Number of words: 173

Before the imperious insistence of the Pope, Michelangelo was forced to give in. And not only did he accept, but after a time unsatisfied with the theme (of the twelve Apostles), he proposed to the Pope that it should be modified. Indeed, we have documentary evidence on the origin of the ‘subject’ of the vault written by Michelangelo himself to his friend Fattucci in January 1524, in which we read ‘…and having begun the said work it seemed to me it would work out but a poor thing and I told the Pope that by painting only the apostles there I thought the result would be poor. He asked me why and told him it was because they were poor too. Then he commissioned me anew that I should do what I wanted.’ Only Michelangelo could have conceived that powerful synthesis, personal in the extreme, stamped both in form and thought with a single style – his own.

Excerpted from page 24  of  S. Chandrasekhar ‘Man of Science ’ by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam