''The Prophet Daniel'' is one of the seven

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

prophets painted by the Italian High Renaissance master

Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was insp ...

(c. 1542–1545) on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The Sistine Chapel is in Vatican Palace, in the Vatican City. This particular

fresco Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaste ...

figure is painted second on the right from the side of the High Altar. Unlike many other paintings of the period, this portrayal makes no reference to the most famous event from

Daniel Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge"Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 68. (cf. Gabriel—"God is my strength" ...

's life, that is his time in the den of the lions. Instead, Michelangelo shows Daniel reading a great book, which is held up by a muscular figure from below.

See also