Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

Even before completing “The Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, Pope Paul III had chosen Michelangelo to decorate the walls of his new namesake chapel – the Pauline Chapel located in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. Used as an antechamber to the Sistine Chapel, the Pauline Chapel contains Michelangelo’s last two paintings - the “Conversion of St. Paul” (which was executed when he was 67 years-old) and the “Crucifixion of St. Peter” (70 years old.) Considered by many to be Michelangelo’s least successful paintings, they not only lack the dramatic pathos typical of the artist’s earlier works but seem to possibly betray a personal sense of melancholy in the artist as well.