Sistine Chapel (video)
The Sistine Chapel, the Pope’s “Cappella Magna”, is not only an eminent place in universal art. It is much more.
- It is the space that identifies the Catholic Church, it is catechism in figures, the translation of the Bible in images.
- It is a consecrated environment, a shrine, one of the most “untouchable” places in the world.
- It is the place that, for every Pope, holds the memory of a particular day in his life.
Because it is precisely here, in this sacred space, that the cardinals gather for the Conclave, awaiting the manifestation of Christ’s will with regard to the person who will be Peter’s successor.
The Chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere, who had the ancient Cappella Magna restructured between 1477 and 1480.
Pope Julius II della Rovere, nephew of Sixtus IV, then decided to modify part of the decoration, entrusting the task to Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1508, who painted the ceiling with the stories of Genesis, the ancestors of Christ, the Sybils and the Prophets, and, later (1533 – Pope Clement VII) the wall behind the altar, the Universal Judgement.
The fifteenth-century decoration on the walls was instead produced by a team of painters constituted initially of Pietro Perugino, SandroBotticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Cosimo Rosselli, assisted by their respective workshops and by some of their closest collaborators.
Between 1979 and 1999 the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel underwent full restoration under the artistic and scientific direction of the Vatican Museums.
Source: a video taken from the Youtube Channel Vatican Museums
Last article published in Acculturarsi: Picasso in Mostra (in Italian)
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