but the artist had viewed the
work. The Pope now demanded that he should be allowed to see it. A part
of the scaffolding was struck, and the delight of the old Pope was
unbounded. This was in Fifteen Hundred Nine, but the completed work was
not shown to the public until All Souls' Day, Fifteen Hundred Twelve.

The guides at the Vatican tell us this ceiling was painted in twenty-two
months, but the letters of Michelangelo, recently published, show that he
worked on it over four years.

It contains over three hundred figures, all larger than life, and some
are fifteen feet long. A complete description of the work Michelangelo
did in this private chapel of the Pope would require a book, and in fact
several books have been written with this ceiling as a subject. The
technical obstacles to overcome in painting scenes and figures on an
overhead surface can only be appreciated by those who have tried it. We
can better appreciate the difficulties when we think that, in order even
to view the decorations with satisfaction, large mirrors must be used, or
one must lie prone on his back. In the ability to foreshorten and give
harmonious perspective--supplying the effect of motion, distance, upright
movement, coming toward you or moving away--all was worked out in this
historic chapel in a way that has excited the wondering admiration of
artists for three hundred years.

When the scaffolding was at last removed, the artist thought for a time
he had done his last work. The unnatural positions he had been obliged to
take had so strained the muscles of his neck that on the street he had
often to look straight up at the sky to rest himself, and things on a
straight line in front he could not distinguish. Eyes, muscles, hands,
refused to act normally.

"My life is there on the ceiling of the Chapel of Sixtus," he said.

He was then thirty-nine years old.

Fifty eventful years of life and work were yet before him.

* * * * *

When Pope Julius died, in Fifteen Hundred Thirteen, Leo the Tenth, a son
of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was called to take his place. We might
suppose that Leo would have remembered with pride the fact that it was
his father who gave Michelangelo his first start in life, and have
treated the great artist in the way Lorenzo would, were he then alive.
But the retiring, abstemious habits of Michelangelo did not appeal to
Leo. The handsome and gracious Raphael was his favorite, and at