Michelangelo Buonarroti is desperate and sends a letter to his father. He has been entrusted with painting the Sistine Chapel, but he is a sculptor. Donato Bramante advised Pope Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere) to do so. But it’s a trap: Bramante knows that Michelangelo is a sculptor, not a painter, and that Raphael will soon begin painting the Vatican Rooms, and that Raphael is the most admired painter in Rome. Michelangelo will have to compete with Raphael, or else he will have to throw himself into the lion’s jaws. The Sistine Chapel is a thousand square meters. Michelangelo tries to avoid it, even suggesting Raphael’s name to Julius II. But then he accepts. And he writes to his father: “This is the difficulty of the work, and also that it is not my profession. And yet I waste my time fruitlessly. God help me.”
