VATICAN MUSEUMS - SISTINE CHAPEL (fourth part)

Wall above the main door

1570/75 “Resurrection of Christ” by the Flemish Hendrick van der Broek (1519/97) and “St. Michael protects the body of Moses” by Matteo da Lecce (about 1546/1616) to replace the paintings with the same subjects painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio and Luca Signorelli lost in the collapse of the architrave of the main door in 1522

The wall was severely damaged and a Swiss guard was killed. Pope Adrian VI (1522/23) was entering the chapel in that very moment but he was miraculously safe

The two paintings are Mannerist in style, much after the manner of Michelangelo

In ninety years art had gone from the collegiate Renaissance style of the walls of the Sistine Chapel to a style that could not disregard the solitary genius of Michelangelo so gloriously expressed in the same chapel

“While the body of Moses is brought to the grave, the body of Christ, glorified, is taken to heaven, victorious over death. (...) It can be said: the Evangelical Lex leads believers to triumph over death, the Scripta Lex cannot do that despite its merits. Thus the opposition between one Lex and the other seems to be one of the key ideas, if not the key idea of the series” (Cardinal Jorge María Mejía)