Lunette: Josiah, Jeconiah and Shealtiel

The lunettes are meant to be read the way the genealogy runs, starting at the altar and zigzagging from wall to wall toward the door. At this point the zigzag breaks. This lunette and the one before it, with Hezekiah, Manasseh and Amon, sit side by side on the same wall instead of facing each other, and the break is usually linked to the place in Matthew's list where the deportation to Babylon comes in. Jeconiah, named here, was the king of Judah carried off into that exile.

It is also the first lunette in which the two halves are joined by a single action. Two children lunge toward each other with their arms flung out, and the one on the man's lap holds something nobody has identified, as if to hand it across. The man on the right, usually taken for Josiah with Jeconiah on his knees, is wrapped entirely in a fringed green cloak and jerks his head back, one hand open in surprise. On the left the mother pulls away and clutches her child, her coiled blond braids caught by the light. Michelangelo painted it in the first campaign.