Separation of Light from Darkness

By the time Michelangelo reached this panel in the autumn of 1512, he had been up on the scaffold for four years, and it shows in the paint. This is the last of the nine Genesis scenes he finished, the one nearest the altar, and he worked it fast and loose. God rushes straight overhead, arms flung out to push the light away from the dark, his body wrenched into a spiral that only reads correctly because Michelangelo painted it to be seen from far below, foreshortened so it seems to surge up past you. Restorers found that he laid down much of this figure in a single day's patch of fresh plaster. Tucked into the corners sit the young nude ignudi he threaded through every bay of the ceiling.