This is a book about the Sistine Chapel, but also a book about so much more. Although it includes the story of how the great artist Michelangelo came to paint the chapel's ceiling and altar wall, that is only a part of its agenda. And although there are pictures here, this is not a coffee-table book either. This book is rather predicated on the principle that all human-made wonders, no matter how majestic and other-worldly they may appear, spring from a specific place, time, and state of mind, and can thus become a window into that very specific past which formed them. Even something so beautiful, so seemingly above worldly concerns as the Sistine Chapel -- literally so, in the case of the chapel's ceiling -- comes complete with an origin story indelibly bound up with the temporal social currents and concerns of its day. To fully understand how and why the Sistine Chapel came to be, we will first have to consider how the Catholic Church came to be, and how it came to exert such a hold over the political as well as the spiritual life of Western Europe during the extended cultural retrenchment which followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. That, then, will constitute the beginning of our journey through time. During its middle stage, we'll consider the extraordinary flowering of culture we call the Renaissance, the incubator of Michelangelo and the larger-than-life pope for whose glory he painted the chapel's ceiling between 1508 and 1512. Finally, we will turn to the bubbling discontent in Europe about the Catholic Church and its often decadent ways that led to the Protestant Reformation, the disturbing, minor-key background music to Michelangelo's return to the Sistine Chapel to paint its altar wall between 1536 and 1541. Call this book the essential companion to your Sistine Chapel picture book -- the story behind the stories portrayed in those timeless frescoes.