Spandrel: Hezekiah, Manasseh and Amon

The lunette below names three kings, Hezekiah, Manasseh and Amon, and this triangular cell of the vault above it was meant to hold one of them. Which one is still argued, and the museum admits the critics disagree. If the figures in the lunette are Manasseh and the mother of Amon, the child up here would be the young Hezekiah with his parents. Others read the lunette as Hezekiah and Amon, which leaves this group as the family of Manasseh. Michelangelo gave no clue.

A woman sits in front, her body turned toward us and her face in profile, in a broad green cloak with yellow lights and violet lining, her white shirt slipped off one shoulder. Behind her are a curly-haired child in a little cap and a white-haired old man, also lying down. The woman and child seem lit from within while the old man stays dim and sketchy, the way Michelangelo left the background of his marble roundels roughed out. The scene took two days of fresco, at the end of the first campaign, next to the panel of the Fall. Above it two bronze-coloured nudes lie with their heads drooping, as if asleep.