The Punishment of Haman

By the time Michelangelo reached this corner of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, around 1511, he had been up on the scaffold for three years, and his style had grown far bolder than where he began. It shows in the twisted body of Haman. The story comes from the Book of Esther: Haman, a royal minister who plotted to destroy the Jews of Persia, is put to death on the very gallows he had built for his enemy. Michelangelo does not hang him tidily to one side. He throws Haman straight out at us, arms and legs wrenched in violent foreshortening, so the figure seems to burst out of the curved wall into real space. In Dante's Purgatorio, which Michelangelo knew well, this same Haman appears as if crucified, and here he is given that outflung, cross-like shape.