Author | : Ross King |
File Size | : 47,6 Mb |
Publisher | : Random House |
Language | : English |
Release Date | : 31 October 2012 |
ISBN | : 9781446418833 |
Pages | : 398 pages |
Michelangelo And The Pope s Ceiling by Ross King Book PDF Summary
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.