# Elizabeth Lev: The unheard story behind the Sistine Chapel

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?"

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2016
- Runtime: 17 min
- By: TED.com
- Genres: Education, History, Religion
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/ElizabethLev_2015G)
- Licence or status: [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) (as the archive states it)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/ElizabethLev_2015G?play=1)