Elizabeth Lev: The unheard story of the Sistine Chapel
Elizabeth Lev's experience studying and teaching art has led her to believe that when we encounter something beautiful, we are made vulnerable and opened to the truth. Full bio
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to the Vatican Museums.
down long corridors,
lots and lots of stuff.
a stair and a door.
of the Sistine Chapel.
what do we have?
by painted curtains,
to keep out cold during long masses,
the great theater of life.
plays a part is a great story,
in the three stages
as a space for a small group
They elected their pope there.
ecclesiastical man cave.
that today it attracts and delights
there was a creative explosion,
of new geopolitical frontiers,
missionary tradition of the Church
works of art in history.
as a great evolution,
to audiences of people
to a historical circumstance.
parochial perspective.
worldviews were dramatically altered
was well under way
reflected a smaller world.
of Jesus and Moses,
of the Jewish and Christian people.
Pope Sixtus IV,
Michelangelo's future painting teacher,
with a frieze of pure color,
familiar landscapes,
or a Tuscan landscape
something much more familiar.
of the Pope's friends and family,
for a small court
microcosm had to expand as well.
was Michelangelo Buonarroti,
to decorate 12,000 square feet of ceiling,
but had left to pursue sculpture.
because he had left a stack
of a great sculptural project,
to paint 12 apostles
in the Sistine Chapel ceiling,
every other ceiling in Italy.
to sail across the Atlantic Ocean,
new artistic waters.
of great beginnings,
stories on a ceiling.
a busy scene from 62 feet below?
handed on for 200 years
for this kind of a narrative.
to filling space with busyness,
and hacked away at a piece of marble
in massive, dynamic bodies.
by the larger-than-life Pope Julius II,
of Michelangelo's brazen genius.
for 30 years and he knew its power.
of the Warrior Pope,
it wasn't fortresses and artillery,
the Sistine Chapel.
of Greco-Roman sculptures --
that would become the seedbed
the Vatican Museums.
that would be eternally relevant
Michelangelo and Julius II,
to this project,
in three and a half years,
most of the time, hours on end,
to paint the stories on the ceiling.
to the world around you.
and structure and energy;
which opens onto nine panels,
than painterly color.
by the entrance,
enclosure intended for the clergy
looking for a beginning.
or in biblical tradition,
of light and dark,
from one side to the next.
the sun, the moon, vegetation.
on the stuff that was being created,
like a caesura in poetry
the universe and his treasures,
of creation, which is man.
against a dark background.
by the creator in that finger,
from the hand of Adam.
from that contact,
will discover his purpose,
at the pinnacle of creation.
She's part of the plan.
that her hand curls around his arm.
from the 21st century,
that the painting spoke to me.
representation of the human drama
the heart of the ceiling,
together in the Garden of Eden,
turns into folded shame.
now in the ceiling.
where you and I can go
out of the inner sanctum,
much like Adam and Eve.
of the world around us.
and a covenant with God.
who grew grapes, invented wine,
naked in his barn.
blind drunk in a barn.
is making fun of us.
right underneath Noah:
on the prophet Zechariah.
coming from the east,
to a new destination,
who will lead us on a parade.
who make safe the way,
human engine, driving it forward.
of the ceiling,
he's about to fall out of his space
three days in the belly of the whale,
of the renewal of humanity
of visitors to that museum
encounters and meets immediate reality.
archway of the altar wall,
had changed again.
Islam a household word
into the Pacific Ocean.
been any further than Venice
of the Last Judgment,
strikingly beautiful bodies.
no more portraits
breaking away from the ground,
reach back to help others,
pulled up together
goes to the winner's circle.
completely nude like athletes.
who have overcome adversity,
of people who combat adversity,
flexing and posing
proved in his painting,
they forge it.
is indeed a stew of nudes.
only the best artistic language,
he could think of:
virtue such as fortitude or self-mastery,
wonderful collection of sculptures
as external power.
to not cause controversy.
that thanks to the printing press,
spread all over the place,
was labeled pornography,
two more portraits,
a papal courtier,
as a dried up husk, no athlete,
several of these figures covered over,
over his great exhortation to glory.
of the human experience.
to look around as if it were a mirror.
of uplifting beauty,
life's biggest questions:
in this great theater of life?
this whole issue of pornography,
daily life scenes and improper things
and covering up some of the figures.
destroyed because of that.
of the Last Judgment was enormous.
that everybody saw it.
that happened within a couple of weeks.
over the space of 20 years
how to live our lives.
pornography in the Pope's chapel?"
that Michelangelo died
found a compromise,
these extra 30 covers,
the origin of fig-leafing.
that was trying to save a work of art,
is not the classic tour
when they go to the Sistine Chapel.
it is a statement.
is encountering problems.
going through that tiny door
in a completely different way
nice to be able to pause and look.
even when you're in those days,
with all those other people,
how amazing it is
from 500 years ago
standing side by side with you,
truly can speak to us all
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Elizabeth Lev - Art historianElizabeth Lev's experience studying and teaching art has led her to believe that when we encounter something beautiful, we are made vulnerable and opened to the truth.
Why you should listen
Art historian Elizabeth Lev became captivated by Rome while completing her graduate studies. She writes and lectures on Renaissance art in the Eternal City, but is most at home in the Vatican Museums, founded in the 16th century to house the trove of art amassed by centuries of Popes. She has spent 15 years studying the vast collection, which contain not only Christian-themed works but art from virtually every other culture in the world. She consults with the Vatican Museums and wrote the film Vatican Treasures. She also wrote A Body for Glory, examining how the papal collection of Greco-Roman nudes grew into the Sistine Chapel.
Elizabeth Lev | Speaker | TED.com