Bramante, Michelangelo and the Sistine Ceiling *

Michelangelo was neither a generous nor a particularly truthful man. when confronted with the account of his life in vasari’s Vite in 1550, ¹ he was stimulated to present his own version, in the biography written by his pupil Condivi and published in 1553. ² Apart from a desire to add information, Michelangelo had another and overriding concern, namely to show how little he had been influenced by masters or contemporaries. He may have been projecting back onto his origins and earlier career an isolation which obtained for his maturity and old age, and have been expressing attitudes which that isolation had engendered; but the result inevitably involved distortion. Vasari, who had hinted at it even in the first edition, largely accepted Condivi’s view of Michelangelo in 1568, and, with some qualifications, this picture has generally been taken as authoritative. ³ Particularly persuasive is the image of the solitary artist single-handedly tackling the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Certainly the ceiling marked a turning point in his career, for by executing it virtually unaided Michelangelo proved to himself and to others that he could achieve what had seemed impossible. But execution is not preparation, and this study attempts to show how, in the conception of the ceiling, Michelangelo, who had little practice either in architectural design or in illusionistic paintings, drew on the experience and example of a fellow artist skilled in both.