What should visitors look out for beyond the famous ceiling?
The upper levels of the walls, which were also painted by Michelangelo. He includes prophets and sibyls, ancient prophetesses who foretold the coming of Jesus. I’d encourage people to look at the incredible physicality of these figures. They really come out towards us. He makes them sculptural and they’re huge. They feel larger than life.
What’s brilliant about their depiction in the FRAMELESS experience is the fact that they are so physical. The movement recalls Michelangelo’s aim to make them extend towards us.
What’s the biggest misconception about the Sistine Chapel?
There can be a tendency to view the images in the chapel separately, but they are intended to work together to tell the core Christian story of the crucifixion of Christ leading to the salvation of mankind.
Michelangelo creates this experience with the ceiling. As the entrance to the Sistine Chapel that we’re meant to use is at the far end, he positions you post-fall. We look above and we’ve had the floods, and as we see in the FRAMELESS experience, the fall of man, the expulsion of Adam and Eve.
But if we look towards the end of the chapel, towards the altar, we see the last judgement wall that has the figure of Jesus. As we walk towards the altar and the last judgement wall, seen in the FRAMELESS experience too, we are walking towards our salvation.
That’s a walk towards the future, towards Jesus, but it’s also a walk into the past. As we walk towards the last judgement wall, the ceiling panels are going back in time. We’re going from the fall to the creation of Adam, to the creation of land and sea, to the creation of darkness and light.
Michelangelo is showing us the way back, but also the way forward.
Are there any other works that particularly stand out to you?
Pietro Perugino, The Delivery of the Keys, which is also included in the FRAMELESS experience, is really worth mentioning here, partly because of its visual beauty. It is so symmetrical in the architecture it depicts, but also in the arrangement of the figures.
It’s the apex of Renaissance art. You can learn what Renaissance art is through this image; the key features of symmetry and balance, the innovation of linear perspective, which is the ability to create a realistic sense of plunging depth within a two-dimensional surface, is expertly executed here.
It’s also important within the Sistine Chapel’s role as a papal chapel, because the painting depicts the delivery of the keys to heaven from Jesus to Saint Peter, who is seen as the first pope. All popes since Peter exist in that lineage.
How has the Chapel changed over the centuries?
One change that is natural but worth mentioning is that the chapel progressively got dirtier over the years. Incense was used daily, so soot built up on the wall paintings. They were cleaned and restored from 1980 to 1994, and in the FRAMELESS experience, that is captured by the digital colour.
Another is on The Last Judgement wall, there are hundreds of nude figures. Just after that wall was completed, the papacy employed another painter to paint fabric loincloths over the nude figures to cover them up. The Catholic Church was very anxious about the destruction of the chapel and of its sacred images, because it was a time of rising Protestantism, and they didn’t believe in the worship of images.
Making the paintings a little bit quieter was seen as a protective mechanism because one of the criticisms of Protestants towards the Catholic Church was this idea of excess. This huge panel with loads of nude figures might have seemed excessive and could have been a target for iconoclasm. It’s a testament to the power of images that someone wanted to potentially destroy them.
How can immersive experiences like FRAMELESS help people appreciate masterpieces like the Sistine Chapel?
I think it can draw out layers of meaning that people ignore or elements of the creative process that people might overlook. For example, including the stars as one of the images on the ceiling tells that earlier story of the Sistine Chapel. In the Middle Ages, we didn’t see God as a human being, so the ceiling was blue covered with stars.
It highlights this very physical representation of God, particularly in that moment after Adam has had that spirit breathed into him.
The meaning of the frescoes themselves is brought out and comes to life more. I think it’s exciting and interesting for that reason for people who are familiar with the Sistine Chapel as well as people who are seeing it for the first time through FRAMELESS.
