The brain on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

[JamesU]

K NM then. I had a plan that spiraled towards many things including the pure existence of god himself! *bratty tome* But mike was nt a zooby

 

[Huckleberry]

You don't find it likely that a man known for symbolism in his art would put symbols in his art? It could be a brain, or an apple, or a heart, or a scrotum, or whatever you want it to be. Maybe it was just put into confuse people. Maybe it is pure coincidence. Unless someone asks the man himself or he wrote it down somewhere then the world may never know for certain. All I know is that he has the knowledge, the talent, and the motive. It wouldn't stand up in a court of law, but it is enough for me to form a loose opinion, just as many art historians already have. I'm not claiming fact here, just opinion. Maybe Michelangelo won't mind?

Here are some quotes that may have come from Michelangelo. They show a little of the mind of the man.

Already at 16, my mind was a battlefield: my love of pagan beauty, the male nude, at war with my religious faith. A polarity of themes and forms - one spiritual, the other earthly.

I cannot live under pressures from patrons, let alone paint.

I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin's; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.

It is better docration when, in painting, some monstrosity is introduced for variety and a relaxation of the sense and to attract the attention of mortal eyes, which at times desire to see that which they have never seen.

What do you despise? By this you are truly known.

Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man.

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/michelangelo_buonarroti.html
http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/authors/michelangelo_a001.htm


And an interesting bbc article.

Scholars and art historians have long recognised that Michelangelo habitually made liberal use of symbolism in both painting and sculpture, and perhaps he was also fond of visual puzzles and humour2. For example, the 'supporting cast', and the accompanying embellishments, (the nude figures, the prophets and sibyls3, the scenes in the medallions4 and spandrels5), which adorn the Sistine Chapel ceiling, have never been satisfactorily interpreted.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A681680

 

[zoobyshoe]

You don't find it likely that a man known for symbolism in his art would put symbols in his art?

Don't you see what a pointless question this is? Even if I answer that it is likely he put symbols in, it says nothing whatever about any particular object or shape in question.

It could be a brain, or an apple, or a heart, or a scrotum, or whatever you want it to be.

The question is, "Did Michaelangelo intend it to be a brain?"

Maybe it was just put into confuse people. Maybe it is pure coincidence. Unless someone asks the man himself or he wrote it down somewhere then the world may never know for certain.

The fact it suggested a brain to one viewer is, really, a non-story, and attempts to support the notion Michaelangelo deliberately tried to suggest a brain can't come from indirect trains of logic, like your one about him being homosexual. Something very direct is needed.

All I know is that he has the knowledge, the talent, and the motive.

No, there is no motive, just your speculation that various things could have constituted a motive. Confirmation bias.

It wouldn't stand up in a court of law, but it is enough for me to form a loose opinion, just as many art historians already have.

Why even bother entertaining the idea it's a brain? He used the same shape of drapery in the deluge panel. This one is almost certainly just coincidently more brain shaped.

 

[Huckleberry]

I never intended to imply that it definitely was a brain. I was saying that it was likely a brain. And I'm not the only person who can clearly see it. If that wording offends you then let me rephrase. The image in the painting may have been intended to represent a brain. That seems more balanced.

Usually this is where I would say, let's forget about this and go out for some beers.

 

[Math Is Hard]

My thought is that he may have subsconsciously formed the design in a brain pattern. It was a pattern he had some familiarity with, and given his love of anatomy, he probably spent quite a few hours sketching out this particular organ. Later on, it may have effortlessly emerged as a basic shape for one his great works.
I think that any artist might be inspired by patterns found in nature, but not necessarily have a conscious understanding of why a particular composition or balance of shades and colors is pleasing, only that it is familiar and evokes a certain emotion that is being conveyed.

 

[zoobyshoe]

My thought is that he may have subsconsciously formed the design in a brain pattern. It was a pattern he had some familiarity with, and given his love of anatomy, he probably spent quite a few hours sketching out this particular organ. Later on, it may have effortlessly emerged as a basic shape for one his great works.

This train of speculation doesn't mean much unless we know he actually did sketch brains. He may well not have, since they don't show from the ouside. My understanding is that the reason he dissected cadavers was to get a better view of the muscles and bones in order to draw the body more realistically. A search of his sketches should reveal whether he sketched brains or not.

Da Vinci did sketch brains, but only for anatomical study. He never worked a brain into one of his paintings.

The shape of the drapery behind God could have come from a multitude of visual sources, but was most likely his purely abstract solution to framing the figures after he worked out the composition of how to cluster them there, floating down from heaven. His solution to that compositional problem just happens to resemble the outline of a brain. But a brain isn't such a specific shape that we couldn't find a brain shaped cloud, or that we couldn't spill some milk and get a brain shaped puddle. In other words, it's too easily just an accidental resemblence.

And, everyone is still ignoring the fact that he has some similarly shaped drapery around a woman's head in the deluge panel of the chapel ceiling.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I never intended to imply that it definitely was a brain. I was saying that it was likely a brain. And I'm not the only person who can clearly see it. If that wording offends you then let me rephrase. The image in the painting may have been intended to represent a brain. That seems more balanced.

"Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easily is a bush supposed a bear!"

Theseus
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Act V, scene I

 

[Huckleberry]

"Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easily is a bush supposed a bear!"

Theseus
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Act V, scene I

So I take it you don't want that beer? Why zoob?

 

[zoobyshoe]

So I take it you don't want that beer? Why zoob?

I gave up drinking completely many years ago. It leads to spinning beds and visions of brains on the ceiling.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Looking at more of the chapel ceiling I see there are two more portraits of God. The one right next to this one also looks "brainy" if you're looking for it, but the third one is completely random: God and an angel with drapery.

 

[Integral]

Zoobie,
You are either trolling. blind or in serious denial. Michelangelo painted god in a brain, that is as obvious as a painting on the ceiling. I feel very comfortable with the idea of him sending a hidden (in that time) message to the Church.

Why does this bother you?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Michelangelo painted god in a brain, that is as obvious as a painting on the ceiling.

It has been drapery for 500 years. Someone notices it looks brain-like and now it's definitely a brain? Is it a sheep brain or a human brain?

I feel very comfortable with the idea of him sending a hidden (in that time) message to the Church.

Sure, he could have put something in his art that expressed one opinion or another, but nothing about this brain thing adds up. What is the message? Find where he said something to the effect he thinks God is a figment of the human mind.
The quotes people have been digging up indicate that he was completely religious all his life, believed fully in God, and believed in the Catholic church.
Why does this bother you?[/QUOTE]
It is so clearly drapery. It is so easily just accidently brain-shaped. I have a book with the whole ceiling in it. there's a guy sitting over toward the side (some apostle, I think), and, by God, if you look at him sideways he has the same brain shape. There's a woman in the deluge scene who has brain shaped drapery swirling in the air around her head. What do we make of the fact there is a portrait of God three panels down that is not at all brain-shaped?

 

[Huckleberry]

Here is a site that shows the sistine chapel. Many of the pictures can be selected individually. Which of these other photos depict god? Just out of curiousity, do the other brainy pictures perhaps resemble fish brains or reptile brains when God created those things? If they do then it would be a good indication of the intent of Michelangelo's motives, if he had one at all. Which panels depict God?

http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/CSN/CSN_Main.html

Michelangelo seems to have been religious all his life, but he was also a neoplatonist. His art was in the middle of the reformation period of the Catholic church and he held views that were unorthodox for a time, at least until later in his life.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Here is a site that shows the sistine chapel. Many of the pictures can be selected individually.
Which of these other photos depict god?

I'm not getting details of the painting when I click. Just essays about the panel I click on.

Just out of curiousity, do the other brainy pictures perhaps resemble fish brains or reptile brains when God created those things?

No, they're brainy in the same way the one in question is. The most interesting of these, I see in my book, depicts Zechariah, (and not some apostle as I thought.)

Michelangelo seems to have been religious all his life, but he was also a neoplatonist.

Meaning?

 

[Gokul43201]

Zoobie,
You are either trolling. blind or in serious denial. Michelangelo painted god in a brain, that is as obvious as a painting on the ceiling. I feel very comfortable with the idea of him sending a hidden (in that time) message to the Church.

Why does this bother you?

I'm with Zoob on this. You guys all have brain on the brain. I do not see enough evidence of this implication. Besides, something like this is more a trademark of a da Vinci than a Mikey.

 

[Adrian Baker]

Our resident brain expert moonbear thinks it is a brain, as do the biologists I work with. One of these biologists is a very strong Christian but his reading of it is that the fundamental basis of Christianity is that; either God is only in the mind of man (ie imagined), or that man is in the mind of God (ie created by him).

That is surely THE fundamental question for all Christians? Whatever Michaelangelo's beliefs, he would surely have been aware of that conundrum. Perhaps that was why he put God in the brain...

Incidentally, re: Is it really a brain... Don't you Americans have a saying that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.. it is a duck!?

 

[Evo]

Our resident brain expert moonbear thinks it is a brain, as do the biologists I work with. One of these biologists is a very strong Christian but his reading of it is that the fundamental basis of Christianity is that; either God is only in the mind of man (ie imagined), or that man is in the mind of God (ie created by him).

That is surely THE fundamental question for all Christians? Whatever Michaelangelo's beliefs, he would surely have been aware of that conundrum. Perhaps that was why he put God in the brain...

Incidentally, re: Is it really a brain... Don't you Americans have a saying that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.. it is a duck!?

I don't think Moonbear thinks it was intended to look like a brain, she pointed out that it looks more like a sheep brain than a human brain. I don't think it was intended to look like a brain either, it wouldn't make any sense.

 

[Adrian Baker]

I don't think it was intended to look like a brain either, it wouldn't make any sense.

It might not to me and you, but then we aren't fantastically talented artists, who practise disection, and get comissions for the church paintings!

I went to the National Gallery in London with an Art expert and the information stored in each picture is fantastic! Portrait paintings have so many 'clues' and stories painted in that the average person today can't see. "The Ambassador" painting by Holbein (the one with the distorted skull in it) is awesome for the amount of info in it. Have a look at this site.

http://phs.prs.k12.nj.us/~ewood/virtualmuseum/Ambassadors/Ambassadors.html

It is pictures like this that make me think that an artist of Michaelangelo's calibre would not have painted a 'brain-like' object by mistake - I mean, the guy was one of the greatest artists ever!

I have no christian/atheist argument here to push, I'm just intrigued by the picture and would like to understand it more.

 

[Moonbear]

I'm with Zoob on this. You guys all have brain on the brain. I do not see enough evidence of this implication. Besides, something like this is more a trademark of a da Vinci than a Mikey.

As I was looking up more on this last night, including where the idea originated that this is a brain on the ceiling, as far as I can locate, this started with an article in JAMA (an article on something mostly for entertainment is common in their journal). The brain-like shape was first noticed by an anatomist or physician after it was cleaned. So, the predisposition to see a part of the anatomy in the painting was already there.

I tend to compare this to those of a highly religious disposition seeing images of Mary in common objects where the rest of us see discoloration from water damage.

It wouldn't surprise me to find out there are hidden messages (or even meaningless images included as jokes) within the Sistine chapel ceiling, because as far as I understand, Michelangelo was somewhat arm-twisted into accepting the commission for the Sistine chapel, and was a bit mischievous in hiding imagery that didn't belong. However, whether this particular bit of imagery was intentional, I don't know, and we'd have to know something about what Michelangelo believed and was familiar with in order to know if it even could be intentional.

This was something that used to frustrate me when I took high school literature classes. They seemed to focus on finding hidden symbolism in novels, yet when I'd ask how we know if it's really a symbol or just us making up stuff (because I should could make up a lot of stuff when those essays were due), nobody would answer. I finally had one teacher who admitted that people do find symbols that the author did not intend. I can't remember which author, but someone who was still living when his work became popular enough for people to begin writing about the symbolism had apparently later written about how humorous he was finding it that people were finding symbolism he never intended and calling things symbolism that weren't.

If we did come across something in Michelangelo's writing or correspondence that indicated he believed in the brain as the seat of the soul, or that the brain was significant in some other way (the mind being what makes humans unique from other animals), I might give a tad more credence to this, but absent that, I really think it's more likely us seeing something that is pure coincidence.

I included the overlay for fun because the overall shape doesn't resemble a human brain to me, but that of another species. However, in creating the overlay, personally, other than the overall outline loosely resembling a brain, the alignment of brain landmarks, as the article associated with the original post posits exists, is not something I see clearly. The main features one would see in a brain cut in half are the the corpus callosum and some of the ventricles, and I just don't see that in the shapes in this image. With the lines drawn on top, you can trick your eye into seeing something, but it's really not there.

 

[Evo]

It might not to me and you, but then we aren't fantastically talented artists, who practise disection, and get comissions for the church paintings!

I went to the National Gallery in London with an Art expert and the information stored in each picture is fantastic! Portrait paintings have so many 'clues' and stories painted in that the average person today can't see. "The Ambassador" painting by Holbein (the one with the distorted skull in it) is awesome for the amount of info in it. Have a look at this site.

http://phs.prs.k12.nj.us/~ewood/virtualmuseum/Ambassadors/Ambassadors.html

It is pictures like this that make me think that an artist of Michaelangelo's calibre would not have painted a 'brain-like' object by mistake - I mean, the guy was one of the greatest artists ever!

I have no christian/atheist argument here to push, I'm just intrigued by the picture and would like to understand it more.

I agree, artists do strange things sometimes. I wonder what Michelangelo would have said if someone told him, "hey, that looks like a sheep brain!"

What do you think of this later painting by Domenichino? http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/d/domenich/adam_eve.jpg

 

[Moonbear]

I went to the National Gallery in London with an Art expert and the information stored in each picture is fantastic!

One of the fun things about art is that we can also take home messages and see things in it that are unique to our personal perspective. In other words, things that are not intended or seen by the artist can still strike resonance with something personal to the viewer.

It is pictures like this that make me think that an artist of Michaelangelo's calibre would not have painted a 'brain-like' object by mistake - I mean, the guy was one of the greatest artists ever!

Not necessarily, especially if he didn't see it as a brain. What is more noticeable to me about the image, and something to contemplate, is that most of the bodies are entirely contained within that drapery backdrop. And, clearly, having God as the largest "person" in that image is significant; this is a common theme in art, to draw more significant people or objects proportionally larger than everything else in the painting. It is of course also significant that God is reaching out of the backdrop, not confined. But what interests me more is that there are other people's feet sticking out of the boundaries of the backdrop. Why feet? Why not keep all the other people neatly confined within the boundaries of the drapery backdrop when that would fit with the crowded appearnace inside this part of the painting? Are these people kicking out from their boundaries? Maybe like a baby kicking out from its blanket, no longer being swaddled by a parent but kicking out for independence? It sure doesn't add any form of symmetry, unless it provides a continuity with the other paintings surrounding it...do the feet point toward another painting, as a way to visually draw the viewer and connect them from one component of the overall painting to another to make the work seem more cohesive?

 

[Moonbear]

I agree, artists do strange things sometimes. I wonder what Michelangelo would have said if someone told him, "hey, that looks like a sheep brain!"

What do you think of this later painting by Domenichino?

Not at all the same thing...that's a rat brain, not a sheep brain, in Domenichino's work. The arm out front is even an olfactory bulb.

Think of it like a Rorschach test. What someone sees in a painting quite often can tell us more about the viewer than the artist.

 

[Evo]

Not at all the same thing...that's a rat brain, not a sheep brain, in Domenichino's work. The arm out front is even an olfactory bulb.

It does look like a rat brain.

 

[Moonbear]

It does look like a rat brain.

Oh, I'm so glad we have this thread. I'm going to have so much fun finding hidden brains next time I visit an art museum! It'll be like a whole day of playing "Where's Waldo?"

 

[JamesU]

What I fel like:

:zzz:

 

[zoobyshoe]

Incidentally, re: Is it really a brain... Don't you Americans have a saying that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.. it is a duck!?

This is my very point. The saying is "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck." This alleged "brain" neither walks nor quacks.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Oh, I'm so glad we have this thread. I'm going to have so much fun finding hidden brains next time I visit an art museum! It'll be like a whole day of playing "Where's Waldo?"

Or, people can meditate on paintings till they hear the sound of one brain quacking.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Moonbear:

Michelangelo. The Prophet Zechariah. - Olga's Gallery
Address:http://www.abcgallery.com/M/michelangelo/michelangelo49.html

For full effect, print this out and turn it sideways with the guy facing down. I think it is more "brainey" than the other one.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Non-brainey God:

Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Plants (detail) by MICHELANGELO di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
Address:http://gallery.euroweb.hu/html/m/michelan/3sistina/1genesis/8plants/08_3ce8a.html

 

[Moonbear]

Moonbear:

Michelangelo. The Prophet Zechariah. - Olga's Gallery
Address:http://www.abcgallery.com/M/michelangelo/michelangelo49.html

For full effect, print this out and turn it sideways with the guy facing down. I think it is more "brainey" than the other one.

I can see more than one orientation for a brain in that one (haven't really printed it out though, just mentally rotating the image). I don't care if they're intentional, it's just a fun thing to look for now. I think it means I need a vacation!

Non-brainey God:

Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Plants (detail) by MICHELANGELO di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
Address:http://gallery.euroweb.hu/html/m/mi...s/08_3ce8a.html

You're right, that's definitely more of a liver. (And in case the smilies don't tip you off, I'm joking about the liver.)