In painting the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling in the early part of the 16th centur y, Michelangelo had to overcome a number of daunting hurdles. The first comes directly from the physical proper ties of the ceiling, as it is a barrel vau lt, which is a cur ved surface. To make it more difficult still, that barrel vault is intersec ted with smaller vaults posit ioned over the w indows. As such there are no flat surfaces any where except around the w indows, where the artist also painted a series of half-moon-shaped lu net tes. As a result, even pr ior to picking up a paintbr ush Michelangelo had to first work out how to c reate realistic portrayals of human figures in proper propor t ion and in mot ion on these wildly u neven surfaces. His abilit y to pull this off is testament to his immense artistic skill.
A nother major challenge in painting the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling was actually getting up there, as it is 20 metres above the floor. For t u nately, a conser vation campaign that started in the Eighties revealed the method Michelangelo employed to reach such heights: he constr ucted a complex scaffold. The scaffold consisted of a truss br idge that spanned across the vau lt and ran on rails that were at a 90-degree angle to the walls. This permitted Michelangelo to access all areas of the ceiling as the scaffolding cou ld be moved along the rails – it was only ever covering a quar ter of the vau lt at any one time, as he needed a mbient light from the w indows to paint. Interestingly, the holes that were made to suppor t this structure can still be seen in the walls to this day.