Les ancêtres du Christ : Roboam et Abias

This sits low on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, in the curved space above a window, and it was among the last stretches Michelangelo painted before the scaffolding came down late in 1512. High overhead are the famous scenes, God dividing light from dark, Adam reaching out. Down here are the ancestors of Christ, the long line of names from the opening of Matthew's gospel, and Michelangelo painted them as ordinary, weary people. Rehoboam and Abijah were kings, but he showed them slumped and waiting on either side of a plaque bearing their names. By this point he had spent four years working high on the scaffold, and he laid these lunettes in fast and freely, with a loosened, almost impatient brush that you can still read up close.