Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling
  • Published: 1 June 2006
  • ISBN: 9781844139323
  • Imprint: Pimlico
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $39.99

Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling

Formats & editions
EBook
31 Oct 2012
Paperback
1 Jun 2006
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The extraordinary story behind Michelangelo's masterpiece by the author of Brunelleschi's Dome.

In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The thirty-three-year-old Michelangelo had very little experience of the physically and technically taxing art of fresco; and, at twelve thousand square feet, the ceiling represented one of the largest such projects ever attempted.

Nevertheless, for the next four years he and a hand-picked team of assistants laboured over the vast ceiling, making thousands of drawings and spending back-breaking hours on a scaffold fifty feet above the floor. The result was one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. This fascinating book tells the story of those four extraordinary years and paints a magnificent picture of day-to-day life on the Sistine scaffolding - and outside, in the upheaval of early sixteenth-century Rome.
  • Published: 1 June 2006
  • ISBN: 9781844139323
  • Imprint: Pimlico
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $39.99
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About the author

Ross King

Ross King is a renowned expert in the Italian Renaissance. He is the author of numerous bestselling and acclaimed books including The Bookseller of Florence, Brunelleschi's Dome, Machiavelli, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling and Leonardo and the Last Supper. He lives just outside Oxford.

portrait photo of Ross King

Also by Ross King

The Bookseller of Florence
Brunelleschi's Dome
The Judgement of Paris
Ex Libris
Domino
See all

Praise for Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling

Ross King deftly stitches modern Michelangelo scholarship into his fluent and gripping narrative. The result is a delightful book that overturns many legends

Independent

A fascinating and carefully researched account of day-to-day life atop the Sistine scaffolding

The Times

A narrative that never falls back on exaggeration or deviates from the facts

Sunday Times

We learn an enormous amount by reading this book; King's grasp of and research into the period seem all-encompassing

Spectator
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