On this day in 1475, poet, painter, sculptor, and architect Michelangelo Buonarroti was born. The city of Florence contains many of his early works, including his famous gigantic statue of the biblical figure David.

Michelangelo. The Later Years. St. Peter's basilica in Rome contains the work for which Michelangelo was most renowned in his later years. In 1508, he began painting frescoes on the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel. They took him 12 years to finish.

But I Wanted To Be A Sculptor! Michelangelo was first and foremost a sculptor and started out making a sculpture for Julius II's tomb. He was disappointed when the funding ran out. He had already spent a year on the huge bronze work... which was melted down to make a cannon. Michelangelo knew that the ceiling was a big job and he'd have to give up sculpting for quite a while.

How Big Was It? Well... the Sistine Chapel was built in the 1470s for Pope Julius II's uncle, Pope Sixtus IV (it was named for him, too). The chapel measures 40x130 feet ~ the size of the Temple of Solomon. At the center, the curved ceiling is more than 60 feet above the floor, which makes it as tall as two lighthouses stacked on top of each other. The ceiling measures more than 5000 square feet.

What to Paint on the Ceiling... Originally the ceiling was blue, with gold stars. Michelangelo replaced the blue ceiling with images of the Creation, the birth of Adam and Eve, and the expulsion from Paradise.

How Do You Paint A Ceiling? First Michelangelo had an architect design a scaffold. But it would have left holes in the painting when it came down. So Michelangelo designed his own scaffold ~ a flat wooden platform on brackets built out from the wall, high up near the top of the windows. A series of zigzag ladders led up and down from the platform. Then Michelangelo hired some painters to help.

Good Help Is hard to Find? He decided they weren't talented enough... so he locked them out. Finally Mchelangelo went to work, with assistants to carry up materials and apply plaster.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, and Off to Work... Michelangelo painted the frescoes while lying on his back on the special scaffold. Four hundred images later, he was finished.

If These Walls Could Talk... First the walls of the chapel were decorated by artists of the time: Sandro Botticelli, Il Ghirlandaio, Pinturicchio, and Luca Signorelli. The pictures on the wall depicted three epochs: before the ten commandments were given to Moses, between Moses and Christ's birth, and the Christian era thereafter.

Endings? The vaulted ceiling was finished in 1512, at the height of the Renaissance. In 1534, Michelangelo started the Last Judgment, on the altar wall, just seven years after the invasion of Rome by the soldiers of the German emperor Carlo V. This invasion marks the end of the Renaissance period, and Michelangelo's work was influenced by the event.