Sistine Chapel Ceiling - Stylistic Analysis and Artistic Legacy

Stylistic Analysis and Artistic Legacy

Michelangelo was the artistic heir to the great 15th century sculptors and painters of Florence. He learnt his trade first under the direction of a masterly fresco painter, Domenico Ghirlandaio, known for two great fresco cycles in the Sassetti Chapel and Tornabuoni Chapel, and for his contribution to the cycle of paintings on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. As a student Michelangelo studied and drew from the works of the two most renowned Florentine fresco painters of the early Renaissance, Giotto and Masaccio. Masaccio's figures of Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden had a profound effect on the depiction of the nude in general, and in particular on the use of the nude figure to convey human emotion. Helen Gardner says that in the hands of Michelangelo "the body is simply the manifestation of the soul, or of a state of mind and character".

Michelangelo was also almost certainly influenced by the paintings of Luca Signorelli whose paintings, particularly the Death and Resurrection Cycle in Orvieto Cathedral contain a great number of nudes and inventive figurative compositions. In Bologna, Michelangelo saw the relief sculptures of Jacopo della Quercia around the doors of the cathedral. In Michelangelo's depiction of the Creation of Eve the whole composition, the form of the figures and the relatively conservative concept of the relationship between Eve and her Creator adheres closely to Jacopo's design. Other panels on the ceiling, most particularly the iconic Creation of Adam show "...unprecedented invention".

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was to have a profound effect upon other artists, even before it was completed. Vasari, in his Life of Raphael, tells us that Bramante, who had the keys to the chapel, let Raphael in to examine the paintings in Michelangelo's absence. On seeing Michelangelo's prophets, Raphael went back to the picture of the Prophet Isaiah that he was painting on a column in the Church of Sant'Agostino and, according to Vasari, although it was finished, he scraped it off the wall and repainted it in a much more powerful manner, in imitation of Michelangelo. John O'Malley points out that even earlier than the Isaiah is Raphael's inclusion of the figure of Heraclitus in the School of Athens, a brooding figure similar to Michelangelo's Jeremiah, but with the countenace of Michelangelo himself, and leaning on a block of marble.

There was hardly a design element on the ceiling that was not subsequently imitated: the fictive architecture, the muscular anatomy, the foreshortening, the dynamic motion, the luminous colouration, the haunting expressions of the figures in the lunettes, the abundance of putti. Gabriele Bartz and Eberhard König have said of the Ignudi, "There is no image that has had a more lasting effect on following generations than this. Henceforth similar figures disported themselves in innumerable decorative works, be they painted, formed in stucco or even sculpted."

Within Michelangelo's own work, the chapel ceiling led to the later and more Mannerist painting of the Last Judgement in which the crowded compositions gave full rein to his inventiveness in painting contorted and foreshortened figures expressing despair or jubilation. Among the artists in whose work can be seen the direct influence of Michelangelo are Pontormo, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio, Tintoretto, Annibale Carracci, Paolo Veronese and El Greco.

In January 2007, it was claimed that as many as 10,000 visitors passed through the Vatican Museums in a day and that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is the biggest attraction. The Vatican, anxious at the possibility that the newly restored frescoes will suffer damage, announced plans to reduce visiting hours and raise the price in an attempt to discourage visitors.

Five hundred years earlier Vasari had said "The whole world came running when the vault was revealed, and the sight of it was enough to reduce them to stunned silence."