The Creation of Adam
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The Creation of Adam
The artwork selected for this project is a painting titled “The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo. This artwork is both controversial and sophisticated, making it hard for people to decode their meaning. For years, this painting has held the interest of the art lovers, not because it is beautiful, but because it conceals within itself, hidden secrets, and unsolved mysteries. While most explanations regarding the actual meaning or probable analysis have been demystified as mere attention-seeking speculations, in this analysis, I will look at this artwork in a unique light.
It is eminent that Michelangelo was an excellent sculptor, architect, and artist. Nevertheless, only a few individuals know that he was a competent anatomist who dissected dead bodies intending to come up with anatomical artwork. There are proofs the artist entrenched such anatomical sketches in many of his masterpieces. The Creation of Adam, a masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel, is such an example. Hidden within the faces of the outline of God and robes is a portrayal of man’s brain that is believed to be the artist’s endeavor at a furtive attack on the contempt for science by the church.
“The Creation of Adam” has numerous interpretations, which vary from one individual to the other. The common myth presented as an interpretation of this painting is that it portrays a human uterus. The proponents of this theory contend that the painting illustrates the human woman with the placenta, and this depicted by the red blob around angels and God. They argue that Adam is born from a placenta Adam, and God’s outspread hands create the umbilical. The green girdle is said to be the amniotic sac rather than the blood vessels (de Campos et al., 2016). They also contend that the entire sketch is supposed to portray a woman reclining backward, with the blue backdrop behind Adam portraying her upper body. They also try to prove that there are clear nipples and breasts on top of Adam’s head.
This theory does not add up to anything substantial because Adam was not born but rather was created. The portrayal of the uterus would not make sense because, in Adam’s creation, the idea of giving birth was not yet known. In this painting, God is overlaid above the limbic system, the emotive location of the human brain, and probably the anatomical complement of the human soul. The right hand of God stretches to the Prefrontal cortex, the most unique and creative section in the human brain. Besides, the artist’s experience did not revolve around reproduction but rather the brain because he was an anatomist.
This painting mirrors the great expertise on anatomy that he gained from his dissections on various bodies. In this work, his primary goal was to understand the anatomy’s secret (Strauss & Marzo-Ortega, 2002). This painting portrays God and Adam trying to reach each other, arms starched, fingers nearly touching. I can figure out the spark of life moving from God to Adam past the synapse formed by their fingertips. Nevertheless, Adam is already living because of his widely open eyes. Nevertheless, the primary goal of this portrait is to show that Adam received something from God.
From this work, there is a red cloud that appears behind the angels, and this shows another element of the concealed power that human beings have: the outline of the human brain. God’s hand stretches to create Adam. In other terms, the power of creation that we have stretches through our third eye, which extraordinarily appears in our scull that we can feel when we imagine something that is about to be successful (De Campos et al., 2015). This is the actual portrayal of what occurs when we use our imagining capacity-energy changes in the realm as transformed by the actual thoughts we cogitate. Some forces act in the universe and they control various systems, and some tend to be connected to human minds.
I also think that this painting’s meaning is related to the story of creation portrayed in the book of Genesis and the foundation of humanity. Still, assessing it from a more in-depth perspective also relates to the correlation the human beings have established with their maker. By outstretching his hands, God makes Adam and portrays Christ as the savior of the human race. The creator is portrayed as omniscient. He is ready to give Adam everything that he requires. Nevertheless, God has anticipated the fall of man, after failing to obey the simple rule: Do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil! Thus, he expects this fall and comes up with a practical solution, which is Jesus Christ. The human brain could also be linked to the knowledge and wisdom that humankind had over the other creatures. Therefore, “The Creation of Adam” is a painting that Michelangelo uses to portray the concept of knowledge bestowed to human beings. This is portrayed by the shape of the human brain that appears in the painting.
References
de Campos, D., Malysz, T., Bonatto‐Costa, J. A., Jotz, G. P., de Oliveira Junior, L. P., Wichmann, J. F., … & da Rocha, A. O. (2016). The hidden symbols of the female anatomy in Michelangelo Buonarroti’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. Clinical Anatomy, 29(7), 911-916.
Strauss, R. M., & Marzo-Ortega, H. (2002). Michelangelo and medicine. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 95(10), 514-515.
De Campos, D., Malysz, T., Bonatto‐Costa, J. A., Pereira Jotz, G., Pinto de Oliveira Junior, L., & Oxley da Rocha, A. (2015). More than a neuroanatomical representation in The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo Buonarroti, a representation of the Golden Ratio. Clinical Anatomy, 28(6), 702-705.