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 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.