The Shrine of Heaven: The Organization of Curial Ceremony inside the Sistine Chapel in Late Quattrocento Rome

Abstract

The following paper proposes an interpretation of the first pictorial program inside the Sistine Chapel on the basis of the development of Curial Ceremony. With the construction of a new chapel inside the Vatican Apostolic Palace, which effectively replaced the previous cappella magna, an ambitious program in stratifying the Caeremoniale Romanae Curiae according to Pope Sixtus IV’s administration of the Roman Church through the construction and affirmation of papal ecclesiastical supremacy.