Art › Rome › The Sistine Chapel
The Delivery of the Keys
Consegna delle chiavi
Christ hands Saint Peter the keys of heaven in a great paved square, a domed temple and two triumphal arches behind them.
Pope Sixtus IV had the walls of his new chapel painted in 1481–1482 by the best painters of the day, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Rosselli and Perugino among them, decades before Michelangelo's ceiling: the lives of Moses on one side and of Christ on the other.
In Perugino's the keys of the Church are given in a vast piazza drawn in perfect perspective; the arches are copies of Rome's Arch of Constantine. His pupil Raphael borrowed the temple for his Marriage of the Virgin. Stand before it in 3D ›
