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
Descent from Mount Sinai (Sistine Chapel) it: the position of some of them, painted from behind, was usually used for negative characters, such as Judas Iscariot in the "Last Supper". Once seeing that, Moses, in the center, gets angry and breaks the Tables on the ground. On the right background is the punishment of the idolatrous and the receiving of the new Tables. Joshua, in the blue and yellow, appears with Moses. Descent from Mount Sinai (Sistine Chapel) The Descent from Mount Sinai is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Cosimo Rosselli and his assistants, executed in 1481–1482 and located in the Sistine Chapel, Rome.