Sistine Chapel ceiling motif. "When Perugino's altar painting was removed and ... "Last Judgement" fresco came to cover the altar wall", after at least twenty five years Michelangelo depicted Christ just below Jonah: not only for his role as precursor of Christ, Christianity and Christocentrism, but also because his powerful torsion of the body, bent backwards from the bust to the eyes and with his forefingers that now point the glorious Jesus to the characters of the ceiling, assumes a function of link between the Old and New Testament. In Vasari's description of the Prophets and Sibyls he is particularly high in his
The Birth of Venus Politian speaks of Zephyr causing flowers to bloom, and spreading their scent over the land, which probably explains the roses he blows along with him in the painting. Having a large standing female nude as the central focus was unprecedented in post-classical Western painting, and certainly drew on the classical sculptures which were coming to light in this period, especially in Rome, where Botticelli had spent 1481–82 working on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. The pose of Botticelli's "Venus" follows the Venus Pudica ("Venus of Modesty") type from classical antiquity, where the hands are held to cover the breasts