Les Ancêtres du Christ : Ozias, Joatham et Achaz

High on the walls of the Sistine Chapel, just above the windows, Michelangelo painted the long line of Christ's ancestors listed in the Gospel of Matthew. This lunette holds three of them, kings of Judah — Uzziah, Jotham and Ahaz — though there are no thrones or crowns here, just a family in a cramped, curved space, a man leaning on his arm and a child pointing behind him. Where the centre of the vault thunders with prophets and the making of the world, these ancestors simply sit and wait, ordinary and domestic. He reached these corners late in the four years he gave the ceiling, between 1508 and 1512, and by then he was worn down and quick, brushing the figures straight onto the wet plaster with little or no preparatory drawing.