The American Jewish writer Irving Stone (born Tannenbaum) aptly titled his 1961 novel about Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling paintings “The Agony and the Ecstasy.” For centuries, ecstatic tourists have admired the Renaissance masterwork painted in the Vatican between 1508 and 1512, where Jews are shown in a state of agony.
Among the over 300 figures included in Michelangelo’s ceiling are dozens of so-called ancestors of Jesus — Jews occupied with domestic tasks such as reading, writing, combing their hair, stitching clothes, and tending children. They stand in contrast to the heroic, energetic figures of sibyls and angels in Last Judgment scenes painted elsewhere in the ceiling. These ancestors were listed in the New Testament books of Matthew and Luke, and although Michelangelo printed their names in his compositions, these names cannot be attached to specific people. Thus, the Sistine Chapel ceiling includes names such as Achim, Eliud, Aminadab, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joram, Azor, Sadoch and more, without indicating to which portraits they correspond.
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