Michelangelo's secret message in the Sistine Chapel: A juxtaposition of God and the human brain

[Poco]

Was Michelangelo just a “merry prankster”? Anybody think there is anything to this? Or is this just more “Dan Brown fodder”?

This is the article.

To quote from the article,

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.

I find the pictures interesting but, as to secret messages? I tend to think not. From what I’ve read here and other places, Michelangelo seemed to be pretty straightforward with his messages. Such as using his own self-portrait in a couple of places and other people’s faces in other places.

Probably one of the more interesting items I came across was written in the comments section:

A PhD, writing in SciAm, writes both “[earth] rotates around the sun” and “Roshak test”.

Roshak is correctly spelled Rorshach and the earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun. (Now, before anybody gets carried away here, there are at least two other threads where you can debate which one revolves around the other. Let’s not get into that here! :tsktsk: )

:doh2:

 

[Poco]

By the way, there is a little note at the end of the article indicating the aforementioned errors have been corrected due to the “alert reader”. (with apologies to Dave Barry, or was it Chuck Adams?)

 

[OriginalJS]

Who knows what Michelangelo was thinking? We know he was dirty and an artistic genius who seems to have had a rather sad life. He complained a lot. Maybe he left “messages” or maybe not. It is fun to speculate, though.

 

[Stylites]

I find it interesting whenever anyone is alleged to have “left messages” versus simply living prayerfully in the present.

.

 

[Benadam]

Michealangelo would stare at a hunk of marble looking for the figure within it waiting for him to release it. He might see a knee or a hip bone and begin chipping away untill the rest of the body was exposed. He felt that something spiritual was happening. Like the essence of something was trapped in the stone. I feel fairly certain that as the figures on the Sistine Chapel ceiling were being roughed out, and layers of shadow and light gradually solidified their forms, he saw the structures of these internal parts of the body, the patterns of which were embedded in his imagination, therefore easy for him to matrix onto the anatomies of his figures. Much like we see objects in clouds or ghostly images in the pixels of a digital image. Given his spiritual viewpoint of the figures he chiselled out of marble I think he felt that the creative process revealed the brain stem within God’s throat. As for it’s meaning, what he thought it meant, in his own mind, was probably as much a personal enterpretation as any other observor.:twocents:

 

[Thing]

Neck looks ok to me. Usually ‘art from a distance’ painting or sculpture emphasizes lines and forms. Look at Gods face profile, greatly exaggerated because it needs to be to read from the ground.

 

[Elizabeth502]

Well, here’s a “first” in my experience: reading about Michelangelo being described as “dirty.”

Not in my world, he isn’t.

 

[Thing]

The story goes that he wore dog-leather trousers and never took them off or washed much and when he died someone discovered the leather had grown into his skin and was stuck to him.

 

[Elizabeth502]

Thanks for the explanation, Thing. I thought others were talking about his artistic concepts, not his personal habits.

 

[jdnation]

Seems pretty cool. I know I try these same things when I try to draw, sort of influenced by Salvador Dali’s stuff, so it’s not unusual that Michelangelo might’ve tried some clever things.