Book description
In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The thirty-three-year-old Michelangelo
had very little experience of the physically and technically taxing
art of fresco; and, at twelve thousand square feet, the ceiling
represented one of the largest such projects ever attempted.
Nevertheless, for the next four years he and a hand-picked team of
assistants laboured over the vast ceiling, making thousands of
drawings and spending back-breaking hours on a scaffold fifty feet
above the floor. The result was one of the greatest masterpieces of
all time. This fascinating book tells the story of those four
extraordinary years and paints a magnificent picture of day-to-day
life on the Sistine scaffolding - and outside, in the upheaval of
early sixteenth-century Rome.
Ross King is the author of
Brunelleschi's Dome
, a highly praised account of how the Renaissance architect Brunelleschi
constructed the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence (voted
Non-Fiction Book of the Year by American Independent Booksellers in
2001), as well as
The Judgement of Paris
and
Leonardo and the Last Supper
. He has also written two novels,
Domino
and
Ex Libris
. He lives in Oxford.
