耶西、大卫和所罗门

These figures sit right at the top of the Sistine Chapel wall, where it curves up to meet the ceiling in the space above a window. By the time Michelangelo reached the lunettes, around 1511, he had been on the scaffolding for close to three years and was working fast and almost alone, painting the plaster freehand without the careful preparatory transfers he had used lower down. The three men belong to the ancestors of Christ, the long family line that opens Matthew's gospel, and their names are set on a painted tablet between them. Jesse, the father of King David, was fitted in at the last, tucked so tightly to one side that he looks less like David's father than his child.