In a place with more than five and a half centuries of history, located in the smallest state of all, elections that intrigue much of the world take place, either for religious, political, social or intellectual reasons.
But they particularly concern around 1.4 billion Catholics, since it is the selection of the Successor of St. Peter, the first Pope ordered by Jesus.
According to that tradition, the uninterrupted line of successors that has since been assured that the messages and teachings that Christ gave to the apostles have been transmitted and remained unchanged.
The cardinals with voice and vote in the transcendental decision on which of the princes of the Roman Apostolic Catholic Church will be the Supreme Pontiff congregated for the first time in the Sistine chapel in 1492.
But it was not the only headquarters of conclaves, until in 1878 it became permanent.
Since then, during that parenthesis in which a Pope is chosen, it is in the thin chimney that is on his roof and not in his magnificent works of art where the eyes of the world are fixed, waiting for smoke signals, the only clues of what is happening inside.
And, from the moment in which it is proclaimed extra omnesand all those who are not part of the conclave retire, the cardinals are locked between those four walls and with a roof covering the sky.
It sounds claustrophobic, but what walls and what roof!
The Sistine Chapel is a work of art that has left millions marvels throughout the centuries.
Some remain speechless; Others, like the German scholar Goethe, find them:
“Until you have seen the Sistine Chapel, you will not have an adequate idea of what man is able to achieve.”
1. Miguel Ángel wrote a poem regretting the difficulties of beautifying one of the most sacred places in Christianity
It is inconsistent that Michelangelo created such a sublime work in the vault of the Sistine Chapel against his will.
He always considered himself more sculptor than painter.
When Pope Julius II asked him to take care of the chapel, he was working in the marble tomb of the Pontiff and never had a complete fresco before.
Although the commission came from such high authority, he tried to reject him twice, but finally capitulated.
One of the most reliable evidence of its reluctance is a sonnet He sent his friend Giovanni Di Pistoia in 1509, just one year after starting his work on the Sistine ceiling, a task that would run for three more years.
His complaints and ailments were already numerous.
He had the inflamed thyroid gland, he said, the crooked and hooded backbone, the oppressed and twisted chest, the constantly stressed thighs and the rear painful by the effort.
As if that were not enough, “My brush, above me all the time, drip painting so that my face is a good floor for excrement!“
To paint the roof of 3,300 meters, it had to be stopped in a precarious scaffold of 18 meters high, with the neck bent back and the arm raised above the head.
Much of the time worked in solitude, because, as the restoration work in the Sistine Chapel demonstrated, its frescoes were carried out largely by their hand, with the exception of relatively minor parts made by attendees.
His mental state was preciputed.
“Because I’m stuck as like this,
My thoughts are crazy stupidities, perfidious:
Anyone shoots badly for a cerbatana crooked“
And he also worried that painting in these conditions would affect the work, hence he declared, at the end of the poem:
“My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protects my honor.
I’m not in the right place, I’m not a painter“
2. In “Adam’s creation” another human appears (and is a woman)
The central image of the roof of the chapel, which shows God creating Adam, with his fingers almost touching himself, is one of the most shocking in the entire building.
As he told the BBC The historian of the Renaissance Catherine Fletcher, is “one of the few paintings that are seen everywhere.”
“Together with Mona Lisa, it is possibly the only painting of Western art that reaches that iconic level.”
The work not only amazed by his great mastery, but also for his great originality.
God appears as a superhero, dragged by the wind, muscular, with tight clothes that reveal his legs and a mantle.
The act of creation, made with the tip of the finger, was also invention of Miguel Ángel.
But there is something that, given how hypnotic these two hands are in the center, can go unnoticed.
In fact, it was not until the 1870s, after the first publication of photographs of the Sistine ceiling, which was observed a significant presence under the arm of God.
It is among figures wrapped in the creator’s oval mantle, and she is a woman who directs Adam an attentive look.
The most widely accepted interpretation is presented for the first time by the English art critic Walter Pater (1839-1894), who said that the person to whom God covers under his arm is Eva, before his creation.
The other 11 figures, he added, symbolically represents the souls of the parent to be born of Adam and Eva: the entire humanity.
The creator, Pater said, “comes with the forms of the things that will be, the woman and her progeny, in the fold of her mantle.”
“She seems very aware of what happens,” Matthias Wivel of the National Gallery in London told BBC.
“God is giving Adam a soul, he is giving him free will, and that is what Eva personifies,” he added.
More recently, it has been stated that the woman who occupies that place of honor with God is the Virgin Mary.
This theory arose following the painted child next to the female figure, on whom the fingers of God pose gently; It is discussed if it could be the child Jesus, who waits patiently with his father.
3. In addition to Miguel Ángel’s, works by other great artists cover the walls of the chapel
When Pope Sixto IV commissioned the construction of the chapel that bears his name, in 1480, Miguel Ángel was only 5 years old.
They would spend almost three decades before the famous Renaissance teacher climbed the high scaffold and transform the roof with his brush.
But that does not mean that it was blank: the vault was painted blue with golden stars.
It was a sky created by Piermatte D’Amelia, one of the artists summoned to decorate the sacred enclosure in a surprisingly short period, just 11 months, from July 1481 to May 1482.
The team was made up of the greatest painters of the previous generation, including Sandro Botticelli, Pinturicchio, Cosimo Rosselli, Pietro Perugino (Master of the painter and architect Rafael) and Domenico Ghirlandio (Master of Miguel Ángel).
The plan included a cycle of Old and another of the New Testamentwith narratives that began on the wall of the altar, continued along the long walls of the chapel and ended on the entrance wall.
Above a gallery of papal portraits, which were completed below with representations of painted curtains.
Twelve frescoes from those artists of the fifteenth century continue to beautifully show scenes of the life of Christ and Moses on the walls of the chapel.
They used to be 14, but when, in 1533, Clemente VII de Médici commissioned Michelangelo to paint “the final judgment” on the wall of the altar, the first two episodes of those stories were lost, painted by Perugino, as well as the altarpiece of the Virgin Asunta among the apostles.
4. An artist covered the genitals in “The Last Judgment”
“The final judgment” was painted 25 years after the roof of the Sistine Chapel, when Miguel Ángel was 60 years old.
The task was overwhelming: visualize the end of time and the beginning of eternity.
No one better than him to carry it out.
The fresco masterfully reflects and on a blue background the textual meaning of the apocalypse.
The term comes from the Greek apokálypsis which means “strip what it covers”, “remove the veil”, “discover”, “unveil”, “reveal.”
Thus, many of the more than 300 figures surrounding Christ, almost all masculine, are naked.
When Biagio da Cesena, the master of papal ceremonies, complained about such indecency, Miguel Ángel’s response was immortalized in the fresco as judge of the convicted and hell.
He painted him naked except a snake around his hips and bites the genitals.
However, Biagio was not the only scandalized, and criticism did not stop even with the artist’s death.
When the Council of Trento forbade “lascivious” art, the work was convicted as improper.
In 1564 Pope Pío V ordered Daniele da Volterra, who had been an apprentice of Miguel Ángel, who cover the nakedness of the characters painted by your teacher.
That earned Daniele the unfortunate nickname Il Braghettone or “the creator of panties.”
Four centuries later, when the “final judgment” was done in the 1980s and 1990s, the dilemma of whether conserving or eliminating the additions that Michelangelo left in sight was presented.
The solution was to leave some traces of censorship as evidence of the dominant mentality of the 16th century, and recover as much as possible the original aspect of the fresco.
Thus, San Pedro, San Bartolomé and Santa Catalina de Alejandría continue to wear the garments created by Il Braghettone.
5. Machu Picchu and the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel are from the same era
The Italian rebirth and the Inca empire do not usually associate with each other, but both were phenomena of the same era.
The Citadel of Machu Picchu, located in the Andes in Peru, was completed around 1450, in the apogee of the power of the empire, and was probably occupied until around 1530.
More than 10,500 kilometers away, while the Incas emperors continued to reign in their incomparable withdrawal at the top of the mountain, the great Italian artists created their frescoes in the Vatican Sistine Chapel.
And Machu Picchu was still inhabited when, in 1512, Miguel Ángel was giving the final touches to his masterpiece on the roof.
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