Completed nearly 500 years ago, the brightly colored frescoes painted on the
Vatican's famous sanctuary are considered some of the world's greatest works of art. They depict Biblical scenes such as the 'Creation of Adam' in which God reaches out to touch Adam's finger.
But Gilson Barreto and Marcelo de Oliveira believe Michelangelo also scattered his detailed knowledge of internal anatomy across 34 of the ceiling's 38 panels. The way they see it, a tree trunk is not just a tree trunk, but also a bronchial tube. And a green bag in one scene is really a human heart."...
"The problem, and art historians too are certainly often guilty of this, is simply that we often see what we want to see," said Dennis Geronimus, a specialist on Renaissance art at New York University who had a chance to examine some of Barreto and Oliveira's "de-coded" matches.
Their proposals, he said, "stretch the visual evidence far beyond Michelangelo's own specific vocabulary of poses, gestures and symbolic relationships."
Indeed, why would Michelangelo hide drawings of human organs in the Sistine Chapel?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment