The Sistine Secrets

by Benjamin Blech

  Buonarroti’s plan is all the more dazzling when you realize that he had to execute the whole thing backward, starting from the eastern wall of the chapel and slowing inching his way west toward the altar wall, arriving at the beginning of the Torah narrative only after more than four years of backbreaking and mind-numbing labor. What most “official” explanations of the Torah strip misunderstand is why he ended it with the Drunkenness of Noah panel. Standard Vatican guidebooks say that this is not only to show humanity’s tendency toward sin, but also to foreshadow its coming redemption through Christ. However, it seems a very strange choice for an ending to the central narrative—both anticlimactic and downbeat. Considering how inspirational most of the other panels are, it doesn’t appear to make much sense. These common explanations overlook one simple factor, though. The whole ceiling project was done in two phases. In the first phase, it is obvious that Michelangelo had planned to do the Torah panels as triptychs, that is, as a three-panel recounting of each major story in the strip. We can still see today that there are three panels for the pre-humanity creation story, three panels for the story of Adam and Eve, and then the last three for Noah. In a classic triptych, the climactic part is always the larger central panel, with the “supporting” parts of the story shown in the two smaller side panels. A quick glance back at the Esther corner fresco will give you an idea of how this worked: there is the big climax of Haman’s execution in the large middle section, with the events leading up to it—Esther’s accusation and the king’s recollection of Mordechai’s help—flanking Haman’s corpse on either side. Michelangelo started this triptych style with Noah: the climax of his story is the Flood, which is the largest panel in the middle. This is flanked on both sides (above and below) by two lesser-known events after the Flood—the first altar ever built, to give thanks for surviving the deluge, and Noah’s invention of the vineyard with his subsequent drunkenness.

  We know from letters and from his contemporaries that Michelangelo encountered many problems while doing the Noah panels. He must have been working on them in the summertime, when Rome, especially in areas near the Tiber River (such as the Vatican), can be extremely humid and muggy. His first Noah frescoes had to be almost completely hacked out of the ceiling because they became crumbly and covered with mildew from the humidity. One Florentine friend and assistant named Jacopo l’Indaco came up with a brand-new formula for the fresco plaster (called intonaco), which was mildew and mold resistant, and thus saved the day. Because of this and other early problems—remember that Michelangelo had never frescoed before and was learning as he went along—just doing the ceiling up to the third Noah panel took one and a half years. By the time the Noah triptych was done, Pope Julius was extremely eager to preview the work and also to show it off. Buonarroti argued furiously against this as much as he could, since no artist wants the public to see work not yet completed. Julius, who was not sure that he would live long enough to see the completed ceiling, would not be dissuaded. In 1510 the pope ordered the scaffolding dismantled and the first part of the fresco displayed to an eager public. The ecstatic reactions from artists and laymen alike helped overcome any complaints from the clergy and censors. Michelangelo won the right to proceed with the rest of the project without further (or with lessened, shall we say) interference. This was also his chance to stand on the ground level and see what the work looked like up there, about sixty-five feet above. He realized then that he was being too timid with the figures, that he had been making them too numerous and too small. We can immediately see the difference in the central panels after the Noah section: they are simplified and the figures are much larger and more “sculpted.” Even the prophets and sibyls increase in size from that point onward. He had allowed his helpers to paint some of the Flood scene, and was unsatisfied with their contributions. From then on, he decided, he would do all the major panels and images himself—alone. This would slow down the job greatly, but it was his only assurance of maintaining his vision and his quality throughout. Michelangelo also realized that his original concept of triptych stories would not work. Even though his intent was that the biggest panel of the Noah triptych, that of the Flood, would be the final dramatic highlight of the ceiling, he could see that the viewer’s gaze would naturally follow the simple linear order of the panels, ending in the relatively anticlimactic and downbeat Drunkenness scene. This triptych layout would have been even more confusing when it came to portraying the first days of creation. So, the plain truth is that the artist changed his mind. For the rest of the central Torah strip, he painted the narrative in straight linear order. With this in mind, let us now go straight to the Beginning, where Michelangelo actually ended the work.

  PAR’SHAT B’RESHEET—THE CREATION PORTION

  The creation story was one that Michelangelo would surely have known from the Jewish mystical perspective, since his teacher Pico della Mirandola had researched and written about it in a book entitled the Heptaplus, or the “Sevenfold explanation of the six days of creation.” In the first panel, we see the very first verse of the Torah: “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.” In this depiction, the Almighty is twisted around in a serpentine manner, much like the contorted positions the artist himself was assuming to create the fresco. With his hands, God is seen as actually separating the heavens. In this gesture, Michelangelo shows that he understands a key concept of the Hebrew text: in the Jewish Bible, God creates the universe by way of separating and differentiating. God separates light from darkness, day from night, the waters from the dry land, and so on. To imitate this divine formula, the Jewish people will, later in the Torah, be commanded to separate and differentiate as well: between the Sabbath and the workdays, between kosher and nonkosher foods, between pure and impure sacrifices, between good and immoral actions, and on and on.

  There is another reason why God’s body is twisted in just this manner. If you look closely at the great statue of Laocoön, discovered only two years before Michelangelo started the ceiling project, you will see that the sculptor could not resist giving God the same magnificent torso as the Greek masterpiece.

  All of Michelangelo’s tutors in the Palazzo de’ Medici were fascinated with the Hebrew biblical commentaries of the great sage Rashi, who lived in Troyes, France, in the eleventh century. Pico della Mirandola, especially, delved deeply into Rashi for his studies on the creation. Viewing this first panel on the ceiling, we may almost certainly infer that Michelangelo was taught some of Rashi’s commentary. In the first chapter of Genesis, at the end of each day of creation, the text says: “And there was evening and there was morning, the second/third/fourth/fifth/sixth day.” However, oddly enough, at the end of the very first day, the Hebrew says: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” How can we explain this phrasing, which seems linguistically incorrect when compared with the way the other days are counted? It would be far more proper for the text to say “the first day.” Rashi offers us an intriguing explanation: the Almighty wanted to ensure that humanity would properly understand the concept of the oneness of God, so he made clear that the first day was really the day of “the One” alone, with no angels or any other heavenly beings yet in existence. Sure enough, on the Sistine ceiling Michelangelo portrays God on day one as One alone, and it is the only panel of the first three sections in which there is not a single angel to be seen.

  One last amazing fact about this panel: it was painted near the end of Buonarroti’s sufferings up on the ceiling. He was in a desperate rush to finish, both for his personal health and because there was concern that the pope, who had been very ill, might not live to see the project completed. If Julius had died before it was done, the next pontiff might have cancelled the artist’s contract, and perhaps have changed or abandoned the work as well. In creating this panel, Michelangelo coincidentally worked without his “angels,” his assistants who would prepare the full-size cartoons to transfer the outlines of the figures to be painted into the wet plaster intonaco. In
fact, this sculptor who had said of himself “I am no painter” painted this entire panel in one day—totally freehand, something few highly experienced fresco artists would ever dare attempt.

  The second panel is the Separation of Day and Night, when God creates “the Sun for the day and the Moon for the night.” There are two secrets of this panel that bear mentioning. One is that the moon on the right side of the scene was painted without paint—it is the actual color of the intonaco itself, left bare on purpose by Buonarroti for a special otherworldly effect. The other secret is another sfogo or “letting off steam” of the angry artist. At this point, he had been up on the scaffolding for four awful years instead of pursuing his cherished craft of sculpting. He would have loved to insult Pope Julius in public, but of course that would probably have cost him his life or his freedom. So instead, Michelangelo found a way to insert a cosmic put-down coming from the Almighty himself. Look carefully at this scene and you will notice that Michelangelo has God facing away from the viewer while creating the sun, and his purple mantle seems almost to part right over—well, there is no delicate way to describe this other vulgar gesture of the angry Florentine. It seems as if the Lord is mooning Pope Julius II from his own chapel ceiling, sticking out the divine backside over the papal ceremonial area.

  The theme of the third panel has long been debated. Does it represent the Separation of the Water from the Dry Land, or as Pico wrote, the Separation of the Waters (upper waters from lower), or the Separation of the Higher Firmament from the Lower? No matter which interpretation is correct, its message clearly revolves around God’s power over the elements, as shown by his control over the waters. Here we can discover yet another idea that Michelangelo ingeniously encoded. As we learned in chapter 6, Dr. Garabed Eknoyan, in his carefully researched article in Kidney International, theorizes that the artist might already have been suffering from a kidney problem at this time—specifically, uric colic, a kidney dysfunction that would have eventually led to the kidney stones and the kidney failure that caused his death years later. We cannot tell if this was a genetic malady that ran in the Buonarroti family, or if it resulted from the artist’s mentally and physically trying way of life. We do know that kidney problems can come from a lack of vitamin D, often the result of lack of sunlight, lack of sleep, and too much calcium intake. This sounds very much like Michelangelo’s life while toiling on the Sistine ceiling, spending all his time indoors, sleeping and eating badly and irregularly, and drinking the calcium-filled water of Rome. Whether or not he was in fact suffering from kidney problems in his thirties, we do know that he had been fascinated with human anatomy since his youth, even doing illegal dissections secretly since he was only eighteen. Dr. Eknoyan points out that Michelangelo would surely have learned what Galen taught about the function of kidneys: that they separated the solid waste in the body from the liquid (urine). In this panel on separating the solid earth from the waters of the sea, Buonarroti wanted to pay tribute to Galen and to thank those who had helped him gain his forbidden mastery of the internal secrets of the human body. If you look carefully at the royal purple cape that envelops God in this scene, you will see the clear shape and several key details of the human kidney.

  THE CREATION OF THE FIRST HUMAN BEINGS

  The next panel, the Creation of Adam, is unquestionably the most famous part of the Sistine ceiling. In fact, along with La Gioconda (the Mona Lisa) and The Last Supper, it is one of the best-known images in the world.

  Here we see Adam, the first human being, freshly formed from the dust of the earth, looking languid and limp because he still lacks the vital ruach HaShem, the divine life force. He is not only Adam here, but according to both Neoplatonic and Kabbalistic thought, he is Adam Kadmon, the primordial human, the prototype for all human life and the microcosmic model for the universe.

  We also see God here, not so much as the Almighty, but in his role of Creator, the One who in creating Adam is creating all of us. Michelangelo’s rendition of God in this scene has caused much debate and questioning down through the ages: Who is the young woman under God’s left arm? Who is the infant under his left hand? Why does God require so many angels around him, even, seemingly, to hold him up in the air? Why did the artist make this image so busy, with so many extra figures around God, and then add a huge purple cape and a blue-green scrap of cloth hanging down like the tail of a kite?

  There are two prevailing opinions on the identity of the mysterious woman. One claims that she must be Eve, or the soul of Eve, waiting for her true soul mate, Adam. The other interpretation is that she is the Neoplatonic concept of Sofia, the Greek goddess and symbol of Wisdom. It is this second view that finds a measure of Kabbalistic support. In the daily prayers of traditional Jews, there is a blessing that offers thanksgiving for our life and for the genius of our bodily functions. The prayer expresses gratitude to God Asher yatzar et Ha-Adam b’Chochmah, “who formed humanity with Wisdom.” However, instead of using the more common Hebrew word anashim (men, humanity, people), the prayer reads et Ha-Adam, literally “the Adam,” the one primordial human. The phrasing powerfully echoes the Kabbalistic insight that man was created through the s’firah of Chochmah, Wisdom, known in Greek as Sofia—the very idea that Michelangelo may also be expressing.

  The infant under God’s left hand is most likely the soul of Adam, about to be transmitted into Adam. Notice that the infant’s body position is imitating that of Adam. It is about to be infused into Adam through Adam’s left hand. According to tradition, the left hand is the one through which we receive blessings and benedictions, since its blood vessels lead directly to the heart. Even today, countless people around the world wear the red string of the matriarch Rachel’s blessing—on their left wrist. Michelangelo knew that his talents, too, were a blessing received from God. Is it only a coincidence that the artist, who depicted Adam receiving his soul from the Creator through his left hand, was also himself left-handed?

  The other questions—about why God’s image is so complicated in this panel, with so many seemingly superfluous figures, a cape, and a hanging cloth—were solved by chance in the year 1975. A Jewish surgeon from Indiana, Dr. Frank Mershberger, entered the Sistine, looked up at the great fresco, and was suddenly struck not only by a sense of awe, but also by a sense of…strange familiarity. What the American surgeon noticed in the Creation panel was the distinctive shape of the cape and the dangling scrap of cloth. He mentally blocked out the colors and the mass of adjacent figures. And then he found himself picturing the diagrams he had studied in his Anatomy 101 textbook back in medical school. The cerebrum, the cerebellum, the occipital lobe, the cortex, the brain stem…of course. They were all there. What Michelangelo had hidden in the painting was a perfect cross-section of the human brain. But—why?

  Again, he was showing to others “in the know” what he had learned surreptitiously through illegal dissections. The only people who might have recognized the hidden internal organs in the ceiling would have been other seekers of knowledge who had pursued the same forbidden activities. Those who knew the secret kept silent, and so for many generations the secret was lost or forgotten. It is a testament to Michelangelo’s anatomical expertise—and his subtle way of disguising his messages—that it took a professional surgeon to rediscover it in the twentieth century.

  Michelangelo concealed this forbidden evidence of anatomical studies to convey the concept of creation rooted in wisdom; the “brain” of God, so to speak, is the source of humankind’s appearance on earth. It is yet another illustration of an idea stressed in the Kabbalah—the brain is the organ mystically linked to the s’firah of Chochmah/Wisdom. Incredibly, Michelangelo was aware of an even deeper truth, noted long ago in Kabbalistic thought: it is not the entire brain that is linked to Chochmah/Wisdom but only its right hemisphere, exactly the part that Michelangelo painted in this panel. The artist found a way to echo visually the ancient Jewish prayer proclaiming that God created Adam with Chochmah, the right side of the divine brain
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  Some experts think that the extra interlocking figures surrounding God are the major brain centers and the ganglia (intersections of the “highway” of the nervous system). However, there is also a far more fascinating mystical explanation. According to Talmud, Midrash, and Kabbalah, the drop of semen that impregnates the womb of the woman does not originate in the male reproductive system but comes from within the man’s brain instead. According to this interpretation, all those figures surrounding the Creator are us, the future descendants of Adam and Eve, waiting to be conceived. That makes all of us direct descendants of God, awaiting birth from his brain—a powerful universalistic concept.