June 01, 2010
Michelangelo's secret message in the Sistine Chapel: A juxtaposition of God and the human brain
R. Douglas Fields in Scientific American:
At the age of 17 he began dissecting corpses from the church graveyard. Between the years 1508 and 1512 he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Michelangelo Buonarroti—known by his first name the world over as the singular artistic genius, sculptor and architect—was also an anatomist, a secret he concealed by destroying almost all of his anatomical sketches and notes. Now, 500 years after he drew them, his hidden anatomical illustrations have been found—painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, cleverly concealed from the eyes of Pope Julius II and countless religious worshipers, historians, and art lovers for centuries—inside the body of God.
This is the conclusion of Ian Suk and Rafael Tamargo, in their paper in the May 2010 issue of the scientific journal Neurosurgery. Suk and Tamargo are experts in neuroanatomy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1990, physician Frank Meshberger published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association deciphering Michelangelo’s imagery with the stunning recognition that the depiction in God Creating Adam in the central panel on the ceiling was a perfect anatomical illustration of the human brain in cross section. Meshberger speculates that Michelangelo surrounded God with a shroud representing the human brain to suggest that God was endowing Adam not only with life, but also with supreme human intelligence. Now in another panel The Separation of Light from Darkness (shown at left), Suk and Tamargo have found more. Leading up the center of God’s chest and forming his throat, the researchers have found a precise depiction of the human spinal cord and brain stem.
More here. [Thanks to Ali Altaf.]
Posted by Abbas Raza at 05:24 AM | Permalink
Comments
Who shaved off God's beards? I had been to the Sistine Chapel after the clean up job and have in my possession many published images of the ceiling.
We do not see the images in the form in all respects depicted in the article. Understood and granted that these are probably from close up observations and speculations of the initial drawings (supposedly initial drawings) through the final layer of painting and recreating them on a surface by the people who are studying them. But give us a break! Does any one seriously believe Michelangelo would put the brain there in the throat of a person? In that perspective it is just not anatomically correct. Look at the many works of the genius. Besides being a physician since 1969, I am also an artist with some degree of dexterity. Even I with one thousandth of the skill of the genius would not do that. He is long gone. He is not here to say anything about his works today. Is it really about honoring this genius at work or distorting him just for the sake of publishing a paper and imposing on him someone else’s desire and views hundreds of years later? I understand that it is becoming more and more difficult to write a paper in areas like anatomy. But I do not think it is just right.
Posted by: Anil Thakuria MD | Jun 1, 2010 3:11:27 PM
Anil, there are many renderings of God on the Sistine Chapel, you're thinking of the, "Birth of Adam" part. The above is from a different part.
But, uh, I think this is just coincidence, to be honest.
Posted by: Justin Simoni | Jun 1, 2010 7:56:10 PM
Honestly, it's not all that unlikely, given Michaelangelo's theological influences - he, via his patron was interested in certain Neoplatonic currents in Christian theology, in which Mind is the first hypostasis of the divine, and the world emanates from mind. It's my understanding that the artist just happened to put a particular anatomical flourish on this notion of mind, which is to say that there was nothing subversive about it; he was just playing to the tastes of a very small orthodox audience. Or so went my religious studies education.
Posted by: markst7 | Jun 2, 2010 9:38:45 AM
OK OK OK NOW THIS IS TOTALLY FAKE, GOD'S HEAD IS NOT A BRAIN!!1!
Posted by: SKATERBOI2000 | Jun 2, 2010 6:10:31 PM
Perhaps this is Michelangelo's clever way of saying that god is a product of the human brain. I wouldn't put it past him.
Posted by: J.Hawkins | Jun 3, 2010 10:07:42 AM
Prof. K.A. Efetov from the Ukraine has found that Michelangelo has encoded the external surface of human brain, as well as human genitals(!) in the Sistine Chapel frescoes. The details of the discovery, along with the proof, may be found here: efetov.com
Posted by: K.A. Efetov | Oct 11, 2010 12:56:29 PM
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