1st November 1512- Michaelangelo's painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is unveiled to the public

It was all happening this week in the 1510's wasn't it?

500 years ago today the people of Rome got to see what Michaelangelo had been up to while lying on scaffolding in a church for the last four years.  This is what constituted a long-awaited release by a major artist in the 16th Century.  Nowadays, the equivalent would be Avatar.  Isn't it weird what progress looks like sometimes?

The painting itself was on the ceiling of a new chapel in the Vatican, which had been called 'Sistine' after the pope who built it called 'Sixtus', which derives from the Greek word for 'polished'.  It's a shame he wasn't bigger on etymology otherwise he might have decided that a shiny surface was appropriate and installed a few mirrors up there instead, thereby beating to the chase by several years whoever it was that actually first got themselves a ceiling like that (my money's on Rod Stewart).

Anyway, 20 years after the chapel was built, the new Pope (Julius II- who I assume went to Eton) decided to get the ceiling painted and asked Michaelangelo a young sculptor from Florence- or California if you've seen Charlton Heston's staggering performance in The Agony and the Ecstasy- to do it.  This was even though Michaelangelo himself was busy at the time sculpting the pope's own tomb for whenever it was going to be needed.  The artist didn't want to do the ceiling and actually ran off to get away from Julius while the Pontiff was visiting France.  Not to preach sermons to football stadiums and kiss the tarmac at the airport, by the way; he was there to fight a war.  That's what popes did back then.  Which probably explains why they had their own tombs on standby.

Once the war was over, Michaelangelo caved and agreed to do the ceiling, probably on the basis that it's not too wise to say no to God's representative on Earth when he's just returned from battering the hell out of the neighbours.

And now he'd agreed to the work, he went to town on it.  That's why it took him four years- which it turned out was a little too long for French-hammering Pope Julius who threatened to throw Michaelangelo off his scaffolding if he didn't get a move on.  Try that next time you've got a painter and decorator round and see if you get a major piece of art out of it.  Even if you are the Holy Father.

There are 343 figures in this work.  344 if you count the
game of Where's Wally which was added in  1973

Once it was finished, Julius' mood probably didn't lighten up much as he held a mass to celebrate the public unveiling of the Michaelangelo's work on the roof.  Now, any Catholic will tell you that when the Pope's giving a mass, you pay attention.  And that's the case even with the modern, preachy, peaceful pontiffs, never mind the warmongering old fashioned ones like Julius who threaten to fling artists off a scaffolding when they're in bit of a tizz.  Yet when Julius tried to deliver his mass in the now-completed Sistine Chapel, he was confronted with a room full of gawping chins as everyone gazed up in the air at the naked people and God and angels and Noah and floods and Adam and Eve and prophets and a-cherub-giving-the-finger (there's one in there).

Luckily for Michaelangelo, Julius went and died within the year- probably having simply angered himself to death, and was replaced by Leo X- the first Pope to have a name that sounds like a Japanese children's cartoon character (except Pope Pikachu: 967-988AD).  He was mightily impressed with Michaelangelo's ceiling and asked him to do some work on the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence which the artist agreed to do, one assumes on the proviso that the new Pope didn't threaten to twat him with a mallet if he took his time.

Unfortunately, the work never got done as the Church was starting to run out of money- as it turns out that fighting wars and commissioning fabulous ceilings costs a bit of gravy.  Leo X needed to raise money fast and started selling absolution for sins to the wealthy of Europe in exchange for cold, hard cash.  This annoyed quite a few members of the church, including a monk in Germany.

His name was Martin Luther and he was sharpening his pencil...