On November 1, 1512, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome was shown to the public for the first time. Pope Julius II had asked Michelangelo Buonarroti to take on the painting four years earlier, and the result surprised everyone who climbed the steps.
Michelangelo thought of himself as a sculptor. He had never wanted the job, but he built a wooden scaffold, mixed his own pigments, and lay on his back for most of four years. The ceiling covers about 12,000 square feet and holds more than 300 figures drawn from the Book of Genesis. The Creation of Adam, where two hands almost touch, sits at the center of the vault.
The work was hard. He kept going. Few expected this.
Michelangelo, who had always considered sculpture his true craft, spent the better part of four years on that scaffold with his neck bent back, painting wet plaster before it dried so the images would fuse with the wall and outlast the century that made them. Visitors who came in 1512 saw a ceiling that still reads as one of the boldest acts of painting ever attempted.
The chapel kept its place at the heart of the Catholic Church. Every papal conclave since has met beneath that ceiling, and travelers still queue to see what one reluctant painter finished in the autumn of 1512.