What is this plan, then? What does the great ceiling really mean? To understand it fully, we have to experience it the way that Michelangelo created it and meant it to be interpreted: step by step, layer by layer.
It is important to keep in mind that originally all visitors to the chapel entered through the front door, to experience the sanctuary as an organic whole, first seeing the entire length of the hall from the portal and then slowly immersing themselves in the imagery, step by step. Michelangelo’s purpose was twofold: On the one hand, the impact of the large-scale all-encompassing view served as powerful inspiration; one could not help but be overwhelmed, both visually and emotionally. But there is another function—a brilliant technique to conceal the deeper and more dangerous messages in his work. Michelangelo put so many different ingredients into the mix that the average viewer is distracted, unsettled, and ultimately disoriented.
To give you an idea of how much Michelangelo included in the chapel ceiling, here is just a small list of its major components:
Trompe l’oeuil architecture
The four salvations of the Jews
The genealogy of the ancestral Jews
Prophets
Sibyls
Medallions
Garlands
Giant nudes
Bronze nudes
Putti
The first two Torah sections of the book of Genesis—event by event
There is so much information and decoration that this, the world’s largest fresco painting at about twelve thousand square feet, seems overstuffed and overdone. Let us be clear: it is—and on purpose. Think of a master magician performing sleight-of-hand tricks. The prestidigitator will be making so many flourishes, grandiose gestures, and distracting movements with one hand that you will never notice the real operation happening in the other hand. So it is with the artwork in the Sistine Chapel.
Of course, one can find significance in every element in the frescoes, but even the most casual comparison with the austere simplicity of Michelangelo’s sculpture and architecture—for example, the David, the Campidoglio Piazza, the Pietà, and the de’ Medici Chapel—suggests that the sensory overload of the Sistine is the result of a conscious decision on the part of the artist. Michelangelo’s genius was in allowing the viewer to see a great deal—in order not to show what is best left secret, except to the knowledgeable few. In other words, he put in so many trees that we cannot see the forest.
To view the chapel ceiling in the private way that the artist intended for his inner circle, imagine that you enter with your eyes closed, that someone guides you down the altar steps and across the length of the room, through the marble partition, to the far end where you turn around and open your eyes. This is an apt image, since to understand all of Michelangelo’s secret messages, you will need to close your eyes to the standard interpretations, go bravely forward, turn your mind-set around, and open your eyes to a new reality.
To unveil and understand the Sistine secrets, we will need to proceed with care, in a Neoplatonic, Kabbalistic way: starting from the edges and working our way in, element by element, toward the central core of meaning.
Turn your gaze now directly over the large wooden portone (great door) of the pope and you will see the first of seven Jewish prophets on the ceiling—Zechariah. Whenever the pope enters the chapel through the main entrance, Zechariah is sitting right over his head, in the very spot where Pope Julius II had wanted Michelangelo to place Jesus.
Why one of the later, lesser-known Jewish prophets over the front door of the Sistine? Michelangelo must have selected Zechariah for a variety of reasons—again, there are multiple layers of meaning, so integral to Talmudic and Kabbalistic thought, and so dear to Michelangelo. First of all, Zechariah warned the corrupt priesthood of the Second Holy Temple: “Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars” (Zechariah 11:1). This was a prophecy that if the priesthood did not cease its corrupt, unspiritual behavior, the doors of the sanctuary would be broken open by attacking foes and the Temple, built partly of cedarwood from Lebanon, would be burned down. And here is the author of that warning, right over the doors of Pope Julius’s sanctuary.
Zechariah is also the prophet of consolation and redemption. He is the one who urges the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem and the Holy Temple: “Thus says the Lord of hosts; My cities shall again overflow with prosperity; and the Lord shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem” (Zechariah 1:17). In his own way, Buonarroti is clueing us in on the fact that he knows what the Sistine is—a full-sized copy of the heichal, the long rectangular back end of the Jewish Holy Temple. At the same time, however, he is letting us know that he does not subscribe to the Church’s theology of successionism; he does not believe that Jerusalem can be replaced by a copy of the Temple in a foreign land.
Another vision of Zechariah involves “four horns” that will afflict Israel. These are four exiles under oppressive foreign regimes: Egypt, which had already ended; Babylon, which was just ending during Zechariah’s time; Persia, which had just conquered Babylon; and finally Greece. These four horns are reflected in the four curved panels in the corners of the ceiling, which surround Zechariah and which contain so many secrets that they merit an upcoming chapter.
Zechariah also had another prophetic vision, of the Holy Menorah, or golden seven-branched candelabra, in the Temple. Even though it had seven branches, they were all made from a single piece of beaten gold, and all their lights leaned together toward the center. This is the reason that the original partition grill in the Sistine had seven candle flames of marble sculpted on top—it symbolized the Menorah, placed right before the image of Zechariah. These seven lights, according to his prophecy, are “the eyes of the Lord” (4:10) that watch over the whole of creation.
This symbol of all the different branches stemming from a single piece of gold is the core of Zechariah’s teaching, and also of Michelangelo’s message. It means that even though there are many various branches of belief, and many names for God, all come together in the end, to one common Light. No one People of the Book has the right to try to dominate, subdue, invalidate, or convert another. “‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts,’ proclaims the prophet” (Zechariah 4:6). Right at the outset of decorating the pope’s supremacist, exclusionary sanctuary of the One True Church, Michelangelo painted one of the most universalist, inclusionary figures of the Hebrew Scriptures, in the hope that one day his message would be heard and heeded even in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel: “…and on that day the Lord shall be One, and His Name—One” (Zechariah 14:9).
Still, the rebellious artist had placed a minor Jewish prophet in the important spot where the pope had wanted Jesus. How did Michelangelo imagine he would avoid the pope’s wrath in openly defying his wishes? Replacing Jesus with a minor prophet might have doomed any other commissioned artist, but Michelangelo found a brilliant way to appease his patron. The Zechariah panel is not simply an idealized portrait of a biblical figure. Michelangelo superimposed a portrait of Pope Julius II on the ancient Hebrew prophet. Not only that, but Michelangelo portrayed Zechariah dressed in a mantle of royal blue and gold—the traditional colors of the della Rovere clan, the family of both Pope Sixtus IV and his nephew Pope Julius II. Replacing the image of Jesus Christ with a portrait of the pontiff? This was no problem for the egomaniacal Julius. It placed his visage permanently over the entrance to this glorious new sanctuary for all future popes and commemorated his family’s role as its builders.
The juxtaposition of Julius over the royal entranceway was a masterful psychological stroke by Michelangelo. At the very beginning of the great project, it must have helped ease the pope’s fears about the rebellious artist’s behavior. It is not hard to imagine that Michelangelo counted on this sop to the pope’s gigantic ego to help gain him pardon for subsequently abandoning the pope’s design of an entirely Christian ceiling.
But Michelangelo couldn’t entirely subdue his true
feelings toward his patron. He was distraught at the prospect of several lonely years up on ladders and scaffolding, doing the type of art he most disdained—painting—and not being able to pursue his greatest passion in life—sculpting. So he incorporated yet another message in the supposed tribute to the pope that leaves us with a totally different perspective.
The putti, or little angelic figures, in the panel with Zechariah serve as “supporting characters,” created by Michelangelo to “whisper” subtly to the informed viewer the real thoughts of the artist. In this case, they are looking over the prophet’s shoulder, casually reading his book. One angel leans on his companion; they look for all the world like two modern Italian soccer fans reading the latest match results in someone else’s newspaper on the subway. What is very hard to see is that the little innocent golden-haired angel who is resting on the other is making an extremely obscene hand gesture at the back of Pope Julius’s head. He has made a fist, with his thumb stuck between his index and middle fingers. This is called “making the fig”—and it is the medieval and Renaissance version of what we would call today “giving someone the finger” or more colloquially, “flipping the bird.” It is a bit blurred and shadowy on purpose, since if the elderly pope had seen it clearly, Michelangelo’s career—and most probably his life—would have ended right there.
True, hardly anyone realizes it, but to this day when a papal procession enters through the giant portal for a rare mass in the chapel, the pontiff passes right under a portrait of his predecessor getting the finger from Michelangelo.
Chapter Eight
THE VAULT OF HEAVEN
As below, so above: as above, so below.
—KABBALISTIC PROVERB
ONE OF MICHELANGELO’s many objections to painting the Sistine ceiling was its lack of Classic architectural details. The chapel, even though it follows the exact measurements and proportions of the original Holy Temple, has a simple, medieval feel. The ceiling is a plain barrel vault, its austerity relieved only by the twelve triangles around the edge. This was entirely the opposite of Michelangelo’s taste. He loved pagan Roman design: the Pantheon, the muscular male Greco-Roman statues being discovered all over Rome, the details from broken cornices found in the Forum, and the coffered ceilings of the Basilica of Maxentius, just to name a few examples. A barrel-vault design from the Middle Ages would not have suited his taste at all.
There is a story told about him when he was very old, famous, and wealthy. A cardinal was passing by in a fancy carriage on a snowy winter day and noticed the great artist trudging through the slush and mud, heading toward the Colosseum and the Forum. (Back then, the Forum was called the campus bovinus, the “cow field,” since only a few of the tallest remnants of the ancient glories of Rome were sticking up through the dirt.) The cardinal ordered his coachman to pull up alongside Michelangelo and offered him a ride. The proud Florentine refused the offer, saying, “Thank you, but I am on my way to school.” “School?” replied the puzzled cardinal. “You are the great Buonarroti. What school could possibly have anything to teach you?” Michelangelo pointed to the Colosseum and the few battered remains of the Forum. “This,” he answered, “this is my school.”
When Michelangelo planned the great ceiling project, one of the first parts of his concept was a trompe l’oeuil architectural structure, not only to appear to hold up the vault, but also to frame the huge variety of panels and images, much like an art gallery sixty-five feet up in the air. The faux structure has several other functions as well. In spite of seeming to be heavy marble, it lightens up the massive barrel-vault ceiling and appears to lift it toward the heavens. When you stand at the main entrance to the chapel, in front of the great portone of the popes, the ceiling does not seem flat, but rather like an airplane taking off into the sky. To add to this effect, Michelangelo inserted two tiny slits of faux sky at either end of the vault, subliminally making the viewer feel as if the whole fresco were an open, airy framework. It also signals the viewer that the ceiling is not a “minestrone” of floating bits of unrelated images, but a true unified, organic system of thought, much like the Neoplatonic unifying philosophy that had so absorbed Michelangelo in his youth.
The school of Neoplatonism offers us a clear explanation for the faux Roman architecture that forms the skeletal frame of Michelangelo’s work. Pico della Mirandola and the other teachers of the de’ Medici circle were enamored of Philo of Alexandria, an early Jewish philosopher who developed a profoundly influential system of Kabbalistic thought early in the first century CE. In fact, many theologians and religious historians credit Philo’s writings with having a major formative effect on the beginnings of Christianity. In one of his better-known works, De Opificio Mundi (On the creation of the world), Philo describes God as the “Great Architect” of the universe.
When any city is founded through the exceeding ambition of some king or leader who lays claim to absolute authority, and is at the same time a man of brilliant imagination, eager to display his good fortune, then it happens at times that some man coming up who, from his education, is skillful in architecture, and he, seeing the advantageous character and beauty of the situation, first of all sketches out in his own mind nearly all the parts of the city which is about to be completed…. then having received in his own mind, as on a waxen tablet, the form of each building, he carries in his heart the image of a city…. like a good workman, keeping his eyes fixed on his model, he begins to raise the city of stones and wood, making the corporeal substances to resemble each of the incorporeal ideas. Now, we must form a somewhat similar opinion of God, Who, having determined to found a mighty state (the Universe), first of all conceived its form in his mind, according to which form he made a world perceptible only by the intellect, and then completed one visible to the external senses, using the first one as a model.1
This beautifully describes not only the process for an architect, but also for a Renaissance artist, particularly one preparing to create a fresco. The painter first had to conceive of the entire project, mapping it out in his head, then making sketches and preparatory full-size drawings on paper, which were then finally transferred onto the permanent plaster surface.
Michelangelo’s project surely brought Philo’s all-incorporating philosophy to mind. Just as the Divine Architect mapped out the entire master plan of the creation, the artist must first map out the planned unity of his project.
In Michelangelo’s study of Midrash, the collection of oral lore connected to the Jewish Scriptures, he almost certainly came upon the famous dictum that “The Creator used the Torah as the blueprint of the universe.” In the order of creation, the Torah came first. “I was in the mind of the Holy One,” the Torah is quoted as saying, “like the overall design in the mind of a craftsman.” The Midrash continues: “In the way of the world, when a king of flesh and blood builds a palace, he builds it not according to his own whim, but according to the idea of an architect. Moreover, the architect does not build it out of his own head; he has [a design]—plans and diagrams to know how to lay out the chambers and where to put in wicket doors. Even so the Holy One looked into the Torah as He created the world” (B’resheet Rabbah, 1:2).
Architectural design as a metaphor is so important in classic Jewish thought—later adopted by the Neoplatonic school—that it is linked with the beginning of monotheism and Abraham’s discovery of God. How did Abraham come to the startling conclusion that there must be a single, unique Creator? The Midrash explains that Abraham, living in a pagan world, at first could not conceive of a Higher Power. One day, however, “Abraham passed a palace with beautifully constructed rooms, magnificently tended lawns and intricately planned surroundings and suddenly said to himself, ‘Is it possible that all this came into being on its own without builder or architect? Of course that is absurd. And so too must be the case with this world. Its ingenious design bespeaks a Designer’” (B’resheet Rabbah, 39:1). It was the concept of a Divine Architect that brought the idea of One God to humanity.
For Michelangelo the faux architectural framework he created for the Sistine ceiling allowed him to express not only a correspondence between the divine and the human architect but also to illustrate an important principle of Kabbalistic harmonizing unity. It is yet another secret that almost no visitor to the Sistine knows. To demonstrate Philo’s philosophy that all faiths and cultures come from One Source and lead to One Source, Michelangelo pulled off the most amazing feat of perspective in the Renaissance. The large panels on the central strip of the ceiling are framed by giant naked youths, the ignudi. These ignudi are seated with their feet or toes resting on square trompe l’oeuil pedestals with pairs of small naked putti carved into the stone. When anyone looks at the square bases all over the vault, their angles are askew. No matter where you stand in the chapel, the pedestals seem to pop out at many disorderly angles.
There is one spot, however, on the smallest but most central of the porphyry disks in the middle of the mosaic floor, that creates a different perspective. Stand on precisely that spot and all the square bases suddenly align themselves perfectly and point directly at your head.
What is truly amazing is that Michelangelo executed this so perfectly from sixty-five feet above the chapel floor, visualizing the sight lines through an obstacle course of scaffolding and canvas drop cloths, over a period of four long years and without the aid of computers or laser aligning devices.
Why did Michelangelo pick this particular porphyry disk on the floor for this fantastic effect? This was the disk upon which the pope himself knelt during many rites in the chapel. Back then, the white marble grill was in the center of the chapel, immediately after this disk when one entered from the great portal. This was another reminder from the original designers of the chapel, marking the exact spot in Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem where the High Priest passed through the Veil to enter the Holy of Holies. Just before crossing through the Sistine’s partition and entering the inner part of the sanctuary, the ruler of the Catholic Church would have to kneel down on the last of the ceremonial disks, the small central core of ten concentric circles, akin to the Ten S’firot (spheres of the universe) of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Michelangelo, in his fresco, added the crowning touch. If the pope looked up, the entire unity of the Alexandrian architecture would bear down on his head, a truly humbling experience for those in the know who have actually stood on this spot. (However, knowing Julius II’s ego, he probably thought it was proof that the entire universe revolved around him.)
The Sistine Secrets Page 14