Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel between 1508 and 1512, and the Last Judgment on the wall behind the altar between 1536 and 1541. The long side walls were painted earlier, in 1481 and 1482, by a team led by Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli.
Two popes paid for the room. Sixtus IV gave the chapel its name and its first frescoes, and his nephew Julius II gave the ceiling to Michelangelo.
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Michelangelo was the second generation of painters in that room, and he did not leave the first one intact.
When he climbed his scaffold in 1508, the walls below him had been finished for more than twenty-five years. Three Florentines and an Umbrian had covered them with the lives of Moses and Christ. Most of that work is still on the walls.
At the altar end it is not. The Last Judgment went up on a wall that had to be emptied first, and among what was cleared away were two paintings Michelangelo had made himself.
What You'll Discover
Who painted the walls first.
Who won the pope's prize.
What the ceiling used to be.
What stood behind the altar.
Who painted there after Michelangelo.