[11] The pope summoned Michelangelo to Rome in early 1505 and commissioned him to design his tomb, forcing the artist to leave Florence with his planned Battle of Cascina painting unfinished.

This is supported by Michelangelo's biographer Ascanio Condivi's statement that the artist read and reread the Old Testament while he was painting the ceiling, drawing his inspiration from the words of the scripture, rather than from the established traditions of sacral art.

"[38] At the age of 37, Michelangelo's reputation rose such that he was called il divino,[13][14] and he was henceforth regarded as the greatest artist of his time, who had elevated the status of the arts themselves, a recognition that lasted the rest of his long life.

[39] The preparatory work on the ceiling was complete in late July the same year and on 4 February 1510, Francesco Albertini recorded that Michelangelo had "decorated the upper, arched part with very beautiful pictures and gold".

The majority theory is that the ceiling's main frescoes were applied and painted in phases, with the scaffolding each time dismantled and moved to another part of the room, beginning at the chapel's west end.

[40] Michelangelo painted the figures at a larger scale than in the previous section; this is attributed to the artist's ability to effectively judge the foreshortening and composition from ground level for the first time.

[39] On 10 June 1508, the cardinals complained of the intolerable dust and noise generated by the work; by 27 July 1508, the process was complete and the corner spandrels of the chapel had been converted into the doubled-spandrel triangular pendentives of the finished design.

[39] Restoration overseer Fabrizio Mancinelli speculates that Michelangelo may have only installed scaffolding platforms in one half of the room at a time to cut the cost of timber and to allow light to pass through the uncovered windows.

[42] The entire ceiling is a fresco, which is an ancient method for painting murals that relies upon a chemical reaction between damp lime plaster and water-based pigments to permanently fuse the work into the wall.

Michelangelo's illustrated poem reads: I’ ho già fatto un gozzo in questo stento, coma fa l’acqua a’ gatti in Lombardia o ver d’altro paese che si sia, c’a forza ’l ventre appicca sotto ’l mento.

E’ lombi entrati mi son nella peccia, e fo del cul per contrapeso groppa, e’ passi senza gli occhi muovo invano.

[58] I've grown a goitre by dwelling in this den– As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy, Or in what other land they hap to be– Which drives the belly close beneath the chin: My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in, Fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin.

Michelangelo's reference to the 'Laocoön Group' in the 'Brazen Serpent' has been noted above, but the artist also alluded to this sculpture in other areas of the Sistine ceiling, including the 'Punishment of Haman',[61] and a pair of ignudi between the 'Sacrifice of Noah' and the 'Prophet Isiah'.

[64] Below the painted cornice around the central rectangular area is a lower register depicting a continuation of the chapel's walls as a trompe-l'œil architectural framework against which figures press, with powerful modelling.

[14] The ceiling at the chapel's four corners forms a doubled spandrel painted with salvific scenes from the Old Testament: The Brazen Serpent, The Crucifixion of Haman, Judith and Holofernes, and David and Goliath.

[65] Some experts, including Benjamin Blech and Vatican art historian Enrico Bruschini, have also noted less overt subject matter, which they describe as being "concealed" and "forbidden.

The ceiling's creation narrative ends with Noah's drunkenness, which Jesuit theologian John W. O'Malley says could be interpreted as focusing on the separation of Gentiles from Jews as the chosen people.

The prophet Jonah, recognizable over the altar by the great fish beside him,[Fig 1] is cited by Jesus in the gospels as being related to his own coming death and resurrection,[68][Src 1] which Staale Sinding-Larsen says "activates the Passion motif".

[80] Modern scholars have sought, as yet unsuccessfully, to determine a written source of the theological program of the ceiling and have questioned whether or not it was entirely devised by Michelangelo, who was both an avid reader of the Bible and is considered to be a genius.

[81] Art historian Anthony Bertram argues that the artist expressed his inner turmoil in the work, saying: "The principal opposed forces in this conflict were his passionate admiration for classical beauty and his profound, almost mystical Catholicism, his [presumed] homosexuality, and his horror of carnal sin combined with a lofty Platonic concept of love.

Ten broad painted cross-ribs of travertine cross the ceiling and divide it into alternately wide and narrow pictorial spaces, a grid that gives all the figures their defined place.

Other commissions by Julius in the same year, for ceilings in Santa Maria del Popolo and the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican Palace, also had geometric frameworks, all probably influenced by the Imperian Roman remains of Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli.

[49][96] In the final panel of this sequence, Michelangelo combines two contrasting scenes into one panel,[Fig 6] that of Adam and Eve taking fruit from the forbidden tree (a fig and not an apple tree as commonly depicted in Western Christian art),[97] Eve trustingly taking it from the hand of the Serpent (depicted as Lilith) and Adam eagerly picking it for himself, as well as their banishment from the Garden of Eden, where they have lived in the company of God, to the world outside where they have to fend for themselves and experience death.

Charles de Tolnay's neoplatonic interpretation sees the story of Noah at the beginning and the act of creation by God as the conclusion of the process of deificatio and the return from physical to spiritual being.

On these curving shapes Michelangelo has painted four scenes from biblical stories that are associated with the salvation of Israel by four great male and female heroes of the Jews: Moses, Esther, David and Judith.

[116] Writing in the 19th century, English art critic John Ruskin compares The Brazen Serpent[Fig 24] favourably to the canonical classical statue group Laocoön and His Sons, which Michelangelo saw upon its discovery in 1506.

[118] Attacking the sculpture's unnaturalistic snakes as "pieces of tape with heads to them" and criticizing the unrealistic struggle, he praises the painting[118] in the rendering of these circumstances; the binding of the arms to the body, and the knotting of the whole mass of agony together, until we hear the crashing of the bones beneath the grisly sliding of the engine folds.

Note also the expression in all the figures of another circumstance, the torpor and cold numbness of the limbs induced by the serpent venom, which, though justifiably over-looked by the sculptor of the Laocoön, as well as by Virgil – in consideration of the rapidity of the death by crushing, adds infinitely to the power of the Florentine's conception.Judith and Holofernes depicts the episode in the Book of Judith.

[154][Fig 30] In 2007, the Vatican, anxious at the possibility that the newly restored frescoes would suffer damage, announced plans to reduce visiting hours and raise the price in an attempt to discourage visitors.

If you look closely at the angels who attend the scary prophetess on the Sistine ceiling known as the Cumaean Sibyl, you will see that one of them has stuck his thumb between his fingers in that mysteriously obscene gesture that visiting fans are still treated to today at Italian football matches.