Sixtus IV Commissions Sistine Chapel Frescoes

1472

Pope Sixtus IV hired Florence's finest painters, including Botticelli, Perugino, Ghirlandaio, and Cosimo Rosselli, to fresco the walls of his new private chapel with parallel narrative scenes from the lives of Moses and Christ. The project was completed in under two years of intense collaborative work. The chapel's ceiling would wait another three decades for a young sculptor from Florence audacious enough to tackle its vast empty vault alone.