Sistine Chapel masterpiece done in Rubik's cubes - 521

The World-record breaking Hand of God, in Rubik’s Cubes. Photo by Cube Works Studio Michaelangelo’s iconic Sistine Chapel ceiling—specifically, his Hand of God masterpiece—received the retro ’80s treatment recently: an artist collective recreated the work using 12,090 Rubik’s cubes.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the world-record breaking art piece took 11 puzzle fans 400 hours to complete. The group behind the work, Cube Works Studio, spent half of that time creating blueprints of the work using computers, while twisting the Rubik’s cubes took the remaining time. The Telegraph also reports:

Josh Chalom, the creative director, said the work is the beginning of an attempt to reproduce the entire ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a project that will be hung from a roof and weigh 50 tonnes and use 250,000 cubes. …

[Says Chalom,] “Essentially, 12,090 cubes came out to 108,810 pixels that has to be individually coloured and mapped. Once this was done blueprints were made up.

“The team then went about twisting with the cubes so they showed exactly the right colours.

“The cubers are incredible and can solve the puzzle in 12 seconds, quicker than I can get it out of the packaging.

This isn’t the first instance of Rubik’s Cube recreations of masterpieces. In the past, one street artist by the name of Space Invader used the cube to depict major events and masterpieces in an art movement Metro.co.uk called “Rubikcubism”. The artist’s work has been sold for upwards of £20,000 apiece. In the meantime, Cube Works Studio’s work is certainly the largest.