Sistine Chapel ceiling picture is crowded with figures and separate incidents as the various individuals who have been attacked by snakes struggle and die or turn toward the icon that will save them. This is the most Mannerist of Michelangelo's earlier compositions at the Sistine Chapel, picking up the theme of human distress begun in the "Great Flood" scene and carrying it forward into the torment of lost souls in the "Last Judgement", which was later painted below. Between the large pendentives that support the vault are windows, six on each side of the chapel. There were two more windows in each end
Sistine Chapel Choir Thus the ""magister capellae"" came immediately after the cardinals, followed, in the order given, by the ""sacrista"", ""cantores"", ""capellani"" and ""clerici"". With the building by Sixtus IV (1471–84) of the church for the celebration of all papal functions since known as the Sistine Chapel, the original ""schola cantorum"" and subsequent ""capella pontificia"" or ""capella papale"" became the ""capella sistina"", or Sistine Choir. Up to this time the number of singers had varied considerably, there being sometimes as few as nine men and six boys. By a Bull dated November, 1483, Sixtus IV fixed the number at twenty-four, six for each