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I told the Pope I was a sculptor, not a painter. He told me I was to paint the ceiling of his chapel. I spent four years on a scaffold, lying on my back, painting a surface of some five hundred square metres, while wet plaster dripped into my eyes and the Pope sent messengers below asking when it would be finished.

I wrote a poem about it: My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in, fixed on my spine; my breast-bone visibly grows like a harp; a rich embroidery bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin. My loins into my paunch like levers grind. My buttock like a crupper bears my weight. I was not made for this. The painting is finished. The Pope is pleased.