- On 06/10/2025
- In curiosity
- Tags: Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museums, Vatican State
VATICAN MUSEUMS, THE SISTINE CHAPEL BEFORE MICHELANGELO
Imagine entering the Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo transformed it into the masterpiece we know today. Looking up, you wouldn’t have seen the biblical scenes that fascinate us, but a starry sky, a mantle of stars painted by Pier Matteo d’Amelia. A work that has now disappeared, but which played a fundamental role in the history of this sacred place.
Pier Matteo d’Amelia, a 15th-century Umbrian painter, was commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV to decorate the vault with a night sky, an image that was meant to convey a sense of spirituality and connection with the divine. His starry sky, created between 1479 and 1480, enveloped visitors in an atmosphere of contemplation, inviting them to prayer and reflection.
Unfortunately, in 1508, Pope Julius II decided to entrust Michelangelo with the decoration of the vault, and d’Amelia’s starry sky was erased to make way for the cycle of frescoes that we admire today. However, his work is not entirely lost: a drawing attributed to the artist, preserved in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, allows us to imagine the beauty of that starry sky.
Pier Matteo d’Amelia’s starry vault is an important piece of the Sistine Chapel’s history, a work that reminds us how this place, before becoming the triumph of Michelangelo’s genius, was already a place of art and spirituality.