Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling standing up, not lying on his back.

Popular imagination, reinforced by films and cartoons, pictures Michelangelo flat on his back on a scaffold, brush dripping paint onto his face as he painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512. In reality, he designed a custom wooden scaffold that let him stand upright, reaching overhead with his arm bent back to work on the ceiling above him, a position that was exhausting in its own right but not the reclining pose usually depicted.

The physical toll was still severe. Michelangelo complained in letters and a satirical poem about the strain on his neck and back from craning upward for hours at a stretch, and some art historians believe the awkward posture affected his eyesight and spine for years afterward. The ceiling, covering roughly 12,000 square feet with more than 300 figures including the famous Creation of Adam, remains one of the most physically demanding single works in the history of art, standing scaffold and all.