Michelangelo is considered one of the most inspired creators in the history of art, and along with Leonardo da Vinci, the most important force in the Italian High Renaissance. As a sculptor, architect, painter, and poet, he exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and on Western art in general. The most important of his many commissions was that of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Working high above the chapel floor, lying on his back on scaffolding, Michelangelo painted some of the finest pictorial images of all time. The Creation of Adam, finished around 1510, depicts the scene where Adam receives from God the divine Word and touch of life.