A visual Journey into the Bible The Book of Genesis

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A Visual Journey into the Bible Page: 22 The rationality is in the form and composition of the scene. The figures are well drawn, as fresco would allow, well delineated, in natural fluent poses. The whole is restive, a nice and warm painting, easy to look at. The painting is simply one scene among others of the Genesis, the birth of the universe. The scene is one normally to be expected as the creation of the first man. Adam is rising up out of the clay that God has just been touching. There is a long line between the outstretched arms of Adam and God, in harmony with the length of the bodies and the length of the rectangular frame of the painting. The iconography is striking so that the people who would come to the Sistine Chapel could imagine the creation and keep that picture in their minds for long. The mysticism is in the ideas and feelings that are conveyed. A multitude of emotions is induced in the viewer of the scene. Man is touched by God and man touches God. This is how we feel when we are all alone in front of a wonderful nature landscape. We are alone at dawn. A veil of mist is hanging over the land. There are shadows of forests far away. We look over meadows. Everything is silent. When we feel thus unified with nature and the universe, we feel we touch God. The universe comes close to us. In us, we feel to be part of the cosmos and at the same time this universe comes so close to us that we have a sense of possession of it. We look into the eyes of God. The ‘Creation of Adam’ is a representation of love. It is the best image of pure love we know. Loving means being glued, linked to somebody, and not knowing why. One sees a person among many others and feels attracted to him or her. One looks closer, and then comes nearer. One feels interested and captured. It is as if one is touching, wants to touch, and knows that once one has touched one will be stuck and unable to withdraw. If one is married and the other person is not one’s spouse, just before the moment of touching is still the moment one can withdraw. But don’t touch or you will be linked inexorably and lost. You will be committed and you will seek the other person out, maybe in an obsessive way. This is the moment captured by Michelangelo. Has God really touched man, is he going to touch him or has he already touched and has he pulled away Man does not seem afraid of the touching and willing to reach for God. But God seems afraid of the consequences of embracing man. His angels feel the same; they are drawing at God. This is an image of the ‘Noli me Tangere’ theme, the words that Jesus said to Mary Magdalene after his Resurrection; Do not touch me lest I be forced to stay. Do not touch me lest I would love you. There is no better, poignant image of love in European painting than the ‘Creation of Adam’. God would want to touch Adam and love him, but knows that it cannot be and withdraws. And Michelangelo used images of men. The ‘Creation of Adam’ remains an eternal image of unfulfilledness, of insufficiency, inadequacy and imperfection. God and man do not touch, cannot touch. Here is a search for perfection unfulfilled, the search of the artist for the perfect painting. The most perfect sculpture remains an illusion. The search of the Popes for the Kingdom of Heavens on earth will never be realised. Nothing is perfect; all is perishable. Man is never really touched by God and thus has not his entire resplendent nature. This is the sadness of the picture. Man is not perfect and cannot be perfect. He can reach out, but will never really be able to grasp, to touch the universe. Copyright ©: René Dewil Date: October, 24 2000
A Visual Journey into the Bible Page: 23 Michelangelo has brought in the paintings of the Sistine Chapel most of what he believed in, all the things that puzzle a man during his life and that he cannot fully understand or that he thinks he understands. This is the philosophy of Michelangelo. His beliefs were strong and honest, not hypocrite. He showed them to the visitors of the Sistine Chapel. He had the strength to open up and show them, he was not afraid and he must have had very much confidence in himself. Because people to whom one shows one’s emotions in this way may hurt one’s character. Michelangelo hid this maybe in the monumentous. There are so many strong powerful nudes supporting the central scenes, that the general impression is not one of quiet, inner thoughts, but of exuberance and grandness. The weight of the powerful frescoes is so overwhelming that the inner emotions of Michelangelo are perceived as universal truths. Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in Florence in 1475. He died in Rome in 1564, almost ninety years old. His life covers many generations of painters, sculptors, architects, poets and humanists. He knew them all, met them in Florence, Bologna, and Rome. He spoke and argued with them, an endless list. He knew the painters Filippino Lippi, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Pietro Perugino, the young Raphael Sanzio, Piero di Cosimo, Lorenzo di Credi, Francesco Granacci, Andrea del Sarto and Sebastiano del Piombo. He was a pupil to the sculptor Bertoldo who himself had learned the art from the great Donatello. Other sculptors he knew were Baccio Baldinelli and Benvenuto Cellini. He met and exchanged ideas with the architects Giuliano da Sangallo, Andrea Sansovino, Antonio da Sangallo, Bramante, and Jacopo Sansovino. Giorgio Vasari worked a short time in his workshop. The poet Ariosto who wrote Orlando Furioso was his contemporary. So were Titian and the great Venetian artists Tintoretto, Veronese and Palma. Michelangelo remained very individual, a loner in art. He was first a sculptor and painted as he sculpted. He looked for a simple but profound idea and then developed much work as an artisan. Michelangelo’s ideas were splendid however. They were true and honest, grown out of his own private genius and out of his own inner life. He had absolute confidence in his own craft and intelligence. He expressed spirituality in marble. Michelangelo knew and worked for at least ten Popes, among the foremost Giuliano della Rovere, Pope Julius II, but also Giovanni de Medici as Clement VII and Alessandro Farnese as Paul IV. He is indelibly linked with the triumph of the message of Christian Catholic faith of the sixteenth century. The Popes needed images and powerful iconography to tell the splendour of God’s works. Michelangelo, in a time without any other form of imagery, provided them just that in the most clear, direct and imposing way. He became the architect of Saint Peter at the end of his years, from 1546 on. He designed the cupola of the basilica, but the construction was finished after his death. He loved Florence dearly, whether it was ruled by the Signoria in the republic under the Gonfalonieres Soderini and Capponi or under the Medici. He built defences for Florence when the city was attacked. He knew Lorenzo Il Magnifico when he was young and from then on his life was always connected with the Medici. Three Popes he knew had the name Medici: Leo X, Clement VII and Pius IV. Michelangelo’s most famous sculpture is the David, that can be found today in the Museum of the Academy of Florence and of which a copy still stands in the Piazza della Signoria, the marketplace of Florence. This sculpture is the symbol of Florence. He sculpted the Pietà in the Saint Peter cathedral. He painted the ceiling of the Sistine Copyright ©: René Dewil Date: October, 24 2000
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