Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes time, monotonous, "tend[ing] towards dull red and grey". Mancinelli writes that the restoration reveals "a new Michelangelo" as a colourist and that this "new character makes much better sense of his historical position". He goes on to say that perceptive viewers of the Sistine Chapel ceiling have always been aware that the range of colours used was very different from that which could be seen, and included the same pinks, apple greens, oranges, yellows and pale blues that were employed by Michelangelo's teacher, Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the most competent fresco painters of the Renaissance. The brilliant palette ought to
Sistine Chapel congregations. These included the Christmas Day and Easter masses, at which the Pope himself was the celebrant. The other 27 masses could be held in a smaller, less public space, for which the "Cappella Maggiore" was used before it was rebuilt on the same site as the Sistine Chapel. The "Cappella Maggiore" derived its name, the Greater Chapel, from the fact that there was another chapel also in use by the Pope and his retinue for daily worship. At the time of Pope Sixtus IV, this was the Chapel of Pope Nicholas V, which had been decorated by Fra Angelico.