It was Pope Julius II who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The artist’s original plan called only for figures of the twelve Apostles, but he later substituted the great series of Old Testament scenes—the stages of Creation, man’s temptation and Fall, the Deluge, and other Biblical events—on the huge ceiling.

Although popes patronized arts, some of them were not always generous and forgiving. The artists were also not quite eager to comply with the demands of the popes.

Banging against the scaffolding, clattering tools, groaning over the discomfort of working on his back, Michelangelo loudly interrupted the celebration of Mass while he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Pope Julius II, raging at his slowness, threatened to throw him off the scaffolding unless he speeded up the work, but Michelangelo ignored him. The Pope finally clambered up to his perch and whacked him with his cane, but it still took four years for the artist to complete the enormous frescoes.

Other papal taskmasters were less excitable than Julius, but fully as difficult. The thrifty Giulio de’ Medici—later Clement VII (1523-34); a nephew of Lorenzo de’ Medici—refused to use Carrara marble on the facade of his family’s church in Florence, so Michelangelo had to waste a year organizing new quarries in Florentine territory, where the revenues would revert to the Medici treasury. At Clement’s orders, Michelangelo ignored his commitments to the heirs of Julius II, who were badgering him to finish Julius’ tomb, and devoted his efforts instead to projects for a colossus over three times the height of the gigantic David, Michelangelo finally rebelled, and pointedly proposed putting bells in its head to peal for mercy for parishioners of the Medici church.