The Sistine Chapel

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the astonishing work of Michelangelo (1477-1564) in this great chapel in the Vatican, firstly the ceiling with images from Genesis (of which the image above is a detail) and later The Last Judgement on the altar wall. For the Papacy, Michelangelo’s achievement was a bold affirmation of the spiritual and political status of the Vatican, of Rome and of the Catholic Church. For the artist himself, already famous as the sculptor of David in Florence, it was a test of his skill and stamina, and of the potential for art to amaze which he realised in his astonishing mastery of the human form.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Catherine Fletcher 4 episodes
  Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University
• Sarah Vowles No other episodes
  The Smirnov Family Curator of Italian and French Prints and Drawings at the British Museum
• Matthias Wivel No other episodes
  The Aud Jebsen Curator of Sixteenth-Century Italian Paintings at the National Gallery

Reading list

• Michelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master
  Hugo Chapman (British Museum Press, 2006) Google Books →
• Michelangelo: His Epic Life
  Martin Gayford (Fig Tree, 2017) Google Books →
• Michelangelo: The Achievement of Fame
  Michael Hirst (Yale University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling
  Ross King (Chatto & Windus, 2002) Google Books →
• Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Ceiling
  Charles Seymour Jr (ed.) (Thames & Hudson, 1972) Google Books →
• Julius II: The Warrior Pope
  Christine Shaw (Wiley-Blackwell, 1993) Google Books →
• Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man and his Times
  William E. Wallace (Cambridge University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• Michelangelo: Six Lectures
  Johannes Wilde (Oxford University Press, 1978) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m0015vh8

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015vh8

Auto-category: 709.2 (Renaissance art)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In 1506, Pope Julius II gave Michelangelo the chance to create, arguably, the greatest work of art in his time or since, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.