Probably the same method was employed in transferring the twenty-four bronze-coloured decorative figures also.
The historical sequence of the events in the nine pictures on the central space of the vault represents the Story of the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and the second entry of Sin into the world, demonstrating the need for a scheme of Salvation, promised by the Prophets and Sibyls in the second part of the decoration.

The series represented is an old invention, and all the scenes may be found in Byzantine and early Italian works; but the new treatment gives them a character of grandeur only equalled by the Old Testament narrative which they illustrate.

All the human figures and most of the angels appear to be dominated by an idea of impending doom, but they nobly act their part in a fateful present, although they know that the future cannot be changed by any effort of theirs, however noble it may be.

They are all fatalists, but all noble in their pessimism; they reflect the mind of the artist.

The individual motives of the figures, their grouping and their action, are frequently taken from earlier art, especially sculpture, and they show how carefully and reverently Michael Angelo studied the works of his predecessors, Massaccio, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, and Jacopo della Quercia.
[Image #27] THE LIBYAN SIBYL SISTINE CHAPEL, ROME (_Reproduced by permission from a Photograph by Sig.