If Darwin and Michelangelo
‘happened’ simultaneously all those ‘Creationism’ and ‘Intelligent
Design’ diehards would have loved Michelangelo.
It turns out that the famous Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor,
architect, poet and engineer - whose birth anniversary falls on March 6
- was familiar with human anatomy and coded his masterpieces to
insinuate - as some historians believe - the Divine hand in creation.
Imagine when authors are too busy trying to prove the existence of a
similar code masterminded by da Vinci, such a code existed all along
right under our noses!
Michelangelo and his rival as well as fellow Italian da Vinci were
considered as the best examples for the archetypal Renaissance man.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born in 1475 in
Caprese near Arezzo, Tuscany.During Michelangelo’s mother’s illness and
eventual death, when he was seven, he was entrusted to the care of a
stonecutter and his wife, in Settignano. It was clear that this
instilled in him an early love for the arts.
The young artist showed no interest in schooling and showed a keen
interest in painting. He often sought the company of painters and
preferred to copy paintings from churches.
In spite of his father’s disapproval at his desire to become an
artist he was apprenticed to the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio at
thirteen, as becoming a practising artist was then considered beneath a
member of the gentry.
In 1489 Lorenzo de’ Medici, de facto ruler of Florence, asked
Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils and Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo
and Francesco Granacci. From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the
Humanist academy which the Medici had founded, where he studied
sculpture under Bertoldo di Giovanni.
At the academy, both Michelangelo’s outlook and his art were subject
to the influence of Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Angelo
Poliziano and the like, the most prominent philosophers and writers of
the day.
 He
is - without a doubt - the best-documented artist of the 16th century.
He was one of the few whose biography was published before his demise.
In fact two biographies were published during his lifetime.
Referring to his work Giorgio Vasari has said “It is certainly a
miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a
perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.” Madonna
of the Steps, Statue of David, frescos of Sistine Chapel, the Pieta,
Doni Tondo and The Last Judgment remains among his best paintings and
sculptures.
It was his belief that every stone had a sculpture trapped within it
and it was just a matter of chipping the stone away to reveal it. He was
a loner and a lot point to the possibility that he may have been
homosexual although no hard evidence has presented itself to support
this theory.
However during his lifetime he was so revered by others that he was
often referred to as Il Divino (“the divine one”). One of his most
striking characteristics was his terribilita, a sense of awe-inspiring
grandeur.
As of late more intriguing facts about his work have surfaced. Frank
Meshberger, then a medical student, paging through a book about
Michelangelo, after intense study on neuro-anatomy spotted a striking
resemblance between the painting of God surrounded by angels in The
Creation of Adam and a cross section of the human brain!
Dr. Frank Meshberger, assumed it to symbolize God’s gift of
intelligence to humanity. “Until I looked through the transparency I
didn’t realize that one of the angel’s backs was the pons, that the legs
and hips were the spinal cord... The knee of the flexed right leg of the
angel with the bifid foot represents the transected optic chiasm, the
thigh the optic nerve and the leg itself the optic tract...” -
Meshberger. Michelangelo’s knowledge in anatomy and his flair for coding
was uncanny and awe inspiring.
But why leave ‘clues’ and ‘codes’? Just for the heck of it or does it
symbolize something? As some historians and critics point out his
writings and poetry of that time he created the Creation of Adam reflect
his belief in not only the divine origin of art and physical beauty, but
also the divinity of intellect.
Consequently it is safe to assume that through drawing a parallel
between the human brain and the Creation of Adam, Michelangelo has
attempted to imply that intellect as the soul is God’s gift.
Or perhaps Michelangelo is insinuating that - as suggested by
Neoplatonism - any human concept of God is inadequate and any image of
God is thereby a creation of the mind, like that of Michelangelo’s
paintings. Or perhaps it is our own wishful thinking that has enabled us
to see a resemblance at all. But who knows, maybe future research will
dig up irrefutable evidence. |
