Die Vorfahren Christi: Serubbabel, Abihud und Eljakim

These figures fill a lunette above one of the chapel windows, among the very last things Michelangelo painted on the Sistine ceiling in 1512, after nearly four years on the scaffold. By this stage he was working fast and largely freehand, without the careful full-scale cartoons he had used earlier on. The names on the painted tablet, Zerubbabel, Abiud and Eliakim, come from the opening genealogy of Matthew's Gospel, and Zerubbabel was remembered for leading the Jews home from their exile in Babylon. A man and a woman sit back to back with a child, each turning to look the same way. They belong to the lowest tier of the whole ceiling, just above the windows, where visitors rarely think to look.