The Delphic Sibyl

Giorgio Ghisi’s detailed reproductions helped make Michelangelo’s frescoes, like Raphael’s, some of the best-known High Renaissance monuments, despite their restricted location. As the Sistine Chapel ceiling was too large to include on one sheet, Ghisi produced a series of oversize engravings of seven prophets and five sibyls. Ghisi’s rendition of the Delphic sibyl in an architectural framework is significantly smaller than the actual painting. The spurious 1540 date at lower right may have been added by the print’s publisher, Nicolas van Aelst, to suggest Ghisi’s images of the chapel appeared earlier than other available reproductions.