Nine scenes from the Book of Genesis
Along the central section of the ceiling, Michelangelo depicted nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The pictures fall into three groups of three alternating large and small panels.[30]
The first group shows God creating the Heavens and the Earth. The second group shows God creating the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, and their disobedience of God and consequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden where they have lived and where they walked with God. The third group of three pictures shows the plight of Humanity, and in particular the family of Noah.
The pictures are not in strictly chronological order. If they are perceived as three groups, then the pictures in each of the three units inform upon each other, in the same way as was usual in Medieval paintings and stained glass.[31] The three sections of Creation, Downfall and Fate of Humanity appear in reverse order, when read from the entrance of the chapel. However, each individual scene is painted to be viewed when looking towards the altar.[30] This is not easily apparent when viewing a reproduced image of the ceiling, but becomes clear when the viewer looks upward at the vault. Paoletti and Radke suggest that this reversed progression symbolises a return to a state of grace.[30] However, the three sections are generally described in the order of Biblical chronology.
The scenes, from the altar towards the main door, are ordered as follows:
- The Separation of Light and Darkness
- The Creation of the Sun, Moon and Earth
- The Separation of Land and Water
- The Creation of Adam
- The Creation of Eve
- The Temptation and Expulsion
- The Sacrifice of Noah
- The Great Flood
- The Drunkenness of Noah
Creation
The three Creation pictures show scenes from the first chapter of Genesis, which relates that God created the Earth and all that is in it in six days, resting on the seventh day. In the first scene, the First Day of Creation, God creates light and separates light from darkness.[Fig 1] Chronologically, the next scene takes place in the third panel, in which, on the Second Day, God divides the waters from the heavens.[Fig 2] In the central panel, the largest of the three, there are two representations of God. On the Third Day, God creates the Earth and makes it sprout plants. On the Fourth Day, God puts the Sun and the Moon in place to govern the night and the day, the time and the seasons of the year.[Fig 3] According to Genesis, on the Fifth Day, God created the birds of the air and fish and creatures of the deep, but we are not shown this. Neither do we see God's creation of the creatures of the earth on the Sixth Day.[5][Src 1]
These three scenes, completed in the third stage of painting, are the most broadly conceived, the most broadly painted and the most dynamic of all the pictures. Of the first scene Vasari says "...Michelangelo depicted God dividing Light from Darkness, showing him in all his majesty as he rests self-sustained with arms outstretched, in a revelation of love and creative power."[9]
Adam and Eve
For the central section of the ceiling, Michelangelo has taken four episodes from the story of Adam and Eve as told in the first, second and third chapters of Genesis. In this sequence of three, two of the panels are large and one small.
In the first of the pictures, and one of the most widely recognised images in the history of painting, Michelangelo shows God reaching out to touch Adam, who, in the words of Vasari, is "a figure whose beauty, pose and contours are such that it seems to have been fashioned that very moment by the first and supreme creator rather than by the drawing and brush of a mortal man."[9] From beneath the sheltering arm of God, Eve looks out, a little apprehensively.[17]
The central scene, of God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam[Fig 4] has been taken in its composition directly from another Creation sequence, the relief panels that surround the door of the Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna by Jacopo della Quercia whose work Michelangelo had studied in his youth. [32][33]
In the final panel of this sequence Michelangelo combines two contrasting scenes into one panel[Fig 5], that of Adam and Eve taking fruit from the forbidden tree, Eve trustingly taking it from the hand of the Serpent and Adam eagerly picking it for himself; and their banishment from the Garden of Eden, where they have lived in the company of God, to the world outside where they have to fend for themselves and experience death.[5][Src 2]
Story of Noah
As with the first sequence of pictures, the three panels concerning Noah, taken from the sixth to ninth chapters of Genesis are thematic rather than chronological. In the first scene is shown the sacrifice of a sheep.[Fig 6] Vasari, in writing about this scene mistakes it for the sacrifices by Cain and Abel, in which Abel's sacrifice was acceptable to God and Cain's was not. What this image almost certainly depicts is the sacrifice made by the family of Noah, after their safe deliverance from the Great Flood which destroyed the rest of Humankind.
The central, larger, scene shows the Great Flood.[Fig 7] The Ark in which Noah's family escaped floats at the rear of the picture while the rest of humanity tries frantically to scramble to some point of safety. This picture, which has a large number of figures, conforms the most closely to the format of the paintings that had been done around the walls.
The final scene is the story of Noah's drunkenness.[Fig 8] After the Flood, Noah tills the soil and grows vines. He is shown doing so, in the background of the picture. He becomes drunk and inadvertently exposes himself. His youngest son, Ham, brings his two brothers Shem and Japheth to see the sight but they discreetly cover their father with a cloak. Ham is later cursed by Noah and told that the descendants of Ham's son Canaan will serve Shem and Japheth's descendants forever. Taken together, these three pictures serve to show that Humankind had moved a long way from God's perfect creation. However, it is through Shem and his descendants, the Israelites, that Salvation will come to the world.[Src 3]
Shields
Adjacent to the smaller Biblical scenes and supported by the Ignudi are ten circular parade shields, sometimes described as being painted to resemble bronze. Known examples are actually of lacquered and gilt wood.[34] Each is decorated with a picture drawn from the Old Testament or the Book of Maccabees from the Apocrypha.
The subjects are the more gruesome or shameful of Biblical episodes, the only exception seeming to be that of Elijah being swept up to Heaven in a Chariot of Fire, leaving his mantel to fall on Elisha. However, Elijah's role as a prophet was one marked by accusation and warnings to repent, and the purpose of his translation into Heaven was traditionally seen as so that he might stand before God to condemn Israel for its sins.[Src 4] In four of the five most highly finished "medallions" the space is crowded with figures in violent action, similar to Michelangelo's cartoon for the Battle of Cascina.[nb 10]
The application of gold on the shields, in contrast to its absence on the rest of the ceiling, serves to link the ceiling to some extent with the frescoes around the walls. In the latter, gold leaf has been applied lavishly to many details and in some of the frescoes, notably those by Perugino, has been most expertly used not just to detail the robes but to highlight the folds by subtle graduation in the density of golden flecks. It is this technique that Michelangelo has picked up on and carried a step further, inspired also perhaps by the medallions that appear on a Roman triumphal arch in Botticelli's episode from the Life of Moses, showing the punishment of the Sons of Corah.
The medallions represent:
- Abraham about to sacrifice his son Isaac
- The Destruction of the Statue of Baal
- The worshippers of Baal being brutally slaughtered.
- Uriah being beaten to death.[Fig 9]
- Nathan the priest condemning King David for murder and corruption.
- King David's traitorous son Absalom caught by his hair in a tree while trying to escape and beheaded by David's troops.
- Abner sneaking up on Joab to murder him
- Joram being hurled from a chariot onto his head.
- Elijah being carried up to Heaven
- On one medallion the subject is either obliterated or incomplete.[Fig 10]
Section references[5][35]
Twelve prophetic figures
On the five pendentives along each side and the two at either end, Michelangelo painted the largest figures on the ceiling: twelve people who prophesied or represented some aspect of the Coming of Christ. Of those twelve, seven were Prophets of Israel and were male. The remaining five were prophets of the Classical World, called Sibyls and were female. The prophet Jonah is placed above the altar and Zechariah at the further end. The other male and female figures alternate down each side, each being identified by an inscription on a painted marble panel supported by a putto.
- Jonah (IONAS) – above the altar[Fig 11]
- Jeremiah (HIEREMIAS) [Fig 12]
- Persian Sibyl (PERSICHA)[Fig 13]
- Ezekiel (EZECHIEL)[Fig 14]
- Erythraean Sibyl. (ERITHRAEA)[Fig 15]
- Joel (IOEL)[Fig 16]
- Zechariah (ZACHERIAS) – above the main door of the chapel[Fig 17]
- Delphic Sibyl. (DELPHICA)[Fig 18]
- Isaiah (ESAIAS)[Fig 19]
- Cumaean Sibyl. (CVMAEA)[Fig 20]
- Daniel (DANIEL)[Fig 21]
- Libyan Sibyl (LIBICA)[Fig 22]
Prophets
The seven prophets of Israel chosen for depiction on the ceiling include the four so-called Major Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. Of the remaining twelve possibilities among the Minor Prophets, the three represented are Joel, Zechariah and Jonah. Although the prophets Joel and Zechariah are considered "minor" because of the comparatively small number of pages that their prophecy occupies in the Bible, each one produced prophesies of profound significance.
They are often quoted, Joel for his "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your elderly shall dream dreams and your youth shall see visions".[Src 5] These words are significant for Michelangelo's decorative scheme, where women take their place among men and the youthful Daniel sits across from the brooding Jeremiah with his long white beard.
Zechariah prophesied "Behold! Your King comes to you, humble and riding on a donkey".[Src 6][36] His place in the chapel is directly above the door through which the Pope is carried in procession on Palm Sunday, the day on which Jesus fulfilled the prophecy by riding into Jerusalem on a donkey and being proclaimed King.[37]
Jonah's main prophesy concerned the downfall of the city of Nineveh. This alone does not seem to warrant him a place above the High Altar. But there is another factor involved. It is the person of Jonah himself that is of symbolic and prophetic significance, a significance which was commonly perceived and had been represented in countless works of art including manuscripts and stained glass windows.[31] Jonah, through his reluctance to obey God, was swallowed by a "mighty fish".[nb 11] He spent three days in its belly and was eventually spewed up on dry land where he went about God's business.[Src 7] Because of this, Jonah was seen as a forerunner of Jesus, who having died by crucifixion, spent a time which spanned part of three days in a tomb, and was resurrected on the third day. So, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Jonah, with the "great fish" beside him and his eyes turned towards God the Creator,[Fig 11] represents a "portent" of the Resurrection of Christ.[36]
In Vasari's description of the Prophets and Sibyls he is particularly high in his praise of the portrayal of Isaiah:[Fig 19] "Anyone who studies this figure, copied so faithfully from nature, the true mother of the art of painting, will find a beautifully composed work capable of teaching in full measure all the precepts to be followed by a good painter.”[9]
Sibyls
The Sibyls were prophetic women who were resident at shrines or temples throughout the Classical World. The five depicted here are each said to have prophesied the birth of Christ. The Cumaean Sibyl, for example, is quoted by Virgil as declaring that "a new progeny of Heaven" would bring about a return of the "Golden Age". This was interpreted as referring to Jesus.[38]
In Christian doctrine, Christ came not just to the Jews but also to the Gentiles. It was understood that, prior to the Birth of Christ, God prepared the world for his coming. To this purpose, God used Jews and Gentiles alike. Jesus would not have been born in Bethlehem (where it had been prophesied that his birth would take place),[Src 8] except for the fact that the pagan Roman Emperor Augustus decreed that there should be a census.[Src 9] Likewise, when Jesus was born, the announcement of his birth was made to rich and to poor, to mighty and to humble, to Jew and to Gentile. The wise men or so-called "Magi" who sought out the infant King with precious gifts were pagan foreigners. [Src 10]
In the Church of Rome, where there was an increasing interest in the remains of the city's pagan past, where scholars turned from reading Medieval Church Latin to Classical Latin and the philosophies of the Classical world were studied along with the writings of St Augustine, the presence, in the Sistine Chapel of five pagan prophets is not surprising.[39]
It is not known why Michelangelo selected the five particular Sibyls that were depicted, given that, as with the Minor Prophets, there were ten or twelve possibilities. It is suggested by John O'Malley that the choice was made for a wide geographic coverage, with the Sibyls coming from Africa, Asia, Greece and Ionia.[38]
Vasari says of the Erythraean Sibyl[Fig 15] "Many aspects of this figure are of exceptional loveliness: the expression of her face, her headdress and the arrangement of her draperies: and her arms, which are bared, are as beautiful as the rest." [9]
Pendentives
In each corner of the chapel is a triangular pendentive filling the space between the walls and the arch of the vault and forming the spandrel above the windows nearest the corners. On these curving shapes Michelangelo has painted four scenes from Biblical stories that are associated with the salvation of Israel by four great male and female heroes of the Jews, Moses, Esther, David and Judith.[40]
- The Brazen Serpent
- The Punishment of Haman
- David and Goliath
- Judith and Holofernes
The first two stories were both seen in Medieval- and Renaissance theology as prefiguring the Crucifixion of Jesus. In the story of the Brazen Serpent, the people of Israel become dissatisfied and grumble at God. As punishment they receive a plague of poisonous snakes. God offers the people relief by instructing Moses to make a snake of brass, set up on a pole, the sight of which gives miraculous healing.[Src 11] Michelangelo chooses a crowded composition, depicting a dramatic mass of suffering men, women and writhing snakes, separated from redeemed worshipers by the snake before an epiphanic light.[Fig 23]
In the book of Esther it is related that Haman, a public servant, plots to get Esther's husband, the King of Persia, to slay all the Jewish people in his land. The King, who is going over his books during a sleepless night, realises something is amiss. Esther, discovering the plot, denounces Haman and her husband orders his execution on a scaffold he has built. The King's eunuchs promptly carry this out.[Src 12] Michelangelo shows Haman crucified with Esther looking at him from a doorway, the King giving orders in the background.[Fig 24]
The other two stories, those of David and Judith, were often linked in Renaissance art, particularly by Florentine artists as they demonstrated the overthrow of tyrants, a popular subject in the Republic. In this image, the shepherd boy, David, has brought down the towering Goliath with his sling, but the giant is alive and is trying to rise as David forces his head down to chop it off.[41][Fig 25]
The depiction of Judith and Holofernes has an equally gruesome detail. As Judith loads the enemy's head onto a basket carried by her maid and covers it with a cloth, she looks towards the tent,[41] apparently distracted by the limbs of the decapitated corpse threshing about.[Fig 26]
There are obvious connections in the design of the Slaying of Holofernes and the Slaying of Haman at the opposite end of the chapel. Although in the Holofernes picture the figures are smaller and the space less filled, both have the triangular space divided into two zones by a vertical wall, allowing us to see what is happening on both sides of it. There are actually three scenes in the Haman picture because as well as seeing Haman punished, we see him at the table with Esther and the King and get a view of the King on his bed.[41] Mordechai sits on the steps, making a link between the scenes.[42]
While the Slaying of Goliath is a relatively simple composition with the two protagonists centrally placed, the only other figures being dimly seen observers, the Brazen Serpent picture is crowded with figures and separate incidents as the various individuals who have been attacked by snakes struggle and die or turn towards the icon that will save them. This is the most Mannerist of Michelangelo's earlier compositions at the Sistine Chapel,[41] picking up the theme of human distress begun in the Great Flood scene and carrying it forward into the torment of lost souls in the Last Judgement which was later to be painted below.
Ancestors of Christ
Subject
Between the large pendentives that support the vault are windows, six on each side of the chapel. There were two more windows in each end of the chapel, now closed, and those above the High Altar covered by the Last Judgement. Above each window is an arched shape, referred to as a lunette and above eight of the lunettes at the sides of the chapel are triangular spandrels filling the spaces between the side pendentives and the vault, the other eight lunettes each being below one of the corner pendentives.
Michelangelo was commissioned to paint these areas, as part of the work on the ceiling. The structures form visual bridges between the walls and the ceiling, and the figures that are painted on them are midway in size (approximately 2 metres high) between the very large prophets and the much smaller figures of Popes which had been painted to either side of each window in the 15th century.[43] Michelangelo chose the Ancestors of Christ as the subject of these images[44], thus portraying Jesus' physical lineage, while the papal portraits are his spiritual successors according to Church doctrine.[45] (see gallery)
Centrally placed above each window is a faux marble tablet with a decorative frame. On each is painted the names of the male line by which Jesus, through his Earthly father, Joseph, is descended from Abraham, according to the Gospel of Matthew.[nb 12] However the genealogy is now incomplete, since the two lunettes of the windows in the Altar wall were destroyed by Michelangelo when he returned to the Sistine Chapel in 1537 to paint The Last Judgment.[46] Only engravings, based on a drawing that has since been lost, remain of them.[Fig 27] The sequence of tablets seems a little erratic as one plaque has four names, most have three or two, and two plaques have only one. Moreover, the progression moves from one side of the building to the other, but not consistently, and the figures the lunettes contain do not coincide closely with the listed names. These figures vaguely suggest various family relationships; most lunettes contain one or more infants and many depict a man and a woman, often sitting on opposing sides of the painted plaque that separates them. O'Malley describes them as "simply representative figures, almost ciphers".[44]
There is also an indeterminate relationship between the figures in the spandrels, and the lunettes beneath them. Because of the constraints of the triangular shape, in each spandrel the figures are seated on the ground. In six of the eight spandrels the compositions resemble traditional depictions of the Flight into Egypt. Of the two remaining, one shows a woman with shears trimming the neck of a garment she is making while her toddler looks on.[Fig 28] The Biblical woman who is recorded as making a new garment for her child is Hannah, the mother of Samuel, whose child went to live in the temple, and indeed, the male figure in the background is wearing a distinctive hat that might suggest that of a priest.[Src 13] The other figure who differs from the rest is a young woman who sits staring out of the picture with prophetic intensity. Curiously, her open eyes have been closed in the restoration.[Fig 29]
Section References[5][14]
[edit] Treatment
Michelangelo's depiction of the Genealogy of Jesus departs from an artistic tradition for this topic that was common in medieval times, especially in stained-glass windows. This so-called Jesse Tree shows Jesse lying prone and a tree growing from his side with the ancestors on each branch, in a visual treatment of a biblical verse.[Src 14]
The figures in the lunettes appear to be families, but in every case they are families that are divided. The figures in them are physically divided by the name tablet but they are also divided by a range of human emotions that turn them outward or in on themselves and sometimes towards their partner with jealousy, suspicion, rage or simply boredom. In them Michelangelo has portrayed the anger and unhappiness of the human condition, painting "the daily round of merely domestic life as if it were a curse".[47] In their constraining niches, the ancestors "sit, squat and wait". [48] Of the fourteen lunettes, the two that were probably painted first, the families of Eleazar and Mathan and of Jacob and Joseph are the most detailed. They become progressively broader towards the altar end, one of the last being painted in only two days.[nb 14]
The Eleazar and Mathan picture contains two figures with a wealth of costume detail that is not present in any other lunette. [Fig 30] The female to the left has had as much care taken with her clothing as any of the Sibyls. Her skirt is turned back showing her linen petticoat and the garter that holds up her mauve stockings and cuts into the flesh. She has a reticule and her dress is laced up under the arms. On the other side of the tablet sits the only male figure among those on the lunettes who is intrinsically beautiful. This blonde young man, elegantly dressed in white shirt and pale green hose, with no jerkin but a red cloak, postures with an insipid and vain gesture, in contrast to the Ignudi which he closely resembles.
Prior to restoration, of all the paintings in the Sistine Chapel, the lunettes and spandrels were the dirtiest.[49] Added to this, there has always been a problem of poor daytime visibility of the panels nearest the windows because of halination.[nb 15] Consequently, they were the least well known of all Michelangelo's publicly accessible works. The recent restoration has made these masterly studies of human nature and inventive depiction of the human form known once more.
Section References[3][14]
Ignudi
(For images, see gallery)
The Ignudi[nb 16] are the 20 athletic, nude males that Michelangelo painted as supporting figures at the each corner of the five smaller narrative scenes that run along the centre of the ceiling. The figures hold or are draped with or lean on a variety of items which include pink ribbons, green bolsters and enormous garlands of acorns.[nb 8]
The Ignudi, although all seated, are less physically constrained than the Ancestors of Christ. While the pairs of the monochrome male and female figures above the spandrels are mirrors of each other, these Ignudi are all different. In the earliest paintings, they are paired, their poses being similar but with variation. These variations become greater with each pair until the postures of the final four bear no relation to each other whatsoever.
The meaning of these figures has never been clear. They are certainly in keeping with the Humanist acceptance of the classical Greek view that "the man is the measure of all things".[50] But Michelangelo knew the Bible well.[10] He would have been well aware of the fact that although seraphim and cherubim are described as being winged creatures, angels are not. They are described as looking like men.[Src 15] When Michelangelo later painted the altar wall of the chapel, he included a great number of angels, particularly in the lunettes which are decorated with scenes of angels carrying the symbols of the Passion. Other angels are employed sounding the trumpets which call forth the dead, displaying books in which the names of the saved and the damned are written and casting sinners down to Hell. In all, the Last Judgement contains more than forty angels, all closely resembling the Ignudi. It is reasonable to conclude that the Ignudi represent angels.[10][51] If the Ignudi are indeed angels, they are the ever-present attendants and messengers of God, impassively watching and waiting on the fate of Humankind.
Their painting demonstrates, more than any other figures on the ceiling, Michelangelo's mastery of anatomy and foreshortening and his enormous powers of invention.[nb 17] In their reflection of classical antiquity they resonate with Pope Julius' aspirations to lead Italy towards a new 'age of gold'; at the same time, they staked Michelangelo's claim to greatness.[52] However, a number of critics were angered by their presence and nudity: Pope Adrian VI described the ceiling as "a stew of naked bodies" and wanted it stripped.[9]
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