Artist: Michelangelo- Sistine Chapel
between 1508 and 1512
This lunette recalls three generations in the ancestry of King David. Their names belong to the period between Israel's settlement in Canaan and the rise of the monarchy. Michelangelo placed these ancestors among the family groups surrounding the Sistine Chapel, showing the generations that prepared the way for the royal line from which Jesus would come.
Matthew 1:5 identifies Salmon as the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab. Boaz married Ruth, a Moabite widow who had joined herself to the people of Israel. Their son Obed became the father of Jesse and grandfather of King David (Ruth 4:13-22). This portion of the genealogy is especially significant because it includes Rahab and Ruth, women whose stories demonstrate that God's redemptive purposes extended beyond Israel by birth. Their descendants became part of the family line leading to Jesus.
The painting belongs to Michelangelo's sequence of domestic groups, in which the physical presence and relationships of the figures carry the composition. The genealogical inscription supplies the biblical connection, but the figures themselves are not securely identifiable as Salmon, Boaz, or Obed. The contrast between the quiet family setting and the monumental ceiling above emphasizes the human generations through which biblical history unfolded.
