The Magnificence of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling
Clip: 7/22/2025 | 5m 25sVideo has Closed Captions
Michelangelo unveils the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but the process prompts a crisis of faith.
After four long years, Michelangelo finally unveils the completed Sistine Chapel ceiling. The Chapel's ceiling is roughly 600 square meters, nearly the size of three tennis courts; a monumental task that Michelangelo painted almost entirely by himself. While Pope Julius II is thrilled with the finished product, four years of backbreaking labor leaves Michelangelo broken and questioning his faith.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
The Magnificence of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling
Clip: 7/22/2025 | 5m 25sVideo has Closed Captions
After four long years, Michelangelo finally unveils the completed Sistine Chapel ceiling. The Chapel's ceiling is roughly 600 square meters, nearly the size of three tennis courts; a monumental task that Michelangelo painted almost entirely by himself. While Pope Julius II is thrilled with the finished product, four years of backbreaking labor leaves Michelangelo broken and questioning his faith.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Narrator: Michelangelo isn't interested in simply serving his patron's political ambitions.
He wants to make art that reflects the depth of his faith.
♪ Wallace: It's difficult labor.
His face looks like the floor of the chapel where the paint has been dripping.
His neck is cricked in a permanent position.
Michelangelo: I spent so long looking up that my body was in a permanent state of contortion I could no longer read looking down.
I had to hold letters up, like that, to the light, so that I could read them.
Narrator: Despite all the pain, Michelangelo perseveres, believing his masterpiece will glorify God.
Finally, after 4 long, punishing years, the ceiling is finished.
♪ It's astonishing that one man with very little assistance was able to do this.
It's just astonishing.
♪ Loh: It's approximately 600 square meters, so that's, roughly speaking, 3 tennis courts.
Woman: It's huge.
It's overwhelming.
The sheer scale of it takes you back.
There's so much of it that you could walk around in there for months, years even and still not see everything.
♪ Warnberg: It's hard to imagine how absolutely delighted Julius must be.
Now he can celebrate mass underneath perhaps the greatest work of art in all of Christendom, and he, Julius II, commissioned it.
♪ Loh: Michelangelo envisions 3 different parts of the Old Testament.
There's the creation sequence.
There's the creation of Adam and Eve.
Then there's the story of Noah.
He wants the story to be about the translation of power through all these generations of biblical figures, down to the Pope himself.
Michelangelo begins by painting the flood, and that is why that is the strangest of the panels.
It's crowded, the figures are too small and it's really difficult to read, but as he moves forward into the space of the church, his style starts to loosen up.
The figures become much more simplified, much more dynamic, and much more sculptural... ♪ almost like if Michelangelo were carving out of paint rather than painting.
♪ When I look at the fresco, there's, like, this passion, this wildness.
Everyone's got these expressions.
The hair's blowing, and it's got so much drama going on.
It still brings tears to your eyes and blows you away in this day and age when we're bombarded with imagery.
It's incredible!
Wallace: There's so much there, such richness, that Michelangelo is really suggesting God's ability to create the richness of the world... ♪ and most people finally end up focusing on little fingers that meet one another.
♪ LaChapelle: The creation of Adam, it's so bold, it's so graphic.
It's just reduced down to the bare minimum.
It's become pop art, really.
You show it all over the world and everyone knows, that's Michelangelo.
♪ Wallace: For Julius, this is an immensely successful propagandistic move.
He has created, at the center of Christendom, the most beautiful work of all time.
♪ It was a triumph, of course.
♪ Wallace: As spectacular as it was, it must have been an extremely difficult and deflating moment for Michelangelo.
Dunant: The man must be absolutely physically and emotionally drained.
You do not spend all of those years trying to create the creation of the world without you coming out of it feeling utterly shattered-- spiritually shattered as well as physically shattered.
♪
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