The Other Sistine Chapel (Part II)

 

The Other Sistine Chapel (Cont’d)

Following last month’s lead-in, I pick up here with some examples of the messaging claimed to have been secretly embedded by Michelangelo into the plaster of the Sistine Chapel as an expression of his beliefs and anger.

Beyond the paints and technique, the deeper meaning of his message was born from this education and from his contempt for clerical corruption (ex: the sale of indulgences and priestly positions) and at its highest level, the Vatican’s “do as I say, not as I do” morality. More than simply a contracted job, the Sistine Chapel would provide an avenue for him to covertly express his disgust with the hypocrisy, corruption, opulence, self-indulgence, and daily abuse he observed in Vatican dealings.^[10] In addition, his brushstrokes would soothe his ego that yearned for recognition in an era when artists held the lowly status of laborers, even forbidden from signing their work. Along with these driving forces, adorning the Sistine Chapel ceiling might serve as a lasting testament to his artistic abilities and bring honor to his family.

Before undertaking the commission, one he did not want, Michelangelo fought for a free hand in the pictorial content. As a result, the final product was significantly different from what the Pope anticipated — Jesus and Mary at the two ends of the ceiling, surrounded by the twelve apostles positioned in spandrels among the geometric designs throughout the 6,000 square foot barrel-vaulted ceiling. There was also to have been a focus on Pope Julius II. Along the upper sides of the ceiling, he indeed painted twelve figures. Unfortunately, these were not the ones Pope Julius and Vatican officials originally had in mind. Given the chance, Michelangelo selected Hebraic themes along with mythological images rather than Christian iconography. On close inspection, it is clear that not one of the figures is New Testament Christian. In their place, images from Old Testament Judaic teachings are presented. Throughout, it focuses exclusively on the Old Testament, to underline the role of the Judaic religion as the precursor to Christianity. He had twelve figures all right, but instead of Christ’s apostles, he painted seven hardly known Old Testament Hebrew prophets accompanied by five pagan Greco-Roman female oracles, called Sibyls, who foretold events. When completed, ninety-five percent of the Chapel was adorned with heroes and heroines of the Jewish Bible, known as the Tahakh (24 books to include the Torah). Pagan sibyls and naked boys comprised the remainder. The result was absent Christian imagery: no Jesus nor his disciples and no flattering images of the Pope in any of the 33 panels teaming with 343 characters. Down the center of the ceiling, he painted important scenes from the Old Testament book of Genesis. There as fresco themes, his choices extend across the ceiling from the creation of the universe, the creation of Adam and Eve including the travails of their expulsion from the garden, to surprisingly conclude with scenes from the life of Noah, before and after the flood including reference to him drunk (legend has him the inventor of wine).

He’d clearly subverted the Pope’s plan to instead portray his deepest personal beliefs and promote harmony and reconciliation between the Bible-Torah, Jews-Christians, as well as respect for pagan Greek and Roman traditions. In his compilation of plaster and pigment images, he intermixed religion although not exclusively the religion of Rome. His motivation, part of the philosophical revolution then underway, also marked the burgeoning discovery of past knowledge lost since the fall of the Roman Empire. It also coincided with the “protest for reform” (“protestant”) then underway, that

The Fig “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?”

would grow to the Protestant Reformation. Deeply religious as he was, he’d broken from the belief that every aspect of day-to-day life, to include a monopoly on the pathway to salvation, was exclusively governed by the Church. For that day and age, this was outright heresy.

   On numerous occasions, using symbols and illusions, he targeted Pope Julius II, at times using vulgar gestures. They took the form, here and there, of subtle finger positions as well as in the poses his characters took resembling Hebrew letters with special numerical and spiritual meanings that only those trained in Jewish tradition might detect. Case in point, he included the name of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet alef and the actual symbol

The Cumean Sibyl’s
“Giving the Fig” Putti 

 for the letter ayin on a scroll below and to the left of the prophet Jeremiah. [Implication] … “a priest who cannot distinguish between alef and ayin, according to the Talmud, is not fit to serve in the temple.” ^[4] In his Adam and Eve “Temptation” ceiling panel, he substituted a fig for the established forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, an apple. Even the tree’s leaves are fig leaves. This was a significant departure from established dogma but in keeping with Judaic interpretation. Realizing this, it makes sense that Adam and Eve later covered their newfound nakedness with fig leaves, easily at hand. [Note: Apples originated in today’s Kazakhstan. While the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans cultivated apples, apple seeds did not appear in Europe until 1500 BC. As late as the 17th century, the word "apple" was used as a generic term for all (foreign) fruit other than berries but including nuts.^[13]

There are also instances when he conveniently employed small angelic cherubs called putti to make the most obscene gesture of the Middle Ages, equivalent to giving “the finger” today. It was called "giving the fig" — making a loose fist and wedging the thumb between the middle and index fingers. Their presence again spoke to his feelings toward Pope Julius. This gesture is subtly incorporated in his painting of the Cumean Sibyl and again in the Prophet Zechariah in which one angel has a hand extended to form the gesture. “Not only could the inclusion of such a rude symbol in a holy artwork already be considered disgusting or blasphemous, but Michelangelo situated this painting directly above the Pope’s seat in order to make it perfectly clear who his ire was directed towards.” ^[5]

In his later Sistine masterpiece, The Last Judgement, he continued to incorporate Jewish themes

Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement

when he returned years later. And to think he would be so bold as to depict Jews in the Last Judgement (and throughout the chapel ceiling) when the Church taught that Jews had no possibility of salvation and lacked any hope of a heavenly reward. After all, the Church preached that as payback for rejecting Jesus, Jews were obviously rejected by God. However, in his Last Judgement among those saved in Paradise, Michelangelo included Jews. The idea of Jews going to heaven was anathema and again heretic, yet:

“… at the top center, Jesus Christ greets the righteous as they ascend to paradise. Slightly above and to the right of Jesus, Michelangelo painted two Jews, identified by their hats, one double-pointed [being spawned of the devil they had horns] and the other yellow, which Jews were forced to wear. While Church theology did not allow for the salvation of Jews, in Michelangelo’s vision of the end of the world Jews inhabit paradise.” ^[4]

This theme is carried further in one of the lunettes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling depicting the ancestral family of Jesus. One of Jesus’ ancestors, Aminadab, is depicted with the signum, a yellow circle sewn on his clothing, sort of like an Egyptian cartouche but here meant to mark him as a Jew per the Fourth Lateran Council and Inquisition.^[6]

“A bright yellow circle is sewn on the upper sleeve of his cloak, a historically accurate detail that became visible during a late-20th-century cleaning and restoration that brightened the frescoes’ colors and clarified their messages.” ^[4]

  The “I am a Jew"
signum Insignia on
Aminadab's Shoulder

Since this form of “Jewish branding” did not exist in his day, Aminadab would not have known of it or had to bear the designation, yet surprisingly Michelangelo included it on Aminadab’s left shoulder. As the Nazis would later mimic in the Holocaust with yellow Stars of David, this identifying symbol was one of segregation, discrimination, humiliation, and hatred. Jews were clearly distinguishable from the rest of the population through dress codes. Yellow and red clothing was mandatory. Additionally, along with a red overskirt, hoop earrings were required for all Jewish women over ten years of age.^[11] These colors along with earrings are conspicuously and repeatedly present in the costume of every ancestor of Jesus in the Chapel’s ceiling. This long-standing anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism would come to an end in 1965 with Italian Pope John XXIII (and his successor Pope Paul VI) via a Vatican II decree.^[12] While the world still lagged far behind, all discrimination practices by the Church were officially ended. To add further insult, this surrogate for Jesus is subtly making "devil's horns" with his fingers. While depressed-looking Aminadab is positioned prominently right above the Papal throne, there are other elusive, subtle messages too intricate for my words to explain.

You can imagine the thrashing and gnashing when the ceiling was completed in 1512. At the unveiling, there was great uproar especially over the degree of nudity portrayed, a Michelangelo specialty. However, it wasn’t until the emergence of an art reform movement that Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel artwork was seriously threatened. While Michelangelo lay near death, the Council of Trent (1545-1563) moved to police and reform religious art.^[7] A council decree set in motion a movement to “sanitize” the imagery of the Sistine Chapel. The extent of shameful nudity on the Chapel vault, the muscular style of the bodies which Michelangelo loved to portray, the extent of pagan mythology depicted, and his extensively ‘nudified’ (my word) Last Judgement with male couples kissing, were just some of the areas of contention that made it, as some claimed, more “a work for the public baths and taverns than for the sacred spaces” of the Pope’s chapel.^[8] When the dictate filtered down to Rome, authorities there ordered that:

"The pictures in the Apostolic Chapel should be covered over, and those in other churches should be destroyed, if they display anything that is obscene or clearly false." ^[9] 

Only due to a compromise, involving the covering-up of the offending genitalia that took place soon after Michelangelo’s death and referred to as the “Fig-Leaf Campaign,” did The Last Judgement survive. This middle-ground approach avoided the mortal indignity proposed by Pope Paul IV of being completely torn down or, in cadence with an equally fatal assault, becoming a repurposed canvas following a complete wash-over of white paint. In the end, the offending parts of about forty figures were deemed sufficiently draped with petticoat and loincloth cover-ups to appease the offended. To remove any question that close “Kama Sutra” positioning might insinuate sexual misbehavior occurring right above the Pope’s altar, the too-close figures of Saint Catherine and Saint Basil were completely redone.^[7] The Chapel’s ceiling with its share of nudity would remain untouched by fig leaves and thus unclothed for the simple reason that the modesty police couldn’t get to it. Michelangelo, though dead, had essentially saved his ceiling masterpiece himself, because amazingly, no one could figure out how to reconstruct the scaffold he’d created to reach it. In effect, his genius had saved his brilliant biblical masterwork. When he completed the ceiling, Michelangelo destroyed his flying bridge and burned his notebooks and related sketches. Exactly why is unclear but it may have revealed his closely held intent. He had been concerned with security, even spying, during his Sistine Chapel years. At one point he suspected after hour snooping in the Chapel by the likes of Donato Bramante, the Pope’s architect, and Raphael, a popular papal artist, both eager to uncover Michelangelo’s revolutionary approach at crafting lifelike frescos. Either could have brought what they discovered to the public market first and later claimed that Michelangelo had copied them. None of this was new to him. He’d been a victim of political infighting as treacherous as it is today, not for dominance of the news cycle but for the ear of the Pope, the only elector who counted. This and the struggle for position and stature within Rome’s and Florence’s contingents of artists, with wannabes and pretenders who felt wronged along with their quests for revenge - all of it had played havoc with Michelangelo his entire life.

    As the first subtle glow of dawn would grow to wash away a false illusion of grime on my bedside shade, so a decade-long cleanup of the Sistine Chapel revealed a different side of Michelangelo. While this man of stone was a genius of mind and hand, he shared these qualities with a passionate

  Just a Shell Game? Which Contains The David? – this is an Italian Archive Photo of
 Michelangelo’s David and the Unfinished Slaves (intended for Pope Julius II’s Tomb) 
Encased in Brick for Protection During WWII  

personality, was blunt and abrupt to a fault, easily bristled at criticism, and to say he was drained of social graces would be a falsehood, for truth be told, he never had any. His single-mindedness to sculpt lacked relief to the point he was reclusive with few friends. But while he developed a crusty, caustic disposition along with a fissionable temper, Michelangelo is viewed as the greatest, most accomplished sculptor of all time. That much is clear. Just maybe, total devotion to his work was the price he’d happily paid for his redemption. What’s new are the sometimes subliminal messages evidently secreted throughout the Sistine Chapel. But experience has taught us that dice can be loaded, the cards stacked, and a confidence game like Three-card Monte rigged. There is also sleight of hand when it comes to statistics. Not so much the numbers themselves, but how they can be cherry-picked to prove just about anything. Why not also Michelangelo’s motives? Is this all much ado about nothing? Was his really a form of subversive art? With today’s penchant to revise history to align with modern norms, could Michelangelo have been upset enough to rebel when in fact he might have been alright with his world just as it was? Had Michelangelo taken the long view measured in centuries to make his point? Would he go so far with some of his images as to impugn a pope, to secretly focus attention on how the Church ignored and condemned its true origins? Is it possible by the positioning of fingers, the configuration of a hat, an arm patch, the colors employed, or a figure’s positioning to delicately communicate a particular letter of the Hebrew alphabet … could any of this really convey subversive messaging? Is it all a bit of a stretch, a burgeoning fantasy, the fodder for new books? The shadows of time are like those of my bedroom. As a gentle breeze can move the leaves outside one way then the next to splash a chaos of shadows of early morning light, can’t the vagaries of time likewise conceal the truth? 

    Life is full of partings, so lest there be a Part III to my tale, I will end and encourage you to visit the Sistine Chapel where Michelangelo’s wondrous work endures. Herded by anxious chapel wranglers to move along, we spend mere minutes looking up at the ceiling’s wonders when Michelangelo invested years to compose its theme and more years to complete. Regretfully, this is far too short a time to coherently appreciate something so masterful that has been waiting centuries for us. It’s there waiting still. Given the time, it speaks volumes even today to a world saturated with photos, videos, and graphic art, so alien to its earliest observers when first publicly unveiled in November 1512. Surprisingly, looking closely suggests new insights and newfound depth to its meaning as it continues to evolve. Go ahead, strain your neck as he once did to see his creation all around you, then decide, for as art is in the eye of the beholder, so lies its interpretation. 

From That Rogue Tourist
Paolo

 

4. “A Jewish Art Paradise at the Vatican,”
https://forward.com/culture/308648/in-the-vatican-a-jewish-paradise/

5. “Subversive Messages in the Sistine Chapel,”
https://artcrimearchive.net/2021/02/22/subversive-messages-in-the-sistine-chapel/

6. “The Treatment of Jews in Renaissance Rome and on the Sistine Chapel Ceiling,” https://zeteojournal.com/2016/05/12/michelangelos-jews-sistine-chapel-rome-sulkow/

7. “The Council of Trent and the Call to Reform Art,”
https://smarthistory.org/the-council-of-trent-and-the-call-to-reform-art/

8. “Michelangelo Gallery, The Last Judgment”
https://www.michelangelo-gallery.com/the-last-judgment.aspx

9. “Learning the Intriguing (and Sometimes Controversial) History Behind Michelangelo’s Last Judgement,” https://mymodernmet.com/last-judgment-michelangelo-sistine-chapel/

10. “The Protestant Reformation and Michelangelo's Last Judgment,”
https://art109textbook.wordpress.com/new-online-textbook-2-2/chapter-5-mannerism-venetian-painting-and-16th-century-painting-in-germany/michelangelos-last-judgment/

11. Chantal Sulkow, “Michelangelo’s Jews - The Treatment of Jews in Renaissance Rome and on the Sistine Chapel Ceiling,” https://zeteojournal.com/2016/05/12/michelangelos-jews-sistine-chapel-rome-sulkow/.

12. “Pope John XXIII and Judaism,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_XXIII_and_Judaism

13. "Apple", Online Etymology Dictionary,
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=apple&ref=searchbar_searchhint