As the plaster could only be
painted on whilst wet, we can tell, by the marks of the divisions between
the separate days' plasterings, how many days the larger individual
figures took. One of the largest and most prominent, as well as one of the
finest and most finished, the Adam in the Creation of Man, was painted in
three sittings only. The lines of the junctions of the plaster may be seen
in a photograph; one is along the collar bone, and one across the junction
of the body and the thighs. There is also a division all round the figure,
an inch or so from the outline, so we know that the beautiful and highly
finished head and neck were painted in one day; the stupendous torso and
arms in another; and the huge legs, finished in every detail, in a third.
Such power of work and of finish is utterly inconceivable to any artist of
to-day. Some will even excuse the imperfection of the study of a head by
saying that they had only three or four sittings.
Condivi asserts, and Vasari follows him, that the part uncovered in
November 1509, was the first half of the whole vault, beginning at the
large door of entrance and ending in the middle. But Albertini states in
his _Mirabilia Urbis_(115) that the upper portion of the whole vaulted
roof had been uncovered when he saw it in 1509, and this statement is
corroborated by the work itself. There is a distinct enlargement of the
style from the Sin of the Sons of Ham through the series of the Creation
and the Athletes to the Prophets and Sibyls, and again from the first of
these, near the large door, to those near the altar wall.
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