Who painted the Sistine Chapel, wall by wall and ceiling by ceiling

Ask who painted the Sistine Chapel and almost everyone says Michelangelo, which isn’t wrong, just incomplete. Some of the finest artists of the Renaissance painted it in three campaigns decades apart. Michelangelo came last and took the glory, rightly, but once inside you’ll be looking at the work of at least five masters. Here’s who did each part, and how long it took.

Before Michelangelo, a sky and four workshops

Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere, who gave the chapel its name, rebuilt an earlier chapel, the Cappella Magna, from 1477. The building was put up by Giovannino de’ Dolci and Baccio Pontelli, according to the Holy See, and consecrated on 15 August 1483. The ceiling had no figures then. It was a starry sky painted by Pier Matteo d’Amelia.

The walls went to a first-rate team. Between 1481 and 1482 Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli worked there, with assistants such as Biagio di Antonio, Bartolomeo della Gatta and Luca Signorelli. They painted the stories of Moses on one wall and of Christ on the other, a series of papal portraits and, lower down, painted curtains. Pinturicchio came out of that circle too, trained in Perugino’s workshop, and went on to decorate the Borgia Apartment.

This is the part I most like to stand up for. You have Botticelli and Perugino in the same room, and most people leave without having looked at them.

The ceiling, four years of Michelangelo

A crack that split the vault in 1504 was what pushed Julius II to have it repainted. He gave the job to Michelangelo, under a contract dated 8 May 1508. The first plan was twelve apostles in the spandrels and ornamental patterns elsewhere. Michelangelo thought it a ‘poor thing’ and won a new brief with far more freedom.

The first half was done by August 1510, and the ceiling was finished on 31 October 1512. The next day, All Saints, Julius II said Mass beneath it. In 2012 Benedict XVI described it as roughly four years’ work over a thousand-plus square metres. What he painted, scene by scene, is on my page about the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Whether he did it alone is another matter, and here I’d rather be careful. Sources disagree on whether his assistants got onto the scaffold, and there’s a serious case that one or two worked on the Flood, the scene he had to redo because of mould. The design and the main hand are his, that much is certain. And the old line about him painting flat on his back isn’t something I’ve found in any reliable source.

The Last Judgement, twenty years on

Michelangelo came back to paint the altar wall. Clement VII commissioned it at the end of 1533, but Paul III set it in motion. The scaffold went up in April 1535 and the painting ran from 1536 to autumn 1541. To make room, frescoes by Perugino on that wall were lost, along with two lunettes Michelangelo had painted himself.

In 1564 the order came to cover the nudity, and Daniele da Volterra added the cloths. He’s the last name on the list, even if his contribution was covering up. The fresco in detail, and the cleaning it had between February and March 2026, are on my page about the Last Judgement.

And no, not Leonardo

One of the most common searches is whether Leonardo da Vinci painted in the Sistine Chapel. He didn’t. He doesn’t appear in any Museums source as one of its painters. If you want Leonardo in the Vatican, he’s in the Pinacoteca, with his St Jerome.

How to look at it, knowing all this

Inside you can’t talk or take photos, and guides can’t explain, so the homework comes first. I’d go in this order. A minute for the ceiling, because you won’t be able to help it. Another for the Last Judgement at the far end. And the rest of your time on the walls, Moses on one side and Christ on the other, with the four 15th-century workshops facing each other. For more to carry in your head there are the Sistine Chapel facts, and for tickets, hours and getting there, my guide to the Sistine Chapel.