{"id":41909,"date":"2026-02-23T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T15:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=41909"},"modified":"2026-03-06T12:39:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T20:39:51","slug":"michelangelo-hated-painting-the-sistine-chapel-and-never-aspired-to-be-a-painter-to-begin-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/michelangelo-hated-painting-the-sistine-chapel-and-never-aspired-to-be-a-painter-to-begin-with\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelangelo hated painting the Sistine Chapel \u2013 and never aspired to be a painter to begin with"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anna Swartwood House<\/a>, University of South Carolina<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a 5-inch-by-4-inch red chalk drawing of a woman\u2019s foot by Michelangelo sold at auction<\/a> for US$27.2 million on Feb. 5, 2026, it blew past the $1.5 million to $2 million it was expected to receive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experts believe it to be a study for the figure of the Libyan Sibyl<\/a>, a female prophet who appears on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Michelangelo painted the iconic frescoes from 1508 to 1512, but he first sketched out the overall composition and details in a series of preparatory drawings. Only around 50 of these drawings<\/a> survive today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was an exciting sale for reasons outside that eye-popping sum. Held in private collections for centuries, the drawing only came to light after the owner sent an unsolicited photo to Christie\u2019s auction house<\/a>. There, a drawings expert recognized it as one of the relatively few remaining studies for the Sistine frescoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an art historian who specializes in the Italian Renaissance<\/a>, I\u2019m excited about the sale not because of the money it fetched, but because of the attention it has brought to Michelangelo\u2019s lifelong devotion to drawing, a medium he prized over painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Not my art\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Art historians know a lot about Michelangelo through the letters and poems he penned, along with two biographies written in his lifetime by intimates Giorgio Vasari<\/a> and Ascanio Condivi<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1506, Pope Julius II put Michelangelo\u2019s sculpting work on a papal tomb at St. Peter\u2019s Basilica on hold, redirecting the funds intended for the tomb to the renovation of the basilica itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michelangelo responded<\/a> by closing his studio. He ordered his workshop assistants to sell off its contents, abandoned 90 wagonloads\u2019 worth of marble and left Rome in disgust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1508, Julius and his intermediary, Cardinal Francesco Alidosi, were able to lure Michelangelo back to Rome with the promise of a 500-ducat payment and a contract to paint the Sistine. Despite accepting, the artist went on to complain relentlessly about his new commission. He wrote to his father that painting \u201cis not my profession\u201d and told the pope that painting \u201cis not my art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sculpture, not painting, was central to Michelangelo\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Condivi biography, which Michelangelo approved and helped shape<\/a>, the artist is said to have abandoned painter Domenico Ghirlandaio\u2019s workshop around 1490 to train in the Florence sculpture garden of powerful arts patron Lorenzo de\u2019 Medici. Michelangelo would later joke<\/a> that he became a sculptor as an infant, thanks to the breast milk of his wet nurse, who was the daughter of stonemasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond his enthusiastic embrace of sculpture and resentment over the Sistine \u2013 what he called the \u201ctragedy of the tomb<\/a>\u201d \u2013 Michelangelo found painting in fresco to be backbreaking work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Michelangelo griped about painting the Sistine Chapel in a poem he sent to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia. Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve grown a goiter from this torture,\u201d he wrote to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia in an illustrated poem<\/a>. \u201cMy stomach\u2019s squashed under my chin, my beard\u2019s pointing at heaven, my brain\u2019s crushed in a casket, my breast twists like a harpy\u2019s. My brush, above me all the time, dribbles paint so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy painting is dead,\u201d he concludes. \u201cI am not in the right place \u2013 I am not a painter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A grand design<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The caricature that accompanies Michelangelo\u2019s poem shows not only a cantankerous and restless mind, but also his use of drawing to reflect its inner workings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The early 16th century witnessed a rise of drawing<\/a>, with Michelangelo leading the way. Rather than simply copying or providing models for painting, drawing became understood as an important intellectual, exploratory and creative exercise<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michelangelo\u2019s biographer Vasari famously used the term \u201cdisegno\u201d to mean both a physical drawing and a work\u2019s overall \u201cdesign\u201d or concept, giving the artist an almost godlike creative power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This double meaning is reflected in the title of the hugely popular 2017 exhibition<\/a> of Michelangelo\u2019s drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York”: \u201cMichelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michelangelo created many drawings for the Sistine that reflected the different meanings of \u201cdisegno.\u201d There were his sketches of models, along with his architectural renderings and schemes to organize the huge space. Then there were the full-size \u201ccartoons<\/a>\u201d he drew to transfer his designs directly onto the ceiling itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sketches
Michelangelo\u2019s scheme for the decoration of the vault of the Sistine Chapel, along with his studies of arms and hands. \u00a9 The Trustees of the British Museum<\/a>, CC BY-SA<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The good foot<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Michelangelo also made many studies of individual body parts and gestures for the Sistine, including eyes, hands and feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a drawing for the Sistine ceiling that\u2019s now in the British Museum, various hands \u2013 perhaps modeled after his own \u2013 repeat across the right side of the page. Feet were especially important to the overall design of the human figure, and they stand at the intersection of Michelangelo\u2019s interests in Classical art and human anatomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrapposto<\/a>, or the Classical \u201ccounter-poise,\u201d was the iconic stance for standing figures in paintings and sculptures. It features the trunk of the body centered over one leg with its foot planted, and the other bent with the foot perched on the toe. Michelangelo\u2019s \u201cDavid\u201d stands in contrapposto, and even doctors today are impressed<\/a> by the anatomical precision of the muscles and veins of each foot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
The relaxed left foot of Michelangelo\u2019s \u2018David.\u2019 Franco Origlia\/Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Christie\u2019s red chalk drawing of the foot was likely done from a live model, with Michelangelo showing the elegance of the Libyan Sibyl prophetess through her dramatically arched foot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the finished fresco, Sibyl\u2019s body is a kind of elegant machine. The musculature of her extended arms, her coiled torso and her pointed toe all work in concert. This small drawing shows how the charged energy of a single body part could contribute to the overall \u201cdisegno\u201d of the massive fresco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the process of painting the ceiling was arduous, the process of conceiving it through drawing was obviously rewarding for Michelangelo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Colorful
The finished fresco of the Lybian Sybil in the Sistine Chapel. Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Drawing as the linchpin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Despite the popularity of the Sistine frescoes, Michelangelo rarely returned to painting after completing them. In 1534, Pope Clement VII commissioned him to paint the \u201cThe Last Judgment<\/a>\u201d on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. But only after Clement died later that year \u2013 and Clement\u2019s successor, Pope Paul III, gave Michelangelo the extraordinary title of Chief Architect, Sculptor, and Painter to the Vatican Palace \u2013 did the artist begin work on the altar wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While many people today may think of the Sistine frescoes or Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s \u201cMona Lisa\u201d when they think of the Italian Renaissance, those artists did not think of themselves primarily as painters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a famous letter of introduction<\/a> to the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo elaborates on his many skills in creating fortifications, infrastructure and weaponry. He boasts about his ability to build bridges, canals, tunnels and catapults. Only after 10 paragraphs does he include a single sentence admitting that he, in addition, \u201ccan carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and in painting can do any kind of work as well as any man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Michelangelo\u2019s, Leonardo\u2019s drawings<\/a> show a voracious mind at work. They explore, rather than simply observe, everything from military machines to human anatomy. In 1563, Michelangelo would go on to be named master of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence<\/a>, which aimed to teach drawing and design as the underlying skills necessary for sculpture, architecture and painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing, it turns out, was the art that unified the many pursuits of the \u201cRenaissance Man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna Swartwood House<\/a>, Associate Professor of Art History, University of South Carolina<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anna Swartwood House, University of South Carolina When a 5-inch-by-4-inch red chalk drawing of a woman\u2019s foot by Michelangelo sold at auction for US$27.2 million on Feb. 5, 2026, it blew past the $1.5 million to $2 million it was expected to receive. Experts believe it to be a study for the figure of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":41910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,15534,279,8025,7,10,2450,15533],"tags":[5291,594,12476,17490,2477,6167,885,891,886,860,17470,6168,6169,1313,17471],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41909"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41909"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41985,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41909\/revisions\/41985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}