Vatican City: Today, as we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel has a connection to today’s feast.
On August 15, 1483, Pope Sixtus IV consecrated the Sistine Chapel to Our Lady of the Assumption. It is known for its magnificently frescoed ceilings, but it also serves an important function as the place where the cardinals meet to elect a new pope.
Sistine Chapel, sometimes referred to as ‘papal chapel’ in the Vatican Palace was built in 1473–81 by the architect Giovanni dei Dolci for Pope Sixtus IV.
The Name of the chapel
The heavenly chapel with magnificently frescoed ceilings, got its name from the person who consecrated it: Pope Sixtus IV, who served as the Roman Pontiff from 1471 to 1484. He commissioned the restoration of the Cappella Magna, the chapel that stood where the Sistine Chapel stands today.
The Frescoes.
The artist most famously connected with the Sistine Chapel is Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. However, it wasn’t until several years after a team of artists began work on the chapel, that Pope Julius II commissioned work from Michelangelo.
Between 1481 and 1482, four artists, Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli, worked on the chapel's frescoes. These artists were assisted by their shops in painting the walls with false drapes, the Stories of Moses and Christ, as well as portraits of the popes.
Michelangelo painted the chapel ceiling and the lunettes on the upper part of the walls. Perhaps the most famous fresco in the chapel is his “Creation of Adam,” which portrays God in the form of a man, surrounded by angels and wrapped in a mantle, reaching towards Adam, while Adam reaches back up to God.
Michelangelo tells a story
The “Creation of Adam,” although a focal point of the ceiling, is part of nine frescoes depicting different stories from the book of Genesis. The stories are separated into groups of three.
Saint John Paul II, the Sistine Chapel, and Theology of the Body
Walking into the Sistine Chapel, one might be surprised to see the many bare figures in the frescoes. During Mass in the Sistine Chapel on April 8, 1994, Saint John Paul II called the chapel a “sanctuary of the theology of the human body.”
The late pope and now-saint said in his homily: “It seems that Michelangelo, in his own way, allowed himself to be guided by the evocative words of the Book of Genesis which, as regards the creation of the human being, male and female, reveals: ‘The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.’”
“The Sistine Chapel is precisely —if one may say so — the sanctuary of the theology of the human body,” he added. “In witnessing to the beauty of man created by God as male and female, it also expresses in a certain way, the hope of a world transfigured, the world inaugurated by the Risen Christ, and even before by Christ on Mount Tabor.”
The website for the Vatican Museums, allows one to virtually stroll through the Sistine chapel and even zoom in on the details of each fresco.
The experience is not quite the same as being physically present, but visitors can take their time examining the frescoes without the usual crowds.
There is a even a spray-painted replica of the Sistine Chapel in the United States, located in Waterloo, Iowa, at 622 Commercial street, Cappella Magna.
-CNA