“Ignudi” (Nudes)
Their
symbolic meaning remains mysterious and, among the interpretations, there is
the one that believes them representatives of the pagan world unaware of the
events of Genesis behind them or the one that considers them as spiritual
powers and angels, as opposed to the fallen angels and demons in bronze color
framed above the pendentives
AMONG THE
IGNUDI
“Ten medallions in faux bronze” with Old Testament stories inspired
by the woodcuts of the then famous Bible of Nicholas Malermi of 1490 (the first
vernacular translation of the Bible and the only one for 200 years), connected
to the adjacent scenes:
“Mattathias
destroys the altar in Modein”, “Elijah's ascent to heaven”, “Sacrifice of
Abraham”, maybe “Elisha cures Naaman of leprosy” (almost disappeared), “Death
of Absalom”, “Death of Nicanor”, “Alexander the Great before the high priest in
Jerusalem”, “Expulsion of Heliodorus”, “Antiochus Epiphanes falls from the
chariot” and “Death of Razis”
NINE EPISODES
FROM THE BOOK OF GENESIS divided into three groups:
Creation of
the Universe, Creation and Fall of Man, Stories of Noah
“For Charles
de Tolnay, who interprets the work in a Neoplatonic way, to begin with the
drunkenness of Noah is even necessary, since the stories of Noah on the one
hand and the divine act of creation on the other mark the start and end points
of the 'deificatio' i.e. the bodily ascent to the spiritual essence” (Frank
Zöllner)
First
Group, CREATION OF
THE UNIVERSE
God is the
only protagonist:
“Separation of Light from Darkness” where God has both the impetus of
youth and the wisdom of old age, both manly vigor and female fertility, as his
chest would seem to suggest
“Michelangelo
must have seen a similar, explicit composition played on the same contrast in
the Bible of Nicholas Malermi in 1490, when the creator, however, does not fly,
but stands between a light and a dark surface” (Frank Zöllner)
“Creation of the sun, moon and plants” where the sun could symbolize
Christ, and the moon the Virgin Mary
“Separation of Waters” cryptic episode but that could be
representing the theme of fertility of water related to the generating power of
Baptism
“The
development of the monumentality of the figures are also known in many mostly
male nudes (...). Nudes For example, next to the depiction of the separation of
light from the darkness are significantly larger than those near the scene
Drunkenness of Noah” (Frank Zöllner)
Second
group, CREATION AND
FALL OF MAN:
“Creation of Adam” in which God infuses the soul to Adam, uniting
spirit to matter, the woman and the baby under God's left arm may represent,
respectively, Eva, forerunner of the Virgin, and the Child Jesus
It took
Michelangelo sixteen days to complete the fresco
It is an
unusual representation of God that has given rise to various interpretations
Some even
wanted to recognize in the image of God the right section of a human brain,
which was certainly not unknown to Michelangelo and perhaps alludes to
Neoplatonic thought
The one who
found this out was the neurologist Frank Lynn Meshberger, of St. John's Medical
Center in Anderson, Indiana (USA)
In an
article published by the prestigious Journal of the American Medical
Association he described in great detail the amazing correspondences
According
to Neo-Platonic thought, man is no longer seen as something casual or
fortuitous, but, on the contrary, striving for a purpose, and aimed at
achieving unity with the rest of matter through the intellect, the last step
before the Divinity
Man thus
acquires a certain dignity, precisely because he is not passive and supine to
Nature: the more he is active the more he tends to perfection
“Creation of Eve” as the centerpiece of the overall scheme of
the ceiling, at the precise center. She is the symbol of the foundation of the
church that comes from the side wound of Christ
The church
itself is symbolized by the Virgin Mary - Mary typus Ecclesiae - the new
Eve, to whom the entire Sistine Chape is devoted
Adam
leaning against a tree evokes the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, from whose
side blood and water flowed alluding both to baptism and Eucharist
“Original sin and expulsion from the Garden of Eden” where Adam on the left has a
similar pose to that of Hercules who captures an apple in the garden of the
Hesperides in a classical relief: perhaps they are metaphors of Jesus and
Heaven
Adam
grabbing the tree maybe alludes to the crucifixion and the promise of salvation
“Unlike most
artists of 1400s, Michelangelo summarizes the two episodes in one scene and
equips the snake not only with a human head, but also with an anthropomorphic
body” (Frank Zöllner)
Third
group, NOAH'S
STORIES:
“Sacrifice of Noah” with ark with that in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance was considered a symbol of the church and for its wooden structure
and also a symbol of the cross of Christ
This scene
therefore prefigures the Holy Mass and highlights, with the gesture of Noah,
the contrast between the acceptable and unacceptable offers
Moreover
the ox and the ass, present at birth, represent the Gentiles that recognized
the Messiah, the horse is another symbol of the church, while the elephant is a
symbol of wisdom and of Christ himself
“Deluge” the first to be painted, and the only fresco
full of figures and fine details not discernible from a distance
Above the
roof of the ark the white dove mentioned in the Book of Genesis is visible
“Drunkenness of Noah”. Traditionally Noah's sin was
interpreted as a second original sin, while the vine plant that he plants in
the background on the left foreshadows the incarnation, the vat is a symbol of
Christ's sacrifice and the pitcher and cup remind us of the Eucharist
“The frescoes
of the ceiling which, thanks to the figures of the Ancestors of Christ, form a
large and complex iconographic program, not only illustrate various aspects of
the history of redemption, but also a genealogical continuity from the creation
to the time of Julius II (...). The theme of the continuity of the papacy with
the early history of Christianity was undoubtedly linked to a personal need of
the patron that could be described as evident on a genealogical level: Julius
II was the nephew of Sixtus IV, the pope who had built the Sistine Chapel.
(...) Thus, the history of the family becomes part of the history of the popes
and the work of redemption and the iconographic program culminates in the
golden age of Julius II” (Frank Zöllner)
“Michelangelo
rejects the perspective concept of space of the Renaissance, and with an
unusual choice he doesn't foreshorten figures from below according to an
illusionistic unified vision. It's all about the basic unit of classical
sculpture, the single figure, if anything, associated with elements of
architecture. The motion of the dramatic twists and plastic reliefs of the
masses of giant bodies enhance the isolation of the figures, whose image is
subjected to an act of idealization that gives them a great spiritual universal
meaning: they were raised to the level of symbols of primeval forces of nature
and of the fate of man who struggles between these forces, yearning for the
elevation of his spirit” (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
An
explosion occurred in 1797 in the Castel Sant'Angelo gunpowder depot brought
down part of the sky where, as shown by sixteenth-century prints, there was a
lightning strike
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