Michelangelo’s Sistine secrets

They had the respect of the masses and found favour with kings and popes, yet scientists and artists during the Renaissance resorted to various ploys to keep many of their ideas under wraps. Some of them might have feared religious persecution: Galileo, for example, faced the ire of the church for defending the theory of heliocentricism – the sun was at the centre, and the earth revolved around it. Others probably wanted to keep their work a secret for professional reasons: Leonardo da Vinci – credited as one of the greatest of artists, anatomists, scientist and inventor – wrote his notes backwards from left to right; even inverting alphabets to make his scribbles look like some obscure script.

And now, an article titled ‘Concealed Neuroanatomy in Michelangelo’s Separation of Light’ – in the May issue of the journal Neurosurgery – theorises that Michelangelo Buonarrotti used his knowledge of human anatomy to paint cryptic messages in his Sistine Chapel frescoes.

According to authors Ian Suk and Rafael Tamargo, the Florentine artist concealed an image of the brain – specifically a ventral view of the brainstem – in ‘Separation of Light From Darkness’, which is one of the four frescoes he painted along the longitudinal apex of the Sistine Chapel vault.

These four frescoes, painted during the winter of 1511, are said to complete the series of nine central panels depicting scenes from the Bible’s ‘Book of Genesis’.

‘The gift of intelligence’
Interestingly, the Neurosurgery article is not the first instance wherein anatomists have discovered hidden imagery in the Sistine frescoes.

In a 1990 article titled ‘An Interpretation Of Michelangelo’s Creation Of Adam Based On Neuroanatomy’, a Dr Frank Lynn Meshberger speculated that in the ‘Creation of Adam’ – the most famous of panels at the Sistine Chapel – the artist cryptically illustrated cross-section of the human brain.

Meshberger pointed out that Michelangelo surrounded God with a billowing cloak, which was curiously shaped like the brain to suggest Adam was being endowed with the gift of intelligence.

Then in 2000, a nephrologist called Garabed Eknoyan proposed in an article published in Kidney International that Michelangelo concealed an image of a kidney in the ‘Separation of Land and Water’, the third panel in the Genesis series.

Michelangelo, Eknoyan wrote, was particularly interested in kidney function because he suffered from kidney stones throughout his adult life.

That Michelangelo was a master anatomist like da Vinci is a well-known modern fact. His biographer and contemporary Giorgio Vasari wrote that the Florentine artist took a keen interest in dissecting cadavers right from his teenage years. According to Ascanio Condivi – Michelangelo’s student, and second biographer – the artist continued with cadaver dissections late into his life.

Authors Suk and Tamargo, however, surmise that the Florentine artist did not want to jeopardise his position with the Vatican, by letting them know of his interests in anatomy and the dissection of cadavers.

The Catholic Church at that time would not have looked favourably upon his academic pursuits, especially since it involved what they would probably term as ‘the defiling of the human body’. And that could be the possible reason Michelangelo hid the anatomic references in his frescoes.

In the light of these disclosures, conspiracy theorists might have to go through all of artist’s other works once again – and who knows? There just might be another book for Dan Brown. Move over, Leonardo.