Prophet Joel

While Michelangelo was painting the first bays of this ceiling, the pope's architect, Donato Bramante, was at work a short walk away, pulling down parts of the old basilica of St Peter, more than a thousand years old, to make room for the new church Julius II had ordered. Michelangelo's early biographers cast Bramante as his rival at the papal court.

In 1986 the art historian Charles Robertson proposed that the face of Joel is a portrait of Bramante, frowning in concentration over his scroll. It is a scholar's proposal. No document confirms it, and nothing Michelangelo wrote mentions it.

The Book of Joel is one of the shortest in the Bible. Joel foretold that God would pour out his spirit on all people, that sons and daughters would prophesy and old men dream dreams, words Saint Peter quotes on the day of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles. Here the prophet sits in the first bay from the entrance, facing the Delphic Sibyl, holding an open scroll in both hands, and the painted tablet beneath him gives his name as IOEL.