La creación del Sol, la Luna y los planetas

By 1511 Michelangelo had been up on the scaffolding for close to three years, lying back to paint the Sistine ceiling a few inches from his face, and this panel sits near the heart of that vault. Look for God twice in the same frame. On the right he lunges forward, both arms flung out, conjuring the sun and the pale moon into being. On the left the same figure, seen from behind, sweeps away to call up the plants of the earth. It is one thing painted as two moments, the third and fourth days of Creation folded into a single stretch of wall. Michelangelo was a sculptor by trade and had taken the commission reluctantly, and you can feel it here in the way the body turns and strains, more carved than drawn. The billowing cloak does most of the work, giving both figures their speed. When the ceiling was unveiled in 1512, it was this sense of physical force, God as a working body in motion, that people had never seen given to the act of Creation before.