(2 of 2)
Domestic and Cosmic. "Consider for instance the small scene just underneath the curve of the ceiling between the Prophet Jeremiah and the Sibyl Persica. This triangular picture shows the family of Salmon, one of the ancestors of Jesus. Here, the child leans upon his mother's knee and watches her cutting cloth with a big pair of shears. The pull of the fabric points your eye to something which is happening near by. Glancing up and to the right, you meet with the image in which God the Creator divides Light from Darkness. You are witnessing the same thing in plain domestic terms and, at the same time, on a cosmic scale.
"One of the most astonishing things about the ceiling near at hand is the unfailing precision of its forms, both large and small. Michelangelo has caused each painted figure to exist in full, down to the subtlest wrinkle of a foot sole or the snug arc of a toenail. These refinements, needless to say, are quite invisible from down below. Why did the artist bother? In one of his sonnets, he exclaims, 'My soul can find no stair on which to climb to heaven, unless it be earth's loveliness.' "