Libysche Sibylle

By the autumn of 1512 Michelangelo had spent four years on a scaffold under this ceiling, and the figures he painted last, near the altar, came out larger and more athletic than the ones he had started with. The Libyan Sibyl is one of them. She is a seer from pagan antiquity, twisting her whole body to lift and close a heavy book, her weight balanced on her toes. Michelangelo worked the pose out from a muscular young man who posed in the studio. His red-chalk study for her survives, with the shoulders and one big toe drawn over and over until he had them right. On the ceiling she wears a flowing orange and lilac gown, and the effort of the turn still reads in her back.