Summary
  • The Sistine Chapel is the Private Chapel of the Pope.
  • Conclave or the election of the Popes take place here.
  • It is named after Pope Sixtus the Fourth who built it.
  • The building took six years to build: from 1475 to 1481.
  • There have been three phases of paint work done inside it.
  • In 1482 Perugino, Botticelli and Ghirlandaio paint it.
  • The middle of the side walls contains their work.
  • In 1508 to 1512 Michelangelo paints the ceiling.
  • It is regarded as his greatest work.
  • From 1535 to 1541 he paints The Last Judgement/altar wall.
  • In the late 1990s layers of soot and smoke are removed.

The Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel is the private chapel of the Pope and is where any Pope in the last five hundred years has been elected. Conclave takes place here. It is located within the Vatican Museums.

Completed in 1481, it is located to the right of St. Peter's and is named after the man who paid for it; Pope Sixtus IV. There has always been a private papal chapel at the Vatican, and by the 1400s the previous Cappella Maggiore or Major Chapel was in disrepair.

Pope Sixtus commissioned Giovannino de Dolci and Baccio Pontelli, two italian architects, to build him a new chapel based on the proportions of the Temple of Solomon as given in the Torah or Old Testament.

When it was finished six years later some of the best Italian painters decorated the inside with scenes from the old and new testaments and these paintings, particularly by Michelangelo, are regarded as revolutionary for their time.

Side Walls: Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio

Once built, the best Florentine painters were called in to paint the chapel. The key painters were Petro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli and Domenico Ghirlandaio.

They divided the side walls in to three sections.
On the bottom of the walls would be blank squares resembling drapes or curtains. Tapestries were later designed by Raphael to hang over these blank areas in the chapel during conclave.

At the top of the walls, on either side of the windows would be paintings of the first 32 Popes going around in chronological order. The middle of the side walls were the most important. There would be 16 paintings, 8 scenes from the life of Moses and 8 scenes from the life of Jesus. 6 remain of each.

The most famous of these is Christ Handing of the Keys to St. Peter by Perugino. At this point the ceiling was painted blue with yellow stars in circular formation, looking like the sky.
After this, no further painting was envisioned.

The Ceiling: Michelangelo

In 1508 a crack appeared in the ceiling, which at that stage was entirely blue with small yellow stars.
Pope Julius II asked Bramante to fix the crack, which he did, and Bramante recommended that Michelangelo should repaint the ceiling. The Pope agreed but Michelangelo, a sculptor, did not and arguments ensued.

The original contract stipulated he has to paint the 12 apostles, but Michelangelo rejected this and went with his own plan, which the Pope approved. In the middle he painted scenes from genesis, with God touching Adam in the very center. In the four corners he painted the miraculous saving of the Israeli people. In the triangles he painted the ancestors of Jesus and the old testament and pagan prophets around them.

The ceiling took him four years to do and is regarded as his best work. Hundreds of years of lighting candles covered the ceiling with a layer of smoke which was cleaned before the milenium, revealing Michelangelo to be a superb colorist.

The Last Judgement: Michelangelo

In 1535 a new Pope asked Michelangelo to go in to the chapel one last time.
The Last Judgement or Judgement Day occupies the whole altar wall and shows Jesus sorting out the dead; the elect go to heaven at the top and damned go to hell at the bottom. In the center souls move up and down in purgatory. Now in his sixties, the Last Judgement took him six years to finish.

Conclave

Conclave is the election of the Pope, which occurs in the Sistine Chapel.
I explain the process of this, including the infamous black and white smoke, on the tour.

The Sistine Chapel is covered in detail on all my tours. It is located within the Vatican Museums, you cannot go directly in to the Sistine Chapel and have not been able to so since the year 2000. If you would like to see the Chapel as soon as possible, I recommend taking a tour in the morning, as in the afternoons two hours of museums are necessary before the Chapel can be viewed. In the morning time only one hour of museums is necessary before the Chapel can be viewed.

Photo Policy
The pictures above are authorised photos of the Sistine Chapel, no one is permitted to take photos of or film inside the chapel under any circumstances.
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