ABSTRACT
Julius II's two most significant painting commissions of the early sixteenth century in Rome were Michelangelo's monumental frescoes in the Sistine Chapel and Raphael's Stanza della Segnatura in the pope's Vatican apartments. In fact, however, both artists would develop in less Classical directions following these commissions—Raphael in the Stanza d'Eliodoro and the Transfiguration and Michelangelo in the Last Judgment. Julius II's identification with the Roman Caesars is apparent in the first design of his tomb, which he commissioned in 1505 from Michelangelo. In 1506, when Julius called the work on the tomb to a halt, an angry Michelangelo left Rome and returned to Florence. In the prominence of trees in the ceiling's iconography, Michelangelo refers both to the Tree of Life as the ancestor of the Cross and to the notion of a family tree implied in the Ancestors of Christ.
