Lunette: Asa, Jehoshaphat and Joram

Halfway through the job, the scaffold had to be taken down and rebuilt over the other half of the chapel, and this is probably the first lunette Michelangelo painted once it was up again, at the start of the second campaign. The change shows. From here on the name tablets are simpler in shape, a shortcut usually put down to Pope Julius II pressing for the work to be finished, and the backgrounds are lighter, with larger figures painted faster and more loosely.

The tablet reads ASA, IOSAPHAT and IORAM, three kings of Judah. On the left an emaciated old man, traditionally called Jehoshaphat, sits in profile with one leg stretched out and the other foot up on the seat, writing on a sheet propped on his knee with a reed pen. He cranes his neck so far that his Adam's apple shows. Opposite him a mother in yellow is surrounded by three children. One hugs her from behind and kisses her cheek, one reaches for her breast, and she tucks the third protectively under her arm, a group very close to the way painters showed Charity.