Spandrel: Rehoboam and Abijah

Most of the lunettes with a spandrel above them carry three names on their tablet. The one below this carries only two, ROBOAM and ABIAS, Rehoboam and his son Abijah, so one name serves the lunette and the other this triangular cell of the vault. Which is which, the family in the lunette gives no hint, and scholars have never settled it.

The woman in front sits in profile, bent forward, her chin in her hand and her nose resting on her fingers, in the pose one would call the thinker's. Her hair is elaborately dressed and her close-fitting dress shows arms as muscular as those of most women on this ceiling. With her other arm she holds a child behind her, and further back a white-haired man appears in the distance. The colours are warm, pink, orange and yellow, with violet in the background. It took two days of fresco in the second campaign. In the corners above, two bronze-coloured nudes writhe like shrieking demons. They were painted from one cartoon flipped over, and the hair of both streams the same way, as if caught by a single gust of wind.