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Talk18 min

The unheard story of the Sistine Chapel

Elizabeth Lev · TED

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About

The Sistine Chapel is one of the most iconic buildings on earth -- but there's a lot you probably don't know about it. In this tour-de-force talk, art historian Elizabeth Lev guides us across the famous building's ceiling and Michelangelo's vital depiction of traditional stories, showing how the painter reached beyond the religious iconography of the time to chart new artistic waters. Five hundred years after the artist painted it, says Lev, the Sistine Chapel forces us to look around as if it were a mirror and ask, "Who am I, and what role do I play in this great theater of life?"

The talk

  1. The unheard story of the Sistine Chapel 18 min · TED's player

Credits and licence

Institution
TED
Department
TEDGlobal>Geneva
Speaker
Elizabeth Lev
Year
2015
Level
For everyone
Language
English
Subjects
History, Religion, Art, architecture and design
Source
TED
Licence
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, as TED states it. Non-commercial use only, and no changed versions. TED's terms
Attribution
TED Talks are licensed by TED under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International and are shown here in TED's own player, as TED's usage policy asks.
Who can watch
TED gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from what the source says about it. How courses are placed