The Sistine Chapel, the private chapel of the Popes, was built for Sixtus IV, Pope from 1471 to 1484. The frescoes on the walls of the lives of Moses and of Christ, the Old and the New Dispensations, were according to Kugler, page 114, by 'all the most celebrated painters of the time'. They included Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Pinturicchio, Cosimo Rosselli, Luca Signorelli, and Piero di Cosimo. Raphael's Cartoons were for the tapestries to be hung in the Sistine Chapel.
Michelangelo's frescoes on the vaults and the ceiling were commissioned by Pope Julius II and completed in 1512. Michelangelo's fresco of the Last Judgement was commission by Pope Paul III for the east wall. Work was started in 1536 and completed in 1541. The scheme as a whole thus covered the whole of history from the Creation to the Last Judgement.
For Kugler in 1842:
The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel contains the most perfect works done by Michael Angelo in his long and active life. Here his great spirit appears in its noblest dignity, in its highest purity; here the attention is not disturbed by that arbitrary display to which his great power not unfrequently seduced him in other works. ( Kugler, ed. Eastlake, Handbook of the History of Painting, page 202).
However, Kugler has reservations about Michelangelo's Last Judgement on the east wall of the chapel:
If we consider the countless number of figures, the boldness of the conception, the variety of movement and attitude, the masterly drawing, particularly the extraordinary and difficult foreshortenings, this immense work certainly stands alone in the history of Art, but in purity and majesty it does not equal the paintings on the ceiling. ( Kugler, ed. Eastlake, Handbook of the History of Painting, page 202).
Ruskin writes of the evil influence of the Last Judgement at Works, 22.101 (and see Roman school).