Sistine Chapel ceiling Rome to continue sculpting. The tomb sculptures, however, were never to be finished because in 1508 the pope returned to Rome victorious and summoned Michelangelo to begin work on the ceiling. The contract was signed on 10 May 1508. The scheme proposed by the pope was for twelve large figures of the Apostles to occupy the pendentives. However, Michelangelo negotiated for a grander, much more complex scheme and was finally permitted, in his own words, "to do as I liked". His scheme for the ceiling eventually comprised some three hundred figures and took four years to execute, being completed and
Primavera (painting) Three Graces of the "Primavera". (Kenneth Clark) The origin of the painting is unclear. Botticelli was away in Rome for many months in 1481/82, painting in the Sistine Chapel, and suggested dates are in recent years mostly later than this, but still sometimes before. Thinking has been somewhat changed by the publication in 1975 of an inventory from 1499 of the collection of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. The 1499 inventory records it hanging in the city palace of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici and his brother Giovanni "Il Popolano". They were the cousins of Lorenzo de' Medici ("Lorenzo il