What Life Was Like at the Rebirth of Genius: Renaissance Italy, Ad 1400-1550

On all Saints Day 1512, some four years after he had first climbed to the ceiling of the Sistine chapel Michelangelo, his face showing both exhaustion and exhilaration watched as the last of the scaffolding was dismantled . He was there again the next day, when Pope Julius II entered the chapel in a phalanx of Vatican courtiers. Eyes to heaven the pope spun slowly in a small circle....