Artist: Michelangelo- Sistine Chapel
1508
The names in this lunette recall the final generations of Judah's monarchy and the Babylonian exile. Josiah attempted a major religious reform, but the kingdom later fell under Babylonian domination. Jechoniah was taken into captivity, and the royal family continued its existence outside the land of Judah. Michelangelo placed these names within the ancestral cycle to mark one of the most difficult transitions in Israel's history.
Matthew 1:11-12 places Josiah, Jechoniah, and Shealtiel at the transition from the monarchy to the Babylonian exile. Josiah restored the observance of the Law after the discovery of the Book of the Law in the Temple (2 Kings 22-23). Jechoniah, also called Jehoiachin, was carried into captivity in Babylon (2 Kings 24:8-15). Shealtiel appears among the descendants of the royal family after the exile. Matthew presents the deportation to Babylon as a major division in the genealogy of Jesus. Even the loss of Jerusalem and the Davidic throne did not end the family line through which the Messiah would come.
The painting belongs to Michelangelo's sequence of ancestral figures arranged around the names inscribed above the chapel windows. Rather than depicting the destruction of Jerusalem or the suffering of exile directly, the artist represents the generations through human figures whose attitudes suggest the ordinary burdens of life. The restrained treatment allows the historical meaning to emerge from the inscription and from the lunette's place in the larger sequence.
