Michelangelo was 33 years old when he began frescoing the Sistine Ceiling. (He was 21 years old when he was commissioned to sculpt the Pietà and 26 years old when he began sculpting the David).

Michelangelo complained that he was underpaid for the Sistine Ceiling. In fact he was paid 30 times as much as a qualified artisan could expect to earn in a single year.

The art of fresco enjoyed such great esteem precisely because it was so famously difficult to master. Its myriad obstacles are reflected in the Italian expression stare fresco, meaning "to be in a fix or a mess." Even Leonardo da Vinci had difficulty with fresco.

Fresco, meaning "fresh," comes from the fact that the painter always worked on fresh (wet) plaster. A painter had no more than 12 to 24 hours to paint on the wet plaster before it dried and would no longer absorb the pigments.

Contrary to the legend, Michelangelo did not fresco the Sistine Ceiling while lying on his back. He designed the scaffolding himself so that he and his assistants could stand u on it and bend backwards slightly to work on the vault.

Adam's left hand in the Creation of Adam is not actually Michelangelo's own work.

Michelangelo was famous for his poor personal hygiene. He followed his father's advice: "Never wash yourself," and often slept in his clothes and boots. Sometimes he went so long without taking them off that the skin came away like a snake's with the boots.

Raphael was famous for his personal charm. Vasari attributed his sweet, civilized nature to the fact that he was breast-fed by his mother instead of being sent to a wet nurse in the country. Even animals were said to love him instinctively.

Raphael's "Eve in the Temptation in the Garden" in the Vatican Apartments is actually a mirror image, rather than a direct copy of Leonardo da Vinci's "Leda," a common trick used y artists to disguise an otherwise familiar image.

When Michelangelo was frescoing the Sistine Ceiling, Rome was home to some 7,000 prostitutes and 3,000 priests. Syphilis. was rife among the clergy (even Pope Julius II had it).

Julius II was the first pope to lead an army into battle. He required his cardinals to join the charge, and he traveled with the choir from the Sistine Chapel.

Julius II was the first Pope to grow a beard. In doing so, he was going against not only papal tradition but also canon law.

Julius II created the Swiss Guards as the official papal escort in 1510, granting them a distinctive costume that was said to have been designed by Michelangelo.

Michelangelo had to fresco 12,000 square feet of the Sistine Ceiling. He did not do it alone. He recruited as many as a dozen men to help him during the four years he worked in the Sistine Chapel.

Some of the muscles on the nudes in the Sistine Ceiling are painted in such detail that modern anatomy has yet to find names for them.

Michelangelo seems to have included his self-portrait at least three times in the Sistine Ceiling.

For the Sistine Ceiling, Michelangelo would only use pigments made by a specific order of Florentine monks.

One of Michelangelo's most peculiar problems from frescoing the Ceiling was a bizarre sort of eyestrain. Because he was forced to look upwards for hours on end while painting, he got to the point where he could only read a letter if he held it at arm's length above his head. Luckily, this condition eventually passed.

When Michelangelo unveiled the Sistine Ceiling, everyone seems to have been delighted and amazed except Pope Julius, who wanted Michelangelo to add touches of gold and ultramarine-gaudy additions that Michelangelo flatly refused to paint.

A later pope, Hadrian VI, wanted to take a hammer to the Sistine Ceiling because he found it obscene. Luckily he died before he could carry out his plan.

The recent restoration of the Sistine Ceiling took twice as long as Michelangelo had needed to paint the fresco in the first place.

There are 17,000 daily visitors to the Sistine Chapel.