Ceiling Paint

Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel by Andrew Graham-Dixon

Skyhorse Publications, 2009
(240 pages, $24.95, hardcover)

reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Podles

One of the transcendent moments of my life happened unexpectedly on a private tour of the Vatican Museums, when I pushed open the big wooden door and stood, alone and transfixed, under Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. I had studied it for decades; I thought I knew what to expect; I was thoroughly jolted. I suspect it will be the same when I am called before the Judgment Seat.

After a while I was brought back to earth by my husband’s tugging at my sleeve and saying, with a minimum . . .

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Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland.

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