Understanding The Sistine Chapel & Its Paintings - The BAS Library
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Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling

Understanding The Sistine Chapel & Its Paintings

By Suzanne F. Singer

Pope Sixtus IV built the Sistine Chapel in Rome in 1475–1481 as his private chapel. The chapel, which bears the pope’s name, appears from the outside to be a fortlike rectangular structure. The interior of the chapel is a plain rectangular space 130 feet long and 45 feet wide with a shallow ceiling vault rising to a maximum height of 60 feet above the chapel floor. Six windows penetrate each of the long walls. As we describe the Chapel paintings, turn to the pictures on the following pages. The worshipper enters the chapel through its eastern side, on the […]

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Footnotes

1.

In antiquity a sibyl was a woman endowed with the gift of prophecy. These prophecies were later interpreted by the Church as showing that the pagan world had presentiments of Christianity.