and the whole ceiling on 31 October 1512, and the next day Julius II said Mass in the chapel. Meanwhile, a few metres away, Raphael was painting the Raphael Rooms, and seeing both on the same day is one of the best things the Vatican Museums offer.

The colours you see today

The full restoration of the chapel’s frescoes ran from 1979 to 1999, with the ceiling cleaned during the 1980s under Gianluigi Colalucci. Centuries of lamp soot came off, along with glues brushed on in old restorations to brighten the colours that had ended up darkening them. Out came vivid, shot colours and details nobody could read before, such as Eleazar’s golden hair under a dark, opaque layer. It was controversial, because touches some critics believed were Michelangelo’s own were removed too. I side with Treccani’s point that bright colour was already his hallmark before he reached Rome.

How to look at it inside, without photos or a phone

In the Sistine Chapel, photos and video on any device are banned (where you can shoot is covered in Vatican photography rules), phones can’t be used, silence is expected and guides can’t explain anything inside. My plan has three passes. First I find the Creation of Adam to get my bearings. Then I walk the central band from end to end, counting off the nine scenes. Finally I drop my eyes to the thrones, the corners and the lunettes, where hardly anyone looks.

For the rest of the visit, remember that the chapel is the last stop on the route. Last entry is 18:00 Monday to Saturday, and staff begin moving people out at 19:30, so I’d book the first slot through Vatican City tickets and go with shoulders and knees covered, as I explain in the Vatican dress code.