Michelangelo Buonarroti thought of himself as a sculptor - not a painter. So when Pope Julius II ordered him in 1508 to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, he tried to wriggle out of it. The Pope insisted. Michelangelo grumbled, climbed up the scaffolding, and got to work.
The ceiling was about 65 feet up and over 500 square meters in size. Michelangelo painted it standing, head tilted back, with paint dripping into his hair, eyes, and beard. He fired most of his assistants and did almost everything himself. The work took him four hard years and left his neck permanently sore.
He covered the ceiling with more than 300 figures, including the famous scene of God reaching out his finger to touch Adam. When it was finally revealed in 1512, the Pope and everyone in Rome were astonished. More than 500 years later, around 5 million people a year still crane their necks to look up at it.
