Michelangelo And The Sistine Chapel

The story behind the timeless Renaissance revealed.

Michelangelo's frescoes on the Vatican's Sistine Chapel ceiling are arguably one of the greatest masterpieces of western art. The text and color images in this volume together explore central themes concerning this extraordinary fresco style, bringing information into focus for the general reader and for the tens of thousands of people who visit this masterpiece yearly. 36 color plates.

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.

Januszczak (literary editor, art critic, and now arts editor for the Brit's Channel 4) has written his impressions of the restoration of Christianity's greatest masterpiece. Witty, deeply-informed, biased, and, at spots, murky with allusion, it is a lively and charming, if very personal, commentary. No bibliography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Located in the Villa Belvedere in the Vatican and completed 1n 1574 by the great Renaissance architect, Donato Bramante, with extraordinarily ingenious architecture, Bramante's staircase, then referred to as "lumacha," or "snail," still garners the greatest wonder and admiration. It has survived--almost completely, in its original form. The book shows beautiful and detailed photographs and includes extensive pictorial documentation on the Vatican and its environs in the 16th and 17th century.

Describes events leading up to the creation of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, with information about the life of Michelangelo, as a man and an artist; and includes discussion of the controversial restoration project of the 1980s, with before and after photographs.

A counted cross-stitch pattern of the entire Sistine Chapel Ceiling. Included in the book are 45 full color, individual patterns (one for every scene) and instructions on how they may be stitched together, or individually. These patterns are not computer generated. They have been meticulously created one square at a time. This allowed me to to transform the curved Sistine Chapel Ceiling into a flat pattern. There are no special stitches in the pattern, not even backstitch (except the lettering on the signs). There are only 1/4, 3/4 and full cross-stitches. Also, all the different individual pieces have been designed to interlock with the scenes around them. Although you may find patterns of parts of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling elsewhere, as an aggregate you will not find a similar pattern anywhere. To see a sample of the chart, click on the preview associated with this book. A black & white chart may be seen in the preview associated with the B/W version.

Hailed as "the most radical repackaging of the Bible since Gutenberg", these Pocket Canons give an up-close look at each book of the Bible.