I can’t imagine doing the job: Lying on one’s back or crouched in a stoop, day after day in imperfect lighting, trying to do something precise and lasting, something of color and grace of form, and above all, something not only inspiring, but truly uplifting. I could never have painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Unless.
Unless stick figures and painting outside the lines were in vogue. No. Making a beautiful work of art, a detailed painting on a ceiling high above the floor, is beyond my capacity. Just think of the discomfort in doing the project. Just think of the stillness. Can’t get any exercise save climbing the scaffolding.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against the work. I’ve painted ceilings, all solid white of course with no distinguishable details save spatter on uncovered sections of the floor. Typically, I use a roller rather than a brush to do most of the job. I’m going to guess here, but I don’t think Michelangelo Buonarroti used a roller on the ceiling (though he could certainly have saved himself some considerable time and effort and definitely avoided discomfort because that ceiling has an area of 6,000 square feet).
Four years on one painting project! The work took its toll on his prone and stooping body, or so he writes in verse to Giovanni Da Pistoja. In the poem entitled “On the Painting of the Sistine Chapel,” he complains, “foul I fare.” Here are some of its lines:
“I’ve gown a goiter by dwelling in this den…
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.
My loins into my paunch like levers grind:
My buttock like a crupper bears my weight…
In front my skin grows loose and long; behind,
By bending it becomes more taut and straight….”*
Before and above him 300 figures, none of them sticklike, stick on the ceiling, defying gravity. And prime in theme floats one supreme Creator in the clouds with an outstretched finger ready to impart life to a species just as Michelangelo’s atrophied muscles reached upward to create his art. In a line I excluded from the above verses the artist declares the painting to be “the fruit of squinting brain and eye.”
So, between 1508 and 1512 the artist worked to paint a ceiling and sacrificed his body. For centuries after, millions, if not billions, of people have looked with wonder at a work whose detail is too great to see in a single glance. Only our own squinting focuses our brains on the detail. Michelangelo asks in his poem, as he asks all of us by extension, “Come then, Giovanni, try/ To succor my dead pictures and my fame/Since foul I fare and painting is my shame.”
Shame? Faring foul? Isn’t it interesting to see the Sistine Chapel through Michelangelo’s squinting eyes? We see the beautiful art; he saw the labor and sacrifice. Should we apply such a perspective to everyone’s work, even the most mundane, but nevertheless still detailed creation? I would ordinarily leave you with this as a point of departure for your own thinking, but I’ll give an example. Just about every workplace, every building that houses employees, is a chapel painted by someone’s efforts, risks, and sacrifice. We usually can’t see the details unless we squint.
* http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10314/pg10314-images.html
Unless stick figures and painting outside the lines were in vogue. No. Making a beautiful work of art, a detailed painting on a ceiling high above the floor, is beyond my capacity. Just think of the discomfort in doing the project. Just think of the stillness. Can’t get any exercise save climbing the scaffolding.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against the work. I’ve painted ceilings, all solid white of course with no distinguishable details save spatter on uncovered sections of the floor. Typically, I use a roller rather than a brush to do most of the job. I’m going to guess here, but I don’t think Michelangelo Buonarroti used a roller on the ceiling (though he could certainly have saved himself some considerable time and effort and definitely avoided discomfort because that ceiling has an area of 6,000 square feet).
Four years on one painting project! The work took its toll on his prone and stooping body, or so he writes in verse to Giovanni Da Pistoja. In the poem entitled “On the Painting of the Sistine Chapel,” he complains, “foul I fare.” Here are some of its lines:
“I’ve gown a goiter by dwelling in this den…
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.
My loins into my paunch like levers grind:
My buttock like a crupper bears my weight…
In front my skin grows loose and long; behind,
By bending it becomes more taut and straight….”*
Before and above him 300 figures, none of them sticklike, stick on the ceiling, defying gravity. And prime in theme floats one supreme Creator in the clouds with an outstretched finger ready to impart life to a species just as Michelangelo’s atrophied muscles reached upward to create his art. In a line I excluded from the above verses the artist declares the painting to be “the fruit of squinting brain and eye.”
So, between 1508 and 1512 the artist worked to paint a ceiling and sacrificed his body. For centuries after, millions, if not billions, of people have looked with wonder at a work whose detail is too great to see in a single glance. Only our own squinting focuses our brains on the detail. Michelangelo asks in his poem, as he asks all of us by extension, “Come then, Giovanni, try/ To succor my dead pictures and my fame/Since foul I fare and painting is my shame.”
Shame? Faring foul? Isn’t it interesting to see the Sistine Chapel through Michelangelo’s squinting eyes? We see the beautiful art; he saw the labor and sacrifice. Should we apply such a perspective to everyone’s work, even the most mundane, but nevertheless still detailed creation? I would ordinarily leave you with this as a point of departure for your own thinking, but I’ll give an example. Just about every workplace, every building that houses employees, is a chapel painted by someone’s efforts, risks, and sacrifice. We usually can’t see the details unless we squint.
* http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10314/pg10314-images.html
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