“This is not my art,” was Michelangelo’s succinct response when Pope Julius II asked him to paint a simple, geometric composition with the 12 apostles on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The artist was clear that he considered himself a sculptor, not a painter.

Marking the 550th anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth, a new exhibit, “Michelangelo: The Genesis of the Sistine,” also celebrates the newly renovated and expanded Muscarelle Museum of Art at William & Mary. The renovated building increases the museum’s footprint by more than 42,000 square feet, blending contemporary design with William and Mary’s historic tradition and tripling the museum’s exhibition capacity.

Adriano Marinazzo, curator of the exhibition, is an art and architectural historian who has published numerous studies on the artist. Through his research, Marinazzo developed relationships with experts and significant institutions such as the Uffizi, the Vatican Museums and Casa Buonarroti, the Florentine museum situated on land Michelangelo owned. Through these contacts, the curator was able to bring works to the Muscarelle that have never been seen in this country.

Included in the exhibition is what may be Michelangelo’s first sketch for the project, a drawing showing the architectural profile of the Sistine ceiling viewed from below. It’s paired with an digitally elaborated actual ceiling view, essentially showing the arc from first impression to finished product.

“There are only 45 to 50 surviving Michelangelo drawings because he usually destroyed his drawings, which he saw as working tools” says Marinazzo. “Half of the drawings that exist today are in the exhibition.”

Despite the Pope’s initial request for a simple representation of a dozen men, Michelangelo managed to convince him to adopt a more ambitious vision and allow the artist to create an illusionist framework that would surround sacred scenes from Genesis. Two sketches of apostles offer a glimpse into Michelangelo’s initial, ultimately abandoned, vision for the ceiling frescoes. The two sketches have been combined for the first time in this exhibition.

Part of the brilliance of the exhibit is the combination of rarely, if ever seen, preparatory drawings and life-size reproductions of some of the iconic frescoes.

A visitor standing in front of “The Creation of Adam” is immediately reminded of Michelangelo’s insistence that he was a sculptor by the sheer mass of Adam’s right fist and his rock-like shoulders.

“We thought it was important to mix drawings with color reproductions of the frescoes,” Marinazzo explains. “It helps demonstrate the importance of drawings, which represent the artist’s preliminary ideas and problem-solving exercises to plan the complex decoration of the ceiling.”

The first three galleries have walls of deep blue, a nod to the color of blue Renaissance skies. Walking across a glass skybridge to the remaining galleries, the Muscarelle Museum’s director David Brashear gestures to one of the color reproductions of the ceiling and notes, “You can see this from the road at night. It’s pretty cool.”

The next gallery has walls of deep red and is devoted to drawings for Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment,” which was painted nearly 30 years after the ceiling on the wall over the altar of the Sistine Chapel. The four preparatory sketches on view are among fewer than a dozen surviving examples and Marinazzo says they illustrate the continuity and interconnectedness of his projects over several decades.

The final gallery provides the de rigueur technological element of the exhibition. An immersive video art installation titled “This is not my Art” delivers a 3-D representation of the Sistine ceiling’s architectural structure set to music, and highlights the impressive complexity of Michelangelo’s masterpiece.

Fans of the artist are treated to a portrait of Michelangelo by his contemporary Giuliano Bugiardini, which is on display for the first time in the U.S. In it, he wears a white turban, symbolizing his identity as a sculptor, despite having finished the Sistine Chapel a decade earlier. As if to demonstrate how difficult a job he’d taken on, there are also two of Michelangelo’s sketches of himself painting the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.

Because of the delicacy of the drawings, “Michelangelo: The Genesis of the Sistine” will not travel to other museums. Accordingly, Brashear and the Muscarelle staff are expecting thousands of visitors over the course of the exhibition’s twelve-week run.

The opportunity to view Michelangelo drawings, not to mention life-sized reproductions of portions of the Sistine ceiling and “Last Judgment” altar wall without traveling to Italy, all but guarantee a wide-reaching audience. Tickets will provide timed entry to ensure that visitors have the best possible experience in the galleries.

The genesis of the exhibition’s title refers not only to the biblical subject of the ceiling but to the artist’s development of his vision as a painter.

“Michelangelo thought he was a messenger of God,” Marinazzo says. “He said he was put by God in this position.”

“Michelangelo: The Genesis of the Sistine,” through May 28 at the Muscarelle Museum of Art at William & Mary. Tickets