Das Opfer Noahs

This was among the first scenes Michelangelo painted when he climbed the scaffold in 1508, near the chapel door where you come in. He worked from that end backward through the story, and the order here runs against the Bible, since Noah's thanksgiving sacrifice sits before the Flood rather than after it. There is a reason of craft behind it. He needed the larger neighbouring panel for the Deluge, where he crowded in more than 60 struggling figures. When he finally lowered the scaffolding and looked up from the floor, he saw that these early figures read as too small and too busy from 60 feet below, and he made everything bolder in the panels that came next. The oxen, the firewood, the family bunched around the altar all belong to that first, more crowded manner.