The positioning of the stories is also well planned. On the eastern wall, in the direction of the Holy Land, are the two salvations that take place in Israel. On the western wall, away from Israel, are the two stories that take place in Persia and in the wilderness, both outside the Promised Land.
Yet these four moments of divine deliverance share a more powerful bond, a connection noted long before Michelangelo chose them for “starring roles” in the corners of the Sistine Chapel. For those who know the Midrash it surely seems more than coincidental that both the artist and the rabbis of old linked just these particular stories. In Deuteronomy 26:8, Moses recalls for the Jews that God redeems them with “a mighty hand, an outstretched arm, with great fear, and with signs and wonders.” The seeming redundancy of these phrases is explained by the Jewish commentators in a remarkable manner: Only the last of these expressions relates to an event the children of Israel have already witnessed. The rest refer prophetically to moments still in the future. All together they are to be understood as four ultimate instances of divine intervention. For this very reason, Jews recite this biblical verse at the seder, the Passover festive meal commemorating the deliverance from Egypt, and drink four cups of wine, one for each of the times that God ensured their salvation.
With the four pendentives, Michelangelo seems to be recalling these very same redemptions alluded to in the verse in Deuteronomy.
What is the significance of the promise of redemption in the phrase “with a mighty hand”? The Midrash notes that in the book of Judith, the heroine prays fervently, “Give to me, a widow, a mighty hand to do what I plan” (Judith 9:9; emphasis added). The expression is an exact parallel of the verse in the Torah. Indeed, it was the divine response to her impassioned plea, the mighty hand that enabled Judith to chop off the head of her enemy, that allowed for the miracle of the Hanukkah story and the Jewish deliverance from Greek annihilation.
The sages related the next phrase, “outstretched arm,” to the sword of David. It is captured in the central image of the David spandrel by way of the boy’s outstretched arm holding the sword of Goliath. Here Michelangelo chooses a powerfully symbolic way to stress the role of divine aid to the small shepherd boy’s arm. Strength in Kabbalah is the sphere of G’vurah, symbolized by the Hebrew letter gimel: . Looking at the outline of the vertical image of the sword, David, and the inverted V of Goliath’s head and arms, one can see the shape of this Hebrew letter, which supplies the strength to the boy’s outstretched arm.
The deeper meaning of the next words in the prophetic verse, “great fear,” prefigures the story of Esther. The connection is predicated on three arguments. First, the Talmud says that the fear of Haman’s genocidal plan brought more Jews back to the proper path of faith than all the prophets put together. This is a Talmudic variation on the old proverb that “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Second, according to the biblical text, when Esther finally discloses to the Persian king that someone wants to murder her and all her people, Achashverosh demands: “Who is he, and where is he, that doth presume in his heart to do so?” Haman, the scheming social climber, had even invited himself to be sitting at the royal banquet table at the time, right near the king. At this point, the Talmud adds that an angel of the Lord came along to guide Esther’s hand to indicate the wicked vizier. This is exactly the moment that Michelangelo illustrated in the left part of the spandrel. (The angel, like Moses in the Plague of Serpents panel, is felt but not seen.) The Scripture simply says: “Then Haman was afraid before the King and Queen.” Finally, in chapters 8 and 9 when the Jews are allowed by the king to defend themselves and fight back, the book of Esther says three times that the pagan Persians had fear of the Jews.
Finally, the sages explain that “with signs and wonders” refers to the rod of Moses, as God said to Moses in Exodus 4:17: “Take this rod in your hand, with which you will do signs.” In Michelangelo’s pendentive of the Plague of Serpents, the central image is in fact the rod upon which Moses hangs the redemptive sign of the copper serpent.
Only if we know how Michelangelo used Talmud and Midrash can we understand the otherwise inexplicable linkage of these unusual images. The four corners of Christianity’s holiest chapel and the four cups of the Passover seder have found common voice to proclaim God’s ongoing role in the major moments of history.
There is still one final layer of meaning. The corner scenes near the papal entrance represent two existential threats, Holofernes and Goliath, whose common fate was to be cut down. At the altar side, two other deadly foes, Haman and the serpents, in the end are raised up. Here, too, is a magnificent example of counterpoint. Evil can be destroyed in either direction. Some are meant to be cast down. Others rise, but their elevation is meant to bring about their downfall. Underlying all, as the very cornerstone of human existence, is a universal message of hope to all people, never to give up even when the future looks bleakest. That is why these four corners of faith seem to hold up the whole ceiling, another classic subliminal and powerful message from Michelangelo.
As we get further and further into the frescoes, Michelangelo seems to be taking us deeper and deeper into his private beliefs: humanism, Neoplatonism, Judaism, Talmud, and Kabbalah. With this in mind, let’s move on to the next layer, the one that has challenged art experts for centuries—a baffling assortment of sibyls and prophets.
Chapter Eleven
A COMPANY OF PROPHETS
With all forms of wisdom has she built her house,
she carved out its seven pillars.
—PROVERBS 9:1
THEY LOOM OVER US, sixty-five feet in the air, these giant figures from the ancient world. They are not looking down at us, though. They have something much more important on their minds: the future. They are a strangely assorted group: pagan female fortune-tellers and Jewish male prophets. In a sense, they are polar opposites. The empires represented by the sibyls—Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman—tried, one after another, to wipe out the Jews and Judaism. Conversely, the seven selected Hebrew prophets preached fervently for the eradication of pagan worship within the borders of the Holy Land of Israel in order to ensure the preservation of the Jewish people.
What could they possibly have in common? Combining the images of pagan seeresses and Hebrew prophets, although not unheard of, was not a common practice in Christian art. It wasn’t, that is, until Michelangelo. Here he is, in his work on the Sistine ceiling, showing us his roots in Neoplatonism and in Talmud by creating a whole new genre of art that is both inclusionary and multilayered in meaning. After he painted the ceiling, this combination became a trend in Renaissance painting, copied by many artists of the day, including Raphael. However, no one—including Buonarroti’s beloved Tommaso dei Cavalieri and his closest surviving assistant, Daniele da Volterra—chose to portray the same five sibyls that we find on the Sistine ceiling. Obviously, Michelangelo had a secret reason for these choices. What was it?
Our first clue, included in each of the Sistine portraits of the sibyls and prophets—save one—is a scroll or a book, symbolizing literacy. Through his use of books and writing, Michelangelo is showing us that he believes these seers were the intellectuals of their respective times and places. In fact, the Latin root of the word literacy is the same as for the word intellect: leggere, “to read.” The source for the word intellectual also gives us its true meaning: inter-leggere, “to read between.” An intellectual is defined by an ability to read between the lines, to analyze and to think critically, to understand things on many levels at the same time. This is exactly what we must do to appreciate fully the works of Michelangelo and his fellow Renaissance artists.
Let’s read between the lines here, since there is probably yet another reason that Michelangelo put books and scrolls in the hands of these seers. Only months earlier he had completed a hated task, the casting of the large bronze statue of Julius II for the Cathedral of Bologna, the Warrior Pope’s symbolic seal on his dominion over the rebellious citizenry. Buo
narroti loathed everything about the job: working in bronze, doing a banal portrait, having to cope with Bologna’s rainy climate and even its wine, which did not get along with his Florentine stomach. The lowest point occurred when he had to obtain papal approval to begin the project.
Showing Julius a clay model of the proposed design for the statue, Michelangelo asked the pope if he would like to be shown holding a book. “What, a book?” sneered Il Papa Terribile. “A sword. Me, I am no scholar.” Michelangelo, for once (as far as we know), dutifully complied. (Four years later, just as Buonarroti was finishing the ceiling frescoes, the independent-minded Bolognesi rose up against the pope and melted down his bronze likeness. They reused the metal to make a huge cannon to be used in their continuing struggle for freedom, sarcastically christening the weapon with the name Julia.)
Michelangelo’s very next commission after the bronze statue was the Sistine ceiling project. The pope’s dismissive attitude toward literature and scholarship undoubtedly was still fresh in Buonarroti’s mind as he conceived what the art historian Professor Howard Hibbard calls his “interpenetrating levels of meaning.” To distinguish the wise seers of yore from the antiintellectual pope, the artist showed all the sibyls and prophets (save Jonah) with books and writings—a subtle and barely concealed put-down that must have given Michelangelo pleasure during his long labors up on the ceiling.
We can now analyze Michelangelo’s selection of subjects, as we follow the mandate of “ladies first” by beginning with the five sibyls.
Some say that the word sibyl comes from the ancient Greek word sibylla, which means “prophetess,” but it far more likely derives from the earlier Babylonian/Aramaic sabba-il, “ancient one of God.” Sibyls are technically not the same as prophetesses. A sibyl, or oracle, would only respond to a question submitted to her, whereas a prophet is a messenger or mouthpiece for heaven, speaking, blessing, cursing, and predicting the future without human prompting.
There were ten sibyls in the Classical world, with two more added later in Christian medieval lore. Their names and locations varied from nation to nation, and from writer to writer. However, the best-known ones, and the ones that Michelangelo was most likely to know about, were: Libyan, Persian, Hellespontine, Tiburtine, Cumaean, Delphic, Eritrean, Cimmerian, Phrygian, Samian, and Marpessan. The three pagan sibyls that were the commonly accepted prophesiers of the Church were the Tiburtine, the Hellespontine, and the Samian, which made them the top choices for sibyls on those infrequent occasions when they were portrayed in medieval art. The Tiburtine sibyl, from Tivoli near Rome, predicted to Augustus Caesar the Advent of Jesus, as well as revealing that the future emperor Constantine would convert to Christianity and that the Antichrist would be a Jew from the tribe of Dan (a legend often exploited by the anti-Semites of the day). The Hellespontine sibyl foretold the Crucifixion and for this reason is always portrayed with the cross. The Samian sibyl held an especially important place of honor for her very specific prediction that Jesus would be born in a stable. It is telling and quite remarkable that, despite the renown of these three, Michelangelo refused to use a single one of these images in his work in the Sistine.
So, who are the five sibyls that Michelangelo chose instead to weave into his ceiling? And what was the reason for their selection in place of the seemingly far more logical choices? Let us follow the order in which he painted them, starting from the entrance wall of the chapel. The sequence we see is the Delphic sibyl, the Eritrean, the Cumaean, the Persian, and the Libyan.
THE DELPHIC SIBYL
The Delphic sibyl is at once both breathtakingly beautiful and very sexually ambiguous. If it were not for the quite unconvincing breasts and the few strands of hair that trail out from under her veil, she could easily be mistaken for a teenaged boy. (In fact, Michelangelo used well-built young men as models for all the sibyls.) Her expensively dyed clothes, when you see the actual fresco, have an almost metallic sheen to them—an amazing technical feat in plaster and paint five hundred years ago.
She is one of the earliest sibyls, from Delphi, in ancient Greece. She is not, however, to be confused with Pythia, the priestess of Apollo, who was most famous as the Oracle of Delphi, often a major character in Greek epics and tragedies. Michelangelo’s Delphic sibyl, like the other four sibyls in the Sistine, has no specific name; her identity is restricted to her geographic location. Her simple classic Grecian outfit underlines her origins. Her strands of golden hair show that she is supposed to be a daughter of the sun god Apollo. In Classical literature, as symbolized by the scroll she holds, she appears in Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid.
THE ERITREAN SIBYL
The Eritrean sibyl (or as Michelangelo spelled it, Erythraea) is actually Babylonian, born in Chaldea—the same land in which Abraham, the founder of Judaism, was born. Today, this area is part of Iraq. Like the Delphic sibyl, Eritrea is very masculine. Her arms would be the envy of any bodybuilder. Her right arm is reminiscent of the David’s in Florence. It seems that Michelangelo, missing his beloved life of sculpting while painting the ceiling, kept dreaming of his favorite works in marble.
Some historians credit the Eritrean sibyl with inventing the acrostic, since she wrote her prophesies on leaves. When put in the proper order, the first letters of the leaves would spell out a key word to understanding her prediction. In Michelangelo’s version, the leaf of the book that she is holding begins with a large illuminated letter Q.
THE PERSIAN SIBYL
Little is known of the Persian sibyl except that she supposedly foresaw the exploits of Alexander the Great. In Michelangelo’s rendering, she is shown as aged and having to squint closely to read her book. The putti below her and her book are dumbstruck in darkness. Even though she is very old, she has an incredibly muscular, masculine arm that seems to belong more to a male statue than to a painting of an aged woman—a typical paradoxical Michelangelo touch.
THE LIBYAN SIBYL
In spite of her name the Libyan sibyl was from Egypt, specifically from an oasis in the area called the Libyan Desert. She is known in many ancient accounts, but certainly a version that Michelangelo would have seen was that of Plutarch. In that account, Alexander the Great came to consult her and she foretold that he would be a great conqueror and become the ruler of Egypt.
In her panel, the artist portrays her either picking up or putting away a large book, but one of the putti next to her is holding a scroll as well. The Libyan sibyl is especially famous for her quote about the “coming of the day when that which is hidden shall be revealed.” As he was painting her, Michelangelo may very well have been contemplating the day when his hidden messages in the Sistine would also finally be brought to light.
Michelangelo assuredly felt a strong kinship with Alexander the Great on many counts. Alexander, like Michelangelo, was friendly with the Jews and fascinated by their religion and culture. Through his passions for learning and conquest, Alexander was able to bridge pagan Greek, Egyptian, and Jewish culture. And on a personal level, both the artist and the ancient conqueror were lovers of men.
As an interesting aside, we have a rare surviving sketch from Michelangelo (see above right), made while he was preparing the Libyan sibyl panel, that proves he used only well-built young men to model for these women.
THE CUMAEAN SIBYL
We have saved the Cumaean sibyl for last, since she is the oldest and most famous of all the sibyls. Although Cumaea was located near modern-day Naples, she is considered the sibyl of Rome. It was Cumaea who wrote the Sibylline Books and sold them to Lucius Tarquinius the Proud, one of the legendary kings of Rome. As the story goes, every time she offered to sell him the books of prophecies about the future of Rome, he complained that the price was too high. Cumaea was an even tougher negotiator than the king. Each time he refused to buy, she burned some of the irreplaceable scrolls and then upped her asking price. By the time Tarquinius the Proud finally caved in, she sold him the surviving one-third of the books for four times the original price.
The Cumaean sibyl did have her comeuppance, however. The mythological god Apollo desired her for her beauty and wisdom. She asked him for a favor first: gathering up a fistful of sand, she told Apollo that she wanted to live as many years as the grains of sand in her hand. He granted her wish, but she then refused his advances. Apollo replied, “Very well, but you forgot to ask me to grant you extended youth along with extended life.” As the centuries passed, Cumaea held on to life but grew older and older, shrinking so much with age that she eventually fit inside an oil jar. Michelangelo portrays her—in spite of a massively muscular male body—as an ugly old crone whose head has already shrunk so that it is far too small for her body.
The real Sibylline Books, if they ever existed, were destroyed in a fire in 83 BCE. This means that the so-called Sibylline Books, blended together with the ancient ethical teachings of Pseudo-Phocylides that were studied at the time of Michelangelo, were medieval inventions. This did not stop the Church, though, from spreading the idea that Cumaea had prophesied about both the coming of Jesus and the divine choice of Julius II for pope. This is why Buonarroti, wanting to keep Il Papa Terribile appeased during this touchy project, gave the Roman sibyl’s clothing the della Rovere family colors of royal blue and gold, and placed her right in the middle of the wall across from the papal throne area. Cumaea is symbolizing Julius, the Vatican, and Rome. Yet, unable to completely contain his true feelings about the pope, Michelangelo inserted a not-so-angelic putto (the singular form of putti) giving the old lady “the fig” gesture, just as he did in the panel of Zechariah over the front door. This daring personal insult was so subtly placed that it was only discovered recently, during the cleaning and restoration of the Sistine. Now, five centuries later, we can see that the angry artist succeeded, amazingly enough, in giving Pope Julius II the finger not once, but twice—from his very own commissioned ceiling project.
The Sistine Secrets Page 17