Four three years (1508 - 1511) Michelangelo climbed scaffolding in the chapel to his perch about 65 feet above the chapels floor. From This perch, he painted more then 300 massive human figures onto the 5,8000 square-foot ceiling. It was messy, tiring work. Michelangelo wrote the following pome vividly describing his daily agony.
My stomach is thrust toward my chin,
My beard curls up, toward the sky,
My head leans right over into my back,
my chest is like that of an old shrew,
The brush endlessly dripping onto my face,
Has coated it with a multi-colored paving.
Though as the paint dribbled into his eyes and down his face Michelangelo never lost sight of his inspiring design. The ceiling contains nine paintings illustrating the creation (Separation of Light From Darkness, Creation of the Moon, Stars, and Planets, and Separation of Land and Water), the story of Adam (Creation of Adam, Creation of Eve, and The Temptation and Fall), and the story of Noah (Noah's Sacrifice, and The Flood, Drunkenness of Noah). Toward the center, he painted the scene that was meant to compel the viewer's attention. This scene "The Creation of Adam" God is reaching out to infuse the spirit of life into Adam, the first man. One art historian pointed out, "An electric charge seemed to pass between their fingers."
Humanists combined respect for classical learning with supreme confidence in human ability. Michelangelo's painting represents humanism in the way it glorified the beauty and order in nature, while in older...