How many sibyls are depicted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Five sibyls are depicted.
Michelangelo painted five female prophetic figures on the ceiling: the Delphic, Cumaean, Erythraean, Persian, and Libyan Sibyls. In classical antiquity, sibyls were believed to deliver divine prophecies. Renaissance Christian thinkers sometimes interpreted those prophecies as anticipating the coming of Christ, which helped explain their presence alongside biblical prophets.
The five sibyls form part of a larger group of twelve prophetic figures placed around the ceiling’s outer sections. The other seven are prophets from the Hebrew Bible: Jonah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Zechariah, Isaiah, and Daniel. Michelangelo alternated the pagan sibyls and biblical prophets to create a visual dialogue between classical and Christian traditions.
A frequent error is answering seven because there are seven prophets, but the ceiling has five sibyls and seven prophets. Another source of confusion is the number of sibyls known from antiquity: Renaissance writers discussed more than the five Michelangelo selected. The ceiling was unveiled in 1512 after roughly four years of work.