La separación de la tierra y las aguas

This is one of the nine scenes from Genesis that run down the spine of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and it belongs to the second half of the job, painted around 1511. By then Michelangelo had been up on the scaffold for three years and had learned a hard lesson from the earlier panels nearer the door: figures worked up in fine detail simply vanished when seen from 20 metres below. So here God is bigger, simpler and bolder, sweeping through the sky in a rose-coloured robe as He divides the waters from the land, His arms flung wide and His body strongly foreshortened. Michelangelo painted these later scenes faster and with far fewer helpers than when he began.