The Sistine Chapel, wanted by Pope Sisto IV della Rovere, from which it takes its name, was built by Giovannino de'Dolci between 1475 and 1481 after Christ.

The decoration in the style of 1400 of the walls, realized by an extraordinary group of painters made of Perugino, Botticelli, Signorelli and Ghirlandaio, includes the artificial draperies, the "Stories of Moses and Christ" and the portraits of the Pontiffs while Pier Matteo d'Amelia painted for the inauguration on the vault a starlight sky.
The realization of the frescoes in Sistine Chapel, at least for the one that constituted the initial composition, was taken to its end in 1482 after Christ when were also completed the marble works relatives to the grating, to the choir-stalls, and to the pontifical emblem located above the entrance door. The chapel was consecrated to the cult of the Lady of the Assumption on August 15th 1483 after Christ by Pope Sisto IV but already his nephew, Pope Giulio II della Rovere, only 25 years old, decided to modify the decorations later on, charging Michelangelo Buonarroti of this work.
The contract undertaken on May 8th 1508 after Christ was contemplating the realization of the portraits of the twelve apostles in the crests of the vault, surrounded by ornamental decorations, but soon the Pontiff saw himself constrained to surrender to the requests of the artist who was claiming for a greater liberty of composition.
Michelangelo painted new episodes extracted from the book of the Genesis organized inside an artificial architecture in thematic groups of three:

• Separation of light and darkness
  "God said: - Should the light be!-. And the light was. God saw that the light was a good thing and he separated the light from darkness and called the light day and the darkness night."
• The Creation of the stars and the plants
  "God created the two big lights, the major light to rule the day and the minor light to rule the night, and the stars."
• Separation of the land and water
  "God said: - should the waters which are under the sky congregate in a unique point and the dry appear. And so it was. God called the dry "Earth", and the mass of the waters "sea". And God saw that it was a good thing."
• Creation of Adam
  "And God said: - Let's make the man to our image, to our alikeness, and he should dominate on the fishes of the sea and on the birds of the sky, on the cattle, on all the wildness beats and on the reptiles that snakes on the earth.-"
• Creation of Eva
  "The Lord God moulded with the rib, which he had taken away from the man, a woman and he took her to the man."
• Original sin and expulsion from the Earthly Paradise
  "But the snake said to the woman: - You will not die from hunger! Indeed ... you will become like God, knowing what is good or bad. Then the woman took its fruit and ate some of it, and then she gave some of it also to the husband"
  "The Lord God expulsed the man and put at the east of the Garden of Eden the cherubs and the flame of the fulgurant sword, to guard the path of the Life tree."
• Sacrifice of Noe
• Universal Deluge
  "Then God said to Noe: - For me it has come the time of the end of every man, because the earth, for their fault, is full of violence; here it is, I will destroy them together with the earth. Make a wooden ark of cypresses; -"
• Ebriety of Noe
  "Now Noe, cultivator of the earth, started to plant a vinery. Having drunk the wine, it got drunk and was lying uncovered inside his tent."

When the painting process of the Sistine Chapel was completed, Michelangelo represented along the sides of the vaults figures of sibyls and prophets seating on the throne, in the sails, those who presumably have to be retained as the ancestors of Christ, and in the four angular crests, some episodes of the salvation of the people of Israel.
The most important work of Michelangelo was completed in 1512 after Christ, and on November 1st Giulio II inaugurated a second time the Sistine Chapel with a solemn mass.
Towards the end of 1533 after Christ Clemente VII De'Medici charged Michelangelo to modify again the decoration of the Sistine Chapel by painting on the wall of the altar, at the place of some frescoes of Perugino, the Universal Judgment. In the second half of the 16th century, the frescoes of the entrance wall were restored, seriously damaged by the collapse of the door in 1522 after Christ: Hendrik van den Broeck painted again the "Resurrection of Christ", while Matteo da Lecce painted the "Dispute on the body of Moses". The frescoes of the chapel have sustained a complete restoration between 1979 and 1999 after Christ, recovering the splendour of the colours and the integrity of the original painting tissue.