Prophet Ezekiel

This is one of the giant seers Michelangelo set along the edges of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted around 1510 while he worked on scaffolding under the vault. Ezekiel was the Old Testament prophet of strange visions, wheels of fire and a heavenly chariot, and Michelangelo gives him the body to match. He twists sharply in his seat, gripping a scroll, wind pulling at his rose and grey robes, and turns to a small figure beside him who points upward. By this stage of the work Michelangelo had grown bolder. The prophets he painted later, like this one, are larger and more turbulent than the calmer scenes he'd started with three years earlier.