WHY WAS MICHELANGELO SO RELUCTANT TO ACCEPT THE COMMISSION TO FRESCO THE SISTINE CEILING?
If Michelangelo had his way he never would have painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He considered himself first and foremost a sculptor, not a painter. Though he had some training as a painter, when h: got the commission paint the vault he had not worked m fresco for almost twenty years. He therefore had no appetite whatsoever for the job. Instead, he wanted to work on what he considered a much more prestigious and appealing commission- sculpting the tomb of Pope Julius II. It’s a great irony, of course, that we remember him for the ceiling fresco, not for the papal tomb. WOULD VISITORS TO ROM E TODAY BE SURPRISED BY ROME OF THE 1500s? Rome was kown as the caput mundi, the capital of the world”, but it was far from worthy of this title in 1500.The Rome we know today, with its many fountains and beautiful baroque churches, is a product of several centuries of rebuilding. The City looked very different m the early 1500s, when it was struggling to become something more than a depop
