Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel

The Creation of Adam (1512) as conceived and depicted by Michelangelo represents a significant moment in art history because it brings a humanistic style of expression and sense of realism to the art world that had not existed prior. The work is focused almost exclusively on the Body as a subject. The two figures—God the Father and Adam—represent the majesty of the human anatomy in its ideal form: muscular, flexible, unique, authentic, poised, admirable, beautiful and proportional. In the painting, God is mostly draped with a thin cloth; Adam is completely nude and his position (reclined with one knee propped up while he stretches backwards and reaches forward languidly) suggests one of royalty being wakened after a long slumber. Indeed, the idea that Adam is like royalty is one that Michelangelo infuses into the scene giving the painting its high-minded rapturous quality, which is much in line with the poetic imagination of the Italian Renaissance.[footnoteRef:1] However, it is not just representative o the poetic imagination of the Italian Renaissance; it is also representative of the move to realism that was coming at the end of the High Renaissance and that would burst forth in the Baroque era during the Counter-Reformation. [1: Paul Barolsky, “Botticelli's Primavera and the Poetic Imagination of Italian Renaissance Art.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 8, no. 2 (2000): 7.]

This realism is especially noteworthy because throughout Europe the first rumblings of the Protestant Reformation were approaching at the time that Michelangelo was working in the Sistine Chapel: Martin Luther would nail his 95 Theses to the church in Wittenberg in 1517 and Zwingli would join the call for reform in Switzerland shortly thereafter. John Wycliffe had already been active in calling for reform in the century prior in England, essentially setting the stage for rebellion, and in France John Calvin would launch his attacks on the Church in the 1530s, about the same time that Henry VIII was fighting with the Pope over the attainment of an annulment—the prelude to his own break with the Church and England’s abrupt leap into Protestantism. These storm clouds were gathering all over Europe while a simultaneous threat was coming from the East in the form of Suleiman and the Muslim invasions, which Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, fought hard to repel. The crisis of the Church with the unanswered attacks of the Protestant Reformers and the threat of the Ottoman Empire was palpable—and Charles V himself would push for the Pope in Rome to call a Council that would address the errors being promoted and promulgated by the Protestant Reformers. That council would eventually be held from 1544 to 1563 and be known as the Council of Trent, which launched the Counter-Reformation. Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam thus appears as the last declaration of faith by the High Renaissance of the Middle Ages before the modern era would come crashing down all over Europe, leading to the Roman Catholic Church’s last hurrah and the Age of the Baroque.

In Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam two figures clearly dominate the painting: Adam on the earth on the left side of the panel and God in Heaven on the right side. God is portrayed as being held up by angels populating the drapery behind God. Michelangelo used extremely vibrant colors and incredible detail to paint this scene and bring the optimism, beauty and promise of the awesome act of creation to life in painting. The red color used to surround God places the Father in a magisterial and royal context—and that royal lineage is passed on to Adam through the extension of God’s arm and hand to Adam’s. When the fingers touch and the creation is accomplished, it is as though sparks fly and an invisible burst of happy energy is felt from that touch: God’s hair is blown back and Adam’s is as well. Michelangelo’s use of line is also extremely evident in the way God the Father is represented: his muscular arm, for instance, is outstretched diagonally from God’s head; another line is formed by God’s body and legs which are held out by the angels; and God’s torso supported by angels below acts as a third line, giving God a triangular shape which suggests the Holy Trinity—another doctrine of the Catholic Faith that would certainly be consistent with the context of the painting. God’s attire does not represent his majesty, but his physical being and His angelic attendants all bear it out.

Adam’s body is shaped to look concave while God has a convex posture. In this manner, the two bodies complement one another. Adam’s posture is more passive than God’s, which is active—indicating that God is doing the creating and Adam is receiving the gift of life. The expression on Adam’s face is like that of a newborn—seeing, believing, but not showing much emotion other than a doting look in the eye that communicates all the softness of expression that a newborn baby’s eye communicates when it sees its parents who nurse him, having brought him into the world. The same expression can be seen in Adam’s face as he looks adoringly and with gratitude at God. Line is a major technique that Michelangelo uses with Adam, too, whose figure complements the triangular effect of God with his own triangular, three-lined frame, with arm outstretched at 90 degrees from head and shoulder, hand pointing down to the legs which extend from the body at 45 degrees so that Adam’s figure resembles a right triangle. God resembles an equilateral triangle, which makes sense since the Trinity consists of three equal Persons in one Divine God.

The woman and the child to the left of God are also worth noticing. God has his arm around the woman and is also touching the baby. The woman’s identity is unknown: it could be Eve watching from under God’s arm, representing the mate who will be brought out from Adam’s rib.[footnoteRef:2] It could also be the Virgin Mary, her necessity foreshadowing the Fall and the need for salvation through the Redeemer, which is the main theme of the Sistine ceiling. As such there is reason to believe that the woman may very well be the virgin Mary with her child Jesus.[footnoteRef:3] This theory may be more appropiate, as one can see that the child is looking away from the interaction between God and Adam, as though knowing the sacrificial role he himself will have to play in making things right again. [2: Leo Steinberg, “Eve's idle hand.” Art Journal 35, no. 2 (1975): 130.] [3: Leo Steinberg, “Who's Who in Michelangelo's Creation of Adam: A Chronology of the Picture's Reluctant Self-Revelation.” The Art Bulletin 74, no. 4 (1992): 552.]

Finally, the focal point of the painting is what really gives the viewer a sense of the work’s strength. The focal point is where the two main character’s two index fingers are about to make contact with each other, signifying unity between man and the superior being. One can see that Michelangelo leaves the viewer with a cliffhanger—it is a perfect artistic expression: life is about to be breathed into the creation—but the viewer is not permitted to see the exact moment of conception—just like man and woman cannot pinpoint the exact moment of conception in the act of procreation when they conceive a child. It remains a mystery for them as it does for the viewer with the creation of the first man. For all the viewer knows, as soon as Adam and God make contact with each other, there may be sparks, light or anything of that sort to express the power that has just been passed on.

The iconography of the Creation of Adam by Michelangelo is situated in the narrative contained in the Book of Genesis of the Old Testament, in which God creates the world and then creates man in his own image and likeness. This emphasis on man being made in God’s image is critical and is the reason God and Adam are like mirror images in the painting, almost as if Adam or God were seeing their mirror reflection in a lake of water. There are subtle differences of course: God is depicted as an old, wise man whose reach is exceeding Adam’s and whose body is thrust forward in an obvious pose of activity. Adam’s body is more reclined, as though he were being pulled forth out of the ground (which is in keeping with the narrative in Genesis, in which Adam is made from the earth and given a soul by God). Adam’s youth and tautness is on display. He is also alone, while God is surrounded by angels. This contrasts serves to foreshadow the creation of Eve, who will be made from one of Adam’s ribs in the next panel.
The context of the work is very important to consider because it sheds light on the scope of the project that was the Sistine Chapel. The Creation of Adam is but one panel in the much grander vision that canvasses not only the entire ceiling but also the sanctuary wall, where The Last Judgment is depicted. Michelangelo spent years working in the Sistine Chapel (four years on the ceiling alone, between 1508 and 1512). His work was commissioned by Pope Julius II. The chapel itself was constructed four decades earlier in the 1470s for Pope Sixtus IV. Michelangelo was not the only artist to work on it: many artists were hired to contribute to the walls. Michelangelo, however, obtained the commission for the highest and most important parts—the ceiling and the sanctuary wall.[footnoteRef:4] The centerpiece of the ceiling—the center most focal point—and the most important point in human history (outside of the Incarnation, of course) as told in the Old Testament is the Creation of Adam, alongside the Creation of Eve and the Fall of Adam and Eve. Those three panels make up the center of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The Creation of Adam commands the next-to-center panel of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, serving as the starting point of the grand narrative of human history that sprawls across the rest of the ceiling (the first three panels tell the story of God creating the world, dividing the light from the dark, and separating the water from the earth), and the grand narrative ends with rolling thunder and a thrilling climax on the sanctuary wall, where Michelangelo depicted Christ’s Second Coming on the Day of Judgment. [4: Hasel, M. F. A., and Giselle Sarli. “Teaching Art History from a Biblical Foundation: Art History as a View into the Great Controversy.” The Journal of Biblical Foundations of Faith and Learning 1, no. 1 (2016): 5.]

The Creation of Adam is the first of nine panels commissioned by Julius II to represent the telling of the story of the creation of man as related in the Old Testament.[footnoteRef:5] That story begins the Church’s doctrine on the need for salvation: man is created, man sins, the gates of Heaven are closed to him, and man must wait a Redeemer who will save man from his sin. The Creation of Adam panel begins that story: it shows how Adam was created out of the ground and had life breathed into his soul by God. It shows Adam in a perfect state. This perfection is evident in the purity of Adam’s form and complexion, the muscular dimension of his physique, and stunning physical beauty and masculinity of his nature. Michelangelo makes no compromises on Adam’s form so that physical and spiritual perfection of Adam in his pristine beginnings is evident. The later panel that tells of Adam’s fall from grace and he and Eve’s exile from the Garden of Paradise shows a much transformed Adam—one who is gray and weather-beaten; the physical transformation representative of the spiritual transformation—Adam’s fall from grace. In the Creation of Adam, the titular character is very much in possession of grace and is union and harmony with the will of God, as the image shows. They are touching, intimate, directly in contact with one another. Adam is beloved of God and God is beloved of Adam. [5: Christin Shaw, Julius II: The warrior pope. Crux Publishing Ltd, 2015.]

Surrounding the nine panels, at the center of which is situated the Creation of Adam, are the Old Testament prophets as well as the classical sibyls (or seers) of the pagan tradition. Michelangelo combines the two on the ceiling surrounding the Creation of Adam as a nod to the philosophical foundations of the West that classical world helped to shape in the scholastic tradition. For example, the faith supported by the panels painted by Michelangelo was supported by reason, as Thomas Aquinas showed centuries earlier in his magnum opus Summa Theologica, in which Aquinas continually referred to the philosophers of the classical Greek era.[footnoteRef:6] On the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michelangelo was reinforcing that idea. The great historical irony, of course, is that as Michelangelo was reminding his Italian viewers of the doctrines of the faith and the foundations of Western philosophy used to support the theology of the Christian religion, Catholic Europe was being torn asunder from within as a result of too much expression given to humanism, too much corruption among the clergy, and too much laxity among the Church officials to hold the foundations together. With all of that history surrounding it, it is no wonder that Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam has become so iconic: it represents the moment that generated it all: the moment of human life springing into existence. [6: Benson Saler, “Supernatural as a Western category.” Ethos 5, no. 1 (1977): 38.]

In conclusion, the Creation of Adam sits at the center of the nine panels that run the length of the Sistine Chapel ceiling—each depicting an episode from the book of Genesis describing the steps from man’s creation to his fall to the promise of a redeemer. The ceiling is designed to be a catechism in pictures—and that is what makes it so significant in history. It is one of the last great works of humanist Renaissance art to be created on a meaningful scale before the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation and the total upending of Catholic Europe.