Who painted the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?

Who painted the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling? Michelangelo did. He created the monumental fresco cycle in Vatican City between 1508 and 1512, during the High Renaissance, after Pope Julius II commissioned him to decorate the chapel’s vaulted ceiling.

Michelangelo was already famous as a sculptor and initially considered himself more suited to sculpture than painting. Nevertheless, he designed an ambitious program featuring nine central scenes from Genesis, including The Creation of Adam, along with prophets, sibyls, ancestors of Christ, and illusionistic architectural details. The frescoes were painted using buon fresco, applying pigments to freshly laid wet plaster.

A common mix-up is confusing the ceiling with The Last Judgment, the enormous fresco on the chapel’s altar wall. Michelangelo painted that later, from 1535 to 1541, under Pope Paul III. Other Renaissance artists, including Perugino and Botticelli, painted important scenes on the chapel walls, but Michelangelo is the artist associated with the ceiling itself. The Sistine Chapel was named for Pope Sixtus IV, who commissioned its construction in the late fifteenth century.