Uzziah, Jotham and Ahaz

Everyone looks up at the prophets and the Creation on the Sistine ceiling, and almost no one looks at the strips just above the windows. Michelangelo began the vast commission in 1508, and around its edges he painted the Ancestors of Christ, the 40 generations listed at the start of Matthew's Gospel, the plain human links between the Old Testament and Jesus. This lunette names three kings of Judah, Uzziah, Jotham and Ahaz, but shows no thrones or crowns. Instead there is a family: a woman with children, a seated man, a bundle of belongings, ordinary people waiting. Working high on the scaffold, Michelangelo painted these figures quickly and freely, and their pale, shifting colours were among the parts that leapt out most vividly when the ceiling was cleaned in the 1980s.