Michelangelo and Raphael in the Vatican [antikvár]

the sistine chapel The Sistine Chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV Della Rovere. According to Vasari, he commissioned the Florentine Baccio Pontelli in 1475 to design a building that would house the palace chapel and also serve as a Vatican fortress (the crenelation of the battlements continues to testify to this second purpose). The actual construction was left to Giovannino de' Dolci - often mentioned in contemporary Vatican documents - who also supervised the pictorial decorations in the chapel until its formal inauguration on August 15, 1483. Designer and builder are both immortalized with portraits in Perugino's fresco, Jesus Handing the Keys to St. Peter, on the Sistine Chapel wall. The interior of the chapel consists of a single long nave (13,41x40,23 meters) surmounted by a flattened barrel vault with spandrels and a lunette above each of the twelve arched windows. The floor is of multicolored marble. A high marble chancel screen separates the presbytery from the general body of the chapel. The chancel screen and the choir stalls, decorated in delicate ornamental relief, are the work of Mino da Fiesole and his assistants. The dimensions of the chapel, corresponding exactly to those of the Jerusalem Temple; the division between presbytery and body of the chapel; the original paintings - all these features testify to the Pope's desire to fashion a Renaissance version of the