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Sunday, June 16, 2013

"Michelangelo Hid Anatomy Lesson in the Sistine Chapel: Human Brainstem is Depicted in the Image of God"

In May of 2010, medical illustrator Ian Suk and neurosurgeon Rafael Tamargo came out with an astonishing revelation in Neurosurgery: that the painting of God creating Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel --


-- in fact contains a detailed, anatomically correct representation of the human brain:


Michelangelo frequently dug up corpses from local cemeteries and dissected them, starting at age 17, so had an intimate familiarity with the human body.

There are two schools of thought about Michelangelo's message here. One is that he was celebrating God's greatest gift to Adam, the human brain. The other interpretation is that he was saying that God is merely a creation of the human brain, not the other way around.

Most people seem to have assumed that Michelangelo, often described as a deeply religious man, was sending the former message: that God had endowed Adam with a special brain because He favored humans.

I lean toward the latter interpretation. If Michelangelo had felt that God's greatest gift to Adam was a human brain, why would he not have said so more straightforwardly, rather than putting it in "code," so to speak. Plus, it is God, not Adam, who is contained within the brain, suggesting that it is He, and not he, who is a figment of the imagination.

Michelangelo lived from 1475 to 1564. The Vatican had been established in Rome in 1377, the Spanish Inquisition had its heyday in the late 1400's, and Italy had its own version starting in 1542. In Michelangelo's time, the church had far more power than it does today, and a public declaration of atheism would not have been wise for an ambitious artist.

Michelangelo, as a homosexual, undoubtedly felt himself outside the mainstream, which probably predisposed him towards a different way of viewing many things. (A grandnephew, who published Michelangelo's sonnets in 1623, felt obliged to change the gender of the pronouns in the homoerotic poetry.)

And desecrating the bodies of the dead would certainly not seem to be the act of an instinctively pious man.

Michelangelo must have been confident that people of his time would not recognize the shape for what it was, and that his message -- whatever that was -- would be discovered after his lifetime. And if anybody did happen to recognize the shape, he had plausible deniability: he could just say any perceived resemblance was unintended.

Of course, there is a third interpretation: that Michelangelo had not intended any message, and that the brain shape was merely a lark, a flight of fancy. But this seems unlikely in an era when religion so saturated public life and thinking.

Whatever Michelangelo's intent, it's awe-inspiring that the huge brain -- in effect, the artist's brain -- sat there for half a millennium, gazed at by millions but not truly seen until 2010.

(Would Michelangelo have been surprised at how long it took?)

I find myself shivering in an almost religious rapture at the thought of his overwhelming genius.

10 comments:

Dave Moriarty said...

Mike was clever. And probably enjoyed the idea that there was a picture within the picture, that no one else knew he tucked in there. Sony ought to hire him today . even dead for 500 years he still has better ideas than most

John Craig said...

Dave --
Ha! Yes, that concept was just breathtakingly ingenious. Can't remember the last time I was so wowed by an idea.

Anonymous said...

Another interpretation: whoever created Man must have had one incredible brain.

John Craig said...

Anon --
That's possible too.

the22on said...

This is the first time I saw the "Just Not Said" website. Is there a link that explains what the website is about? Rules?

In any case, I'll comment about the post on Michelangelo:
- I just realized there's no 'a' in Michel because the spill chicken flagged it
- I never knew that his 'pull my finger' painting depicted a brain. That's pretty cool. Many artists hid messages, symbols, etc. in plain sight in their paintings. They probably chuckled to themselves that, "No one will notice that I painted myself
as one of the 50 onlookers in the crowd".
- It shows that people back then probably had the same Bell Curve IQ as today. Maybe the curve has
shifted a bit to the right over the centuries due to nutrition, access to books, etc. When I look at engineering
inventions back then, I'm amazed at what they did with bronze or iron. They even made a 'computer' - it was
discovered in the ocean and had a dozen brass moving wheels, etc. called the Antikythera Mechanism.

John Craig said...

The22on --
This website has been about whatever interests, or stirs me in any way. And I blog only occasionally these days. No rules, I'll post any comments that are relevant, so pleas feel free to make observations, contradict or agree, or pass judgment.

What's really cool about Michelangelo painting that brain is that so fe people were familiar with them back in his day. They all had them, and as you rightly point out, all those brains more or less had the same distribution they do today. And yes, it is amazing how ingenious a few people in almost every era have been.

the22on said...

Yes - "a few people in almost every ear" are ingenious, you say.
I think less than 100 people- in all the billions on Earth at any time-make 'a dent in the universe' as Steve Jobs called it. In history class we study wars and generals and kings and presidents, etc. and they do have an impact on our lives. Imagine if Germany had won the second world war (although they did have a big influence thanks to Operation Paperclip where the United States took in thousands of nazis after the war). I thank the technical people for influencing our lives for the better - inventors, engineers, physicists, etc. I don't think any resident of the first world would enjoy living even a century ago. I went through a hurricane and afterwards, there was no electric. The world was terrible - no heat, air conditioning, hot water, tv, computer, refrigerator, stove, music, news, telephone (some battery stuff worked). When the electric came on, (I live in a high rise apartment complex of 2,000 units) - the cheer of people - me included- was amazing. We all went on our balconies and cheered! Totally spontaneous.
All these inventions make life so much better. And creative people are important also. They entertain us - which is not a luxury - it's a necessity.
I remember they once asked a general in Congress if spending money to support american artists would improve national security. He answered, "No, senator, but I think it would help to remind us of what we are fighting for."
That quote is a little 'off' and I wish I could remember the exact exchange in congress.

John Craig said...

The22on --
So true about how we've been spoiled. I grew up without the internet, but now I can't imagine life without it. And we've had power outages at my house, too, and it's miserable.

That's a great quote by that general. He was pretty good on his feet to think of such an apt reply so quickly.

A high rise complex with 2000 units? Wow, big place. May I ask what city you live in?

Unknown said...

Maybe he meant that through our brain we can be in contact with the divine?
I'm not a Christian by the way, I interpret 'the divine' in a broader sense, I harbour a more animistic view of how the divine is in everything and so also in us.
Our brain makes us perceive the world around us and thus also the divine...

John Craig said...

Unknown --
That's quite possible.