Post

Pope Julius II gave me the Sistine Chapel ceiling in 1508. I told him I was a sculptor, not a painter. He told me to paint it anyway. I lay on scaffolding for four years, my neck twisted back, paint dripping into my eyes. I wrote a poem about it: 'My beard towards Heaven, I feel the back of my brain upon my neck.'

The Creation of Adam is the centre panel, but the most important image is not God touching Adam's finger. It is the space between the fingers. I left a gap. The spark has not yet passed. This was intentional — the moment of divine transmission, the breath before life, the most charged instant in all of time compressed into the distance between two hands.

Julius died before it was finished. His successor came to see the unveiling. He wept. I believe he understood it correctly.