Painting onto fresh, wet lime plaster so the pigment bonds chemically as it dries. Fast, unforgiving, permanent.
Italian for 'a day's work' — the patch of wet plaster a fresco painter could finish before it dried. You can still see the seams on the ceiling.
Renaissance idea that put the human being — reason, body, emotion — at the centre of the universe.
The person paying. In 1508, that's the Pope. Patrons chose subjects, deadlines, even who appeared in the painting.
Drawing a figure on an angle so it appears to lunge out of, or recede into, the picture plane. Michelangelo's superpower.
The twenty muscular nude youths Michelangelo painted around the ceiling's central panels. Nobody is sure what they're for.
End of glossary