Michelangelo's Delphic Sibyl

Michelangelo's Delphic Sibyl (1508-12) is the most beautiful and youthful of the five sibyls depicted on the Sistine ceiling. The sibyls were female seers from antiquity who were thought to have predicted the coming of Christ, and this sibyl appears startled as she turns her head away from her prophetic scroll and gazes into the future.

The Delphic Sibyl was the voice of Apollo, the greek god of music, poetry, prophecy, and medicine, and it has been suggested that the four colors in her garments represent Earth, Water, Fire, and Air -- the basic elements of life.