Spandrel: Uzziah, Jotham and Ahaz

The woman at the front of this group has turned her back half toward us, as if to keep the moment to herself. She is nursing, and the child reaching for her breast is mostly hidden by her shoulder. Behind them a man holds another child in his arms, and in the lower right corner lies a foreshortened sack, the family's baggage.

This is the triangular cell of the vault above the lunette of Uzziah, Jotham and Ahaz. Since the lunette is usually read as Jotham and Ahaz, this family would be Uzziah's, though no name is written here. The colours are muted but changeable. Instead of darkening a colour for its shadows, Michelangelo shifted it into another hue, so the woman's pink dress turns green in the folds. From her very pale headdress the light falls away quickly to the face of the child behind, which is entirely in shadow. The scene took two days of fresco, toward the end of the first campaign, beside the panel of the Fall. In the corners above it, two bronze-coloured nudes lie along the slanting frame and stare at each other in profile.