2024, Art, books, History, Movies

Sistine Chapel

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A couple of weeks ago, we hit the 512th anniversary of when the Sistine Chapel was first opened to the public for viewing; Michelangelo Buonarotti spent seven years working on that ceiling between 1508 and 1512.

The story of his work on the Chapel and his relationship with Pope Julius II is pretty well documented by Irving Stone’s The Agony & the Ecstasy, which came out in 1961.  I haven’t read it but reviews have always said that it’s a fairly well done biography, using mostly primary sources including a lot of Michelangelo’s letters and writings.

I’ve seen the movie several times – it got hugely good press when it came out in `65.  I think it portrays a pretty accurate look at the times although modern reviewers wish that the movie had been more “spicy” and suggest that Michelangelo’s life was more passionate than shown– that he wasn’t just a roboton with veins of paint (a great line by Rex Harrison in the movie – “What runs in Michelangelo’s veins is not blood – it’s paint”).

I’ve been lucky enough to visit the Sistine Chapel and it IS incredible.  However I can’t help but wonder at how Michelangelo could have labored for seven years on the project.  In fact, it turns out that a couple of decades later, he returned to work on The Last Judgments of Popes paintings.  So technically MORE than seven years.

A project taking that long would make me crazy.  My “all flowers, no grass” program in the front yard was a 20-year endeavor, but it was short spurts each year, nothing in comparison to hand painting an entire chapel.  The front porch project took four years but except for the two LONG days that tim and I spent sand-blasting the old stucco off, it didn’t seem like an overwhelming to-do.

I’m not sure how I would keep up my motivation for such a big job that would take so long.

What’s the longest project you’ve worked on?

21 thoughts on “Sistine Chapel”

  1. I wrote all of the scripture lessons for the entire 3-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary, which meant (4x52x3)+ (4x about 15 x 3) hymns for Congregational singing. That was a LOT of song writing. It took years. They haven’t (as you might well imagine) “taken flight”. Most will remain, like the line in Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence”, Songs that voices will never share.

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      1. Yes. It was very satisfying, because it honed a craft that I had developed about 20 years ago, and it allowed me, as an old guy, to play with words and tunes. If you’d like to see some of it, go to aboksu.wordpress.com and scroll to your heart’s delight (or until your stomach turns).

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  2. The flooring at Mercy Medical Springfield, Ohio took 10 months.
    No dogs or cats were eaten.
    The Vatican is spectacular.
    We took the ever narrowing path up to the Sistina. I’m certain that the x and I spoke less than a dozen words while trying to absorb the paintings.
    The flooring was pretty amazing too.

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    1. I also saw the Sistine Chapel. My neck hurt from looking at it. I really wanted to just lay on the floor for an hour and look at each little scene, one by one. But it was too crowded. I read “The Agony…” as a teen during my reading binges. Stone seemed to gloss over the fact that Michaelangelo was a homosexual, as fits the era it was written.

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  3. The Sistine Chapel IS impressive, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t squeeze seven years into the interim between 1508 and 1512. I haven’t read the book or seen the movie, but I can imagine that the job was a royal pain in the posterior; it probably felt like seven years. I have a feeling that’s how the coming four years are going to feel as well. I’ll see myself out now.

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  5. Roughly five years to write “Straight River.” Two+ to write the original, then a break to write “Castle Danger,” then 2.5 to rewrite and revise until I thought it was as good as “Castle Danger.” Mind you, that wasn’t 40 hours per week of writing. I’m slow, so it was more like 15-20 hours per week at most.

    Other than that, my wife might say I’m a 46.5 years-long work in progress. But I have no idea how she envisions me when she’s “finished.” 🙂

    Chris in Owatonna

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  6. Rise and Shine, Babooons,

    I suppose my longterm project would be re-modeling the house we live in now. When we moved here 27 years ago it was pretty shabby. Piece by piece we have added on and remodeled it with the help of several very skilled contractors. During that time we found (alarmingly), aluminum wiring, cigarette butts in the attic, stashes of beer cans from the original contractor who was an alcoholic, cattywampus walls, leaky plumbing, black mold in two places, and two of the weirdest configuration of rooms ever (coat closet behind the entry door and jutting into the garage, an inaccessible furnace room). But the location of the house is why we purchased it. You can fix the house but not the location. It has taken patience, but it is satisfying.

    My next longterm project will be activism. I plan to address our political situation in local, small ways with projects that allow me to hope for the future and not feel swamped by despair. But the situation in which we find ourselves is not acceptable. I am now an old lady with nothing to lose, so I will do what I can.

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  7. Some of the books in my collection of nineteenth century material are ones I acquired over 50 years ago, so I guess that’s a constant and a long-term project.

    Initially, my response to the question was that my longest-term projects were the ones I haven’t finished yet, but it’s unlikely I’ll live that long.

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  8. In Robbinsdale, the sauna Husband built was a decade-long project, in that he originally bought the cedar boards during our first run in Winona, and then didn’t actually build it until two moves and we landed in Robbinsdale…
    And our screen porch took years of thought before coming to fruition.

    Asparagus bed also comes to mind…

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