Abstract
Since the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel has been cleaned, numerous scholarly articles and books1 have been written about the wonderful things revealed: the brilliant hues, the subtlety of the color of modeling, the persuasiveness of the details, the working in of the pentimenti. But I can assure you that no one has written either about whether the Sistine Chapel exists or not, or whether Michelangelo or Julius II ever existed. On the other hand, in the clamorous debates about the efficacy of the cleaning, there has been discussion aplenty about the topics Professor Tymieniecka suggested for our meeting: “verifiability, falsity, illusion, deceit,” and especially about its “adequacy to the truth” of Michelangelo’s work. In the words of the most outspoken critic of the recent cleaning, James Beck, the Sistine Chapel ceiling has always been:
one of those awesome human efforts that tends to defy total analysis. To compound this difficulty of interpretation, no contemporary evidence offering insight into Michelangelo’s and Julius’s intentions survives. Michelangelo never wrote about the project specifically, either out of pur poseful secretiveness or such nonchalance that it never occurred to the artist that clues would be priceless nuggets to later commentators.2
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Notes
James Beck, The Three Worlds of Michelangelo (New York: Norton, 1999), p. 180.
Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier, “Michelangelo’s Ignudi, and the Sistine Chapel as a Symbol of Law and Justice,” Artibus et historiae, Vol. 17/34, 1996, pp. 19–43, 208, esp. p. 36. Joost-Gaugier argues that what is being passed are animal viscera that constitute the first part of appropriate sacrifice, and therefore, the subject is the sacrifice of Abel.
Ascanio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, translated by Alice Sedgwick Wohn and edited by Hellmut Wohl (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976), (Original edition: Vita di Michelangnolo Buonarroti raccolta per Ascanio Condivi da la Ripa Transone [Rome: 1553]).
Beat Wyss, “The Last Judgment as an artistic process: The Flaying of Marsyas in the Sistine Chapel,” Res, Vol. 28, August 1995, pp. 65–77. This is a beautiful account of the interpenetration of Christian and Classical sources starting with Michelangelo’s self-portrait as the flayed St. Bartholomew. A sample: “The Sistine fresco is merely a satirical play on the Last Judgement, of which it has been written that no one knows the day or hour, not even the renowned master Michelangelo. Before the Supreme Judge, the artist accuses himself of the vanity of his creative endeavors” (p. 66).
Leo Steinberg used this apt terminology in his witty “Who’s Who in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam: A Chronology of the Picture’s Reluctant Self-Revelation,” The Art Bulletin, Vol. LXXIV/4, December 1992, pp. 552–66; hereafter “Who’s Who.”
In his search to identify the characters, Steinberg, “Who’s Who,” op. cit., presents the history of the photography of the painting. He begins with Vasari’s identification of “alcuni Putti,” saying only that it is “an inadequate observation to which Condivi had nothing to add” (p. 553), about which see below. For the history of the popular image, see Ghislain Kieft, “Anderson 3789. De grafische geschiedenis van een detail van de Sixtijnse Kapel,” in “‘That Special Touch’ vormgeving tussen kunst en massaprodukt,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, Vol. 39, (1988) (Bussum: Fibula-Von Dishoek, 1989), pp. 165–202.
Loren Partridge summarizes the pertinent facts: the foundation of the first chapel, documented only in 1368, determined the size of the building. Baccio Pontelli (c. 1450–92) incorporated its foundations and walls into the new building; the new chapel was fortified with sloping walls and battlements. The chapel is 133 x 46 x 62 feet (40.5 x 14 x 19 m). It was dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin on 15 August 1483. A painting of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin by Perugino (now lost) stood above the altar on the west wall. The barrel vault was probably painted about 1479–80 following a design by Pier Matteo d’Amelia, active 1467–1503/8. (Loren Partridge, Michelangelo: the Sistine Chapel Ceiling Michelangelo: the Sistine Chapel Ceiling [Rome, New York: George Braziller, 1996], pp. 9–10).
Botticelli, Perugino, Signorelli, Ghirlandaio and others. It is not the authors but the subjects that are of interest to this paper. They are juxtapositions of the lives of Moses and Christ, that is the Old Law and the New. The Moses Cycle runs left from the altar, tituli in parentheses: The Finding of Moses (now lost for it was sacrificed to Michelangelo’s Last Judgment), The Circumcision, The Youth, Crossing the Red Sea, The Descent from Mt. Sinai, The Punishment of Korah, The Testament of Moses; the Christ Cycle: The Nativity (lost), Baptism, Youth, Calling the Apostles, The Sermon on the Mount, Christ Giving the Keys to Peter, The Last Supper, and the Resurrection. Note that the last emphasize the role of the Church in continuing the New Law. Carol F. Lewine lists the scenes with the tituli inscribed beneath each scene; words and phrases emphasizing continuance abound: regenerationis, recepturi, accepturi, promulgatio, replicatio. She reminds us that the walls “were not to be viewed in silence.” She finds that the scenes echo liturgical texts and ceremonies between Lent and Pentecost (The Sistine Chapel Walls and the Roman Liturgy [University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993], p. 2).
Both were Franciscans (see Rona Goffin, “Friar Sixtus IV and the Sistine Chapel,” Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. XXXIX, 1986, pp. 218–62). Sixtus (Francesco Delia Rovere) had made him a cardinal in 1471. Julius II’s (Giuliano Delia Rovere) policies were nearly identical with those of his uncle but “with much greater scope, dynamic, and aggressiveness. … His commission of the decoration of the Sistine ceiling, for example, was a typical extension of an earlier Sistine project, but characteristically far grander, offering an unrivaled opportunity to Michelangelo” (ibid., p. 14).
Just as in filmmaking, the chronology of the narratives does not coincide with the chronology of the execution. The only congruence is in the Last Judgment. On the ceiling, the images of God creating the universe were painted last. The scenes from Genesis of the ceiling were painted after the scenes from the lives of Moses and Christ below. Narrative time for the creators of the Sistina depended on position in the container.
Anthony Hughes, “Michaelangelo,” section therein on the “Sistine Ceiling,” Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (London: Grove, 1996), Vol. 21, pp. 443–445.
Joost-Gaugier, “Michelangelo’s Ignudi, …, op. cit.
Andrea Pappas (“Observations on the Ancestor Cycle of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling,” Source, Vol. 11/2, 1992, pp. 27–31) discusses the importance of these figures, obscured for about 500 years. He notes that while the ceiling program abounds with references to the Babylonian captivity, one of the most important events in the Old Testament, it never appears directly in the chapel. I will excerpt the major points of the argument, for he finds in the images he discusses the political reasons for the theme of continuation in the Sistine. Only a “structural feature in the program — the break in the alternating pattern of the ancestor cycle-alludes to the captivity. … The peculiar position underscores the continuity of the tribe of Judah and of Christ’s line — a matter of potential importance for Julius II.” There is also an emphasis on the “enduring tradition” of “priestly authority. … Renaissance thinkers drew the parallel between the popes and the Levites. … The army commander of Judah often has command of their tribes, and it is the Levite priests who bestow this authority. Significantly, this honor falls on a leader who typically appears in the genealogy of Christ. … Rather than in relation to their husbands, the women in the genealogies of the Old Testament usually appear as mothers. … thus the primary relationships in the lunettes are not nuptial, but maternal, in keeping with the chapel’s dedication to the Virgin. … [She] is a metaphor for the church. Lactation forms a crucial part of this metaphor:” the divine milk of Mary-Ecclesia will become the Sacred Blood that gives life to the faithful. “These all represent the Church as an institution and complement the allusion in the fall frescoes to its dynastic origin. … Julius II’s ongoing difficulties with the pro-conciliar factions in the church certainly would warrant — as it did for his uncle, Sixtus IV — a reminder of the doctrine of papal primacy. Given at least one attempt to use a council to depose him (that engineered by Maximilian of Spain and Louis XII in 1507), the presence of discreet references to the proper relationships between kings and high priest in the decorative program of the ceiling is not surprising. The Babylonian captivity is uniquely suited to this message since it was punishment for disobedience to ecclesiastical law — in particular, violation of the proper relationship between king and high priest. Such disobedience resulted in the removal of the papacy to Avignon, referred to at the time as the “Babylonian Captivity.”
This and the article cited just above about overlooked aspects of the Sistine Chapel decorations caused me to seek the broader theme of continuation. See Margaret Franklin (“Forgotten Images: Papal Portraits in the Sistine Chapel,” Arte cristiana, Vol. 84/775, July-August 1996, pp. 263–69), argues that the series of papal portraits acts to justify the supremacy of the pope, so needful in the reign of Sixtus IV “Canonists realized that papal prerogatives required a secure foundation based on law if they were to compete with imperial claims to legal powers. This foundation … was based on Greco-Roman ideology concerning the nature and function of law. Under the influence of Cicero and the Stoics, the concept of law as being reason which is in everlasting agreement with nature came to signify obedience to the godhead and divine law.” In this way, “God used the Old and New Testaments to guide mankind’s actions according to natural/divine law: ‘Jus naturale in libris Novi et Veteris Testamenti continentur.’ “ (Rufinus, Summa Rufini, ad Dist. ix, 19, ed. Johann Friedrich von Schulte [Giessen: 1892], quoted by Franklin, note 37).
Both are painted by Pietro Perugino and Pinturicchio (Bernardino di Betto di Biago). Both are childhood initiation rituals, baptism first conceived as a replacement for circumcision (George L. Hershey, High Renaissance Art in St. Peter’s and the Vatican [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993]).
The first payment to Raphael for the cartoons of the tapestries is in 1515. Although Raphael’s tapestries for the nave walls were designed before Michelangelo painted the Last Judgment on the altar wall (1535–41), they had little effect on the design of the interior space for they covered faux draperies in fresco. Naturally the texture of the tapestries had greater visual “weight” than the painted ones, and so the frescoes above had a visually more “solid” base. Raphael’s designs were turned into tapestries in the workshop of Pieter van Aelst in Brussels. The completed tapestries were in place before the death of Leo X on 1 December 1521. That they should have been pawned immediately after Leo X’s, death gives an idea of their future peregrinations. They were last seen in the positions that Raphael intended during the Sack of Rome in 1527. After many, many vicissitudes, they have been at the Vatican since 1808. Seven of the ten cartoons survive in the English Royal Collection, and since 1865 have been on permanent loan to the Victoria & Albert Museum. See John Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons in the Royal Collections and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (London: Phaidon, 1972), pp. 138–143.
Partridge, op. cit., p. 15.
It is only because of the recent cleaning that we are able to understand Mchelangelo’s color in this way. And only since the cleaning can it be seen that for Michelangelo, color is form.
Steinberg, “Who’s Who,” pp. 560–66.
An anonymous contributor to the debate finds, behind the girl, a woman’s face. She has, at her neck, a line of red paint that looks like a Raphaelesque bodice. “I wonder if she could be Holy Wisdom, cautioning Eve to be careful?” — Marcia Hall and Leo Steinberg, “Who’s Who in Mchelangelo’s Creation of Adam continued,” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 75/2, June 1993, pp. 340–44, esp. 344.
She was identified with Eve as early as 1871; see Leo Steinberg (“Who’s Who”).
Maria Rzepinska, “Ewa, Szechina czy sophia?: przyczynek do interpretacji freskow syk-stynskich Michala Aniola” (“Eve, Shekina or Sophia?: Contribution on the Study of the Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel of Michelangelo”), in Fermentum massae mundi: Jackowi Wozniakowskiemu w siedemdziesiata rocznice urodzin, in (Warsaw: Agora, 1990), pp. 414–22, and then, “The Divine Wisdom of Michelangelo in the Creation of Adam,” Artibus et historiae, Vol. 15/29, 1994, pp. 181–87. Rzepinska prefers Sophia, arguing against Jane Schuyler’s assertion that the Neoplatonic readings of the ceiling should be supplemented by cabalistic ones. For example, since in the Cabala God’s nature has male and female elements, the girl at God’s left (sinister) side is the Shekinah. For Rzepinska this identification is unsuitable because, in the Book of Zohar the Shekinah is a personification of sin, judgment and expulsion. J. Klaczko first identified the girl as “Sapientia, identified by the Church with Mary to whom the Sistine Chapel was dedicated” (Jules II, Rome et la Renaissance, [Paris, Plon-Nourrit, 1898], p. 355). Rudolf Kuhn reiterated the identification: Michelangelo: Die six-tinische Decke. Beiträge über ihre Quellen und zu ihrer Auslegung (Berlin-New York: de Gruyter, 1975) pp. 28–29.
Henry George Liddel and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) p. 1622.
Friedrich August Wolf, Vorlesungüber die Enzyklopädie der Altertumswissenschaft, 1831), p. 273. ed. J. D. Güntler (Leipzig: Lenhold, Thanks to Siena College librarian Sean Maloney for this reference.
W. Dilthey, Selected Writings, ed. H. P. Rickman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
The Elohist version merely states that God created man and woman and blessed them. In the Yahwist version, God formed man from the dust of the ground, and because it was not good for man to be alone, He made a helper from Adam’s own rib (Genesis 2: 18–23). Steinberg (1993) argues that dual Eves suits the dual creation stories in Genesis I and II.
Ibid.
Richard J. Clifford, S. J., “Introduction to Wisdom Literature,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. V: in Introduction to Wisdom Literature; Proverbs; Ecclesiastes; Song of Songs; Book of Wisdom; Sirach (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 9.
Clifford, S. J., “Introduction to Wisdom Literature,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. V: in Introduction to Wisdom Literature; Proverbs; Ecclesiastes; Song of Songs; Book of Wisdom; Sirach (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 9 Ibid.
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), The Origins of Life. Vol. 1: The Primogenital Matrix of Life and Its Context, Anatecta Husserliana LXVI (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000).
See Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka Logos and Life, Book 4: Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason, Analecta Husserliana vol. LXX (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001).
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Trutty-Coohill, P. (2004). The Wisdom of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam . In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Does the World Exist?. Analecta Husserliana, vol 79. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0047-5_28
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