ABSTRACT
The curious visitor to the Vatican who penetrates to the Sistine Chapel, and is able to raise his eyes above the turmoil of pious and worldly pilgrims and shut his ears to the babel of their authorized guides, finds himself surrounded by three outstanding works of church decoration (PI. I). To his right and left the walls, up to the highest cornice, are covered with fresco-cycles ordered by the founder of the chapel, Sixtus IV, and executed by Florentine and Umbrian artists; above him is Julius IPs and Michelangelo’s ceiling; and in front of him the giant fresco of the Last Judgement, commissioned by two popes, Clement VII and Paul III, and also painted by Michelangelo. Of course, whatever position on the floor the visitor occupies, the range of his vision will be more limited than that of the camera which, from a scaffolding just inside the entrance and some 20 feet high, took this picture. But the overwhelming presence of the works will soon confirm the view with which, thanks to the advance art history has made in our century, he is likely to have been long familiar. It then depends on his personal taste and interest where his attention will settle first; but if he is influenced by his reading he will, in all probability, contemplate the three works one by one, separately. For very good reasons. Their styles are distinctly different, no less so than the moral, religious, or philosophical messages which they convey, and the fact that, in addition to their inherent qualities, they are monuments of three definite periods in the progress of Renaissance art offers opportunities for aesthetic and historical considerations of all sorts.
