According to two neuroanatomists, Michaelangelo has hidden scores of secret anatomical allusions in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
I can’t make out what they’re talking about in the article from the crappy picture that they provide, and was a bit dubious at first. However, seeing this, there may be something to it!
Wow. That page takes a long time to download and it’s worth it. That’s the first time I’ve had a good look at the Sistine Chapel. It’s a lot more colourful than I expected.
Neat! Its also amazing to note how well the colors have held up over the years…were they restored at some point?
ETA: yes it was, in 1984!
The ceiling was finished somewhere around '94. I was there in November '98. They were still working on the wall frescoes.
Too bad it’s the Vatican. They’re not gonna show us where the dicks and boobies and stuff are.
I started college in '87. A good friend of mine was an art history major, and she was amused to no end at the cleaning and restoration of the Chapel. Apparently there had been numerous dissertations and conjecture on M’s use of somber tones to invoke the proper sense of reverence, etc. When they scraped off 400 years of pollution and smoke it was found to be pretty darn vibrant. She went on about this for an entire semester.
Uhmm, no. From Wiki:
Just wanted to chime in that, yeah, it’s worth it to wait for that download. Thanks for the link, Cap!
Funny, the first thing I thought when I saw the thread title was “They finally found where he hid the dick!”
Sadly my mind only noticed one thing after years of gaming. “Damn, almost no cover here, If I don’t get behind the altar first I’m gonna get dropped in seconds”. :smack:
Holy shit, I waited for it to load and was looking at it for a few minutes before I noticed that it scans around. That’s awesome. Then the music loaded and I scared the crap out of myself.
Woah. Second panel down from the famous one - is that God mooning us?
The concept of Deity as Intelligence (embodied in the human brain) became readily apparent to me once I recognized the similarity of form.
The Abrahamic God extending from the brain-stem to the cerebrum and enveloped by streaming fabric that just so happens to correspond to the lateral cross-section of a human brain is an inspired construct that I can only attribute to genius … or perhaps mere happenstance.
heh
Here’s a great site for looking at the Sistine Chapel. It might make you dizzy.
http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html
Zoom in. I found an area where part of the artwork had fallen away and they had patched it with plain colour.
No way! Someone should start a thread about it!
EDIT: By the way, Cracked already showed us the hidden brain back in January.
The brain thing in the Creation of Adam has been talked about for some time–the HuffPo article mentions Frank Meshberger’s proposal of that interpretation back in 1990. Suk and Tamargo’s new “discovery” seems to focus on the fresco of The Separation of Light from Darkness.
They’re not the only ones to follow in Meshberger’s footsteps–a couple of doctors in Brazil, Gilson Barreto and Marcelo de Oliveira, took a similar approach in 2005 to the frescoes, seeing almost all of them as containing anatomical codes: Brazilian Doctors Uncover ‘Michelangelo Code’.
Considering Mich’s anatomical knowledge, I wouldn’t be too surprised if there’s some merit to these interpretations. But the HuffPo article is incredibly annoying with its speculation as to “why” Michelangelo would have hidden these references, citing the Protestant Reformation and the Church’s persecution of Copernicus as sufficient cause for an artist to utilize subterfuge lest he, too, become accused of heresy.
Problem is, Michelangelo finished the ceiling frescoes in 1512–the Protestant Reformation didn’t start until 1517. Similarly, Copernicus’s writings weren’t public knowledge until De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was published in 1543–and Copernicus was never persecuted by the Church during his lifetime (perhaps the author of this article was thinking of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons which claims that Copernicus was assassinated on the Vatican’s orders).
Plus, the implication (not quite overtly asserted in this article, but one I hear all the time) that Renaissance artists who conducted anatomical dissections risked imprisonment or even capital punishment is quite probably a myth. Scholars like Katharine Park have debunked it pretty soundly. I imagine the reason why Michelangelo destroyed his anatomical drawings was most likely to prevent people from knowing that he actually had to do any studies before working on his masterpieces–that way people would think that his paintings and sculptures just sprang straight from his genius of an imagination without any deliberation with sketches or models.
Michelangelo had personal conflicts with Pope Julius II (typical ego battles), but I don’t think he had any major doctrinal conflicts with the Church, at least based on what he left behind in his writings. So I doubt he was a closet heretic. Now, Michelangelo as a closeted homosexual, on the other hand… that’s very likely. But that’s not the same thing as heresy.
Sure looks that way!
When I went they had some small sections that they left unrestored just so they could point out the difference - the unrestored sections were basically black; just completely covered in soot and grime.
Everybody talks about the ceiling in that place. But hove you looked at the floor? Awesome work! And totally uncredited.