For all the tourists who visit Rome,
irrespective of their religious belief, a visit to the Vatican City is a must.
This smallest independent nation has one major attraction, the Sistine Chapel, the Apostolic Palace, the official residence
of the Pope. Originally known as the Cappella Magna,
the chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who restored it between 1477 and 1480. Since
that time, the chapel has served as a place of both religious and functionary
papal activity. Today it is the site of the Papal conclave, the process by which a new pope is selected.
The fame of the
Sistine Chapel lies mainly in the frescoes that decorate interior walls and ceilings
painted by many Florentine Renaissance masters. The Creation of Adam,
or Crezione di Adamo, is the most famous fresco by
Michelangelo as part of the Sistine Chapel's Ceiling, which he painted between
the years of 1508 and 1512, being only 25 years old when he began. To this day,
it is one of the most renowned and celebrated creations in the world,
reproduced in thousands of ways. But there is only one original, and I would
like to tell you a bit more about it.
Most of what I am about to share is told
to the visitors by the audio tape guide and guide books that are freely
available and a guided tour costs 38 Euros.
History
The Creation of Adam illustrates the Biblical narrative from the Book of Genesis in which God gives life
to Adam, the first man. The fresco is part of a complex iconographic
scheme and is chronologically the fourth in the series of panels depicting
episodes from Genesis.
In 1505
Michelangelo was invited to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II. He
was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb, which was to include forty
statues and be finished in five years. Michelangelo was originally commissioned
to paint the Twelve Apostles on the triangular pillars (pendentives)
that supported the ceiling, and cover the central part of the ceiling with
ornament. Bramante, who was working on the building of St Peter's
Basilica, resented Michelangelo's commission for the Pope's tomb and convinced
the Pope to commission him in a medium with which he was unfamiliar, in order
that he might fail at the task. Michelangelo himself reluctantly accepted the
commission to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He was accomplished in
many forms of art, but he considered himself to be a sculptor and not a painter
by trade. Lucky for us he eventually accepted! And the rest is history!!
Michelangelo
persuaded Pope Julius to give him a free hand and proposed a different and more
complex scheme, representing the Creation, the Fall of Man, the
Promise of Salvation through the prophets, and the genealogy of Christ.
The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel which
represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
What does the fresco mean?
God is depicted as
an elderly white-bearded man wrapped in a swirling cloak while Adam, on the
lower left, is completely nude. God's right arm is outstretched to impart the
spark of life from his own finger into that of Adam, whose left arm is extended
in a pose mirroring God's, a reminder that man is created in the image and
likeness of God. Adam's finger and God's finger are not touching. It gives the
impression that God, the giver of life, is reaching out to Adam who has yet to
receive it; they are not on "the same level" as would be two humans
shaking hands, for instance.
Many hypotheses
have been formulated regarding the identity and meaning of the twelve figures
around God. According to an interpretation that was first proposed by the
English art critic Walter Pater (1839 – 1894) and is now widely accepted, the person protected by
God's left arm represents Eve,
due to the figure's feminine appearance and gaze towards Adam, and the eleven
other figures symbolically represent the souls of Adam and Eve's unborn
progeny, the entire human race. This interpretation has been challenged;
the figure behind God has also been suggested to be the Virgin Mary by
some!
Unmistakably the brain!
Take a closer look
at God, what do you see behind Him? Yes, unmistakably the shapes that make up
God and his retinue also make up a pretty accurate anatomical figure of the
human brain, including the major sulci of the cerebrum in
the inner and outer surface of the brain, the brain stem, the frontal
lobe, the basilar artery, the pituitary gland and the optic
chiasm. Thus the Creation of Adam draws some fascinating parallels to the human
brain. Given Michelangelo’s expertise in anatomy, these theories have some
basis to them.
Cloth and scarf
The brain isn't the
only human body analogy found in this fascinating painting. Many believe the
red cloth around God has the shape of a human uterus, and the scarf hanging out
could be a newly cut umbilical cord. This is an interesting hypothesis that presents
the Creation scene as an idealized representation of the physical birth of man
and it also explains the navel that appears on Adam, which is at first perplexing because he was created, not born of a
woman!
But God came last!
In the four years
that it took to Michelangelo to paint the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, he
left the painting of the figure of God to the very end, so his technique would
be refined to such a degree that the figure would come out as close to perfect
as he could make it.
It was not easy or fun
Michelangelo literally
struggled with this hard work, and in 1509 even wrote a poem about how
miserable he was feeling, complaining to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia:
"I've already grown a goiter from this torture." The perfectionist
that he was , Michelangelo actually fired all the apprentices that were there
to help him, preferring to do it all himself. It took him four years to finish
the Sistine Chapel, and a significant part of that was The Creation of Adam.
Blamed for too much nudity
Intending to depict
Adam and others in their natural state, Michelangelo chose to make many of them
nude. However, the nudes in this painting were not ignored by the more delicate
sensibilities of the times. In 1564, the Council of Trent decided the painting
was indecent and ordered the nude parts covered with fig leaves, clothing and
other items.During large restorations performed between the 80s and 90s, many
of these nudity-covering additions were removed, revealing numerous, previously
unseen details!
Michelangelo Did
NOT Lie on His Back
It is a popular
belief that Michelangelo painted the ceiling while lying on his back. But he
actually invented his own type of scaffolding (the man was a genius after all)
that allowed him to paint standing up with more control and precision.
So that is the
story of one of the most famous work of art adored by the world. Leonardo da
Vinci’s The Last Supper and Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam are the most
replicated religious paintings of all time. It is considered, generally, that
The Creation of Adam depicts the excerpt from Genesis that stated: “So God
created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him."
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