The brain on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

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The discussion centers around the interpretation of a painting by Michelangelo, specifically its resemblance to a human brain, and its implications in the context of behavioral neuroscience. Participants explore whether Michelangelo intentionally depicted a brain to symbolize intelligence or knowledge, considering his anatomical expertise and the artistic conventions of his time. Some argue that the shape could be coincidental, while others suggest it may reflect deeper themes related to the divine and human consciousness. The conversation also touches on historical beliefs about the brain's function, with references to various philosophers and medical theories from antiquity to the Renaissance. Ultimately, the debate highlights the complexity of interpreting artistic symbolism and the potential for multiple meanings within Michelangelo's work, suggesting that while the brain-like shape is notable, definitive conclusions about the artist's intent remain elusive.
  • #91
Moonbear said:
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).
This one is actually kind of spooky if you print it and look at it sideways. The drapery really suggests brain fissures and sulci. It has a much better developed occipital/cerebellar area than the other one.
 
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  • #92
http://www.dailynews.lk/2005/05/14/fea04.htm
Michelangelo's mind
Michelangelo considered the human body as the most important metaphor of divine order. His profound knowledge of human anatomy which he acquired by performing dissections is reflected in his sculptural works as well as in his paintings.

He was also heavily influenced by humanist and Neoplatonic ideas which appear in his writings and poems of that time and believed that sublime beauty in art can be produced only when the hands obey the intellect.

Neoplatonism enjoyed resurgence during the Renaissance and this philosophy is very present in Michelangelo's art. The Neoplatonists believed that man being the link between God and the world was the element that kept the universe together. They implied that the physical world came into being as a result of the soul emerging from the Intelligible.

Artists like Michelangelo who believed in the divine origin of art and of the interaction between physical beauty and intellect, attempted to touch or stir the soul through images of beauty. When the eye sees the perfectly harmonized objects that would awaken the soul, the object seen is considered as something divine.

http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~dvess/micel.htm
To view the Renaissance solely from this perspective, however, would be misleading. Burckhardt also emphasized the fact that the philosophical outlook of the Renaissance, in many instances, attempted to Christianize pagan ideologies. This is particularly true of Marsilio Ficino and the Neoplatonic Academy. In the Renaissance, Neoplatonism enjoyed a resurgence in popularity, and was not thought of as being in opposition to Christianity. This is nowhere more clearly seen than in the works of the greatest artist of the age, Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Neoplatonism, as a school of thought, had its origins in the work of Plotinus in the third century. Plotinus argued that there were three hypostases: the One, the Intelligible, and the World Soul. The One was the highest, most perfect realm. The One was completely undifferentiated and, therefore, nothing could be said about it. It was, then, even beyond being; the One transcended all categories which could be applied to it. The other two hypopstases "emanated" from the One. They were not created, but rather, came into being as a result of a corrupt desire to be other than the One. The Intelligible was the Divine mind for Plotinus, and took its form by reflecting back on the One. The realm of the Intelligible was populated by divine ideas, which were the perfect exemplars of sensible objects. The physical world came into being as a result of the emanation of Soul from the Intelligible. Some souls become corrupted and associate with matter. Matter was a complete negation, neither good nor evil in itself, but utterly formless. Soul informs matter, and makes it what it is. Matter, while not evil in itself, is, however, the source of evil. Being bound up with matter corrupts the soul; some souls forget their divine origins and become too concerned with sensible things. . All souls, however, eventually seek to return to the One. Plotinus argued that the soul can become reunited with the One through contemplation. The life of the philosopher, for Plotinus, was the best attempt to free oneself from the bonds of matter and achieve a vision of the One.
Michelangelo was neoplatonist. Neoplatonists believe that the intelligible was the divine mind. This would give meaning to the image of a brain in Michelangelo's work. I would interpret it to mean a gift of divine intelligence from the One.
 
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  • #93
I always thought that it was a pancrease.:confused:

Evo said:
What do you think of this later painting by Domenichino? http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/d/domenich/adam_eve.jpg
[/URL]
He's obviously saying, "What the hell kind of present do you call this? She says she has a headache."
 
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  • #94
Yeah, and then he says "You interrupted my bowling game for this? Don't you understand the Serengeti needs thunder? Do this one more time *points finger* and I'll give your job to Michelangelo. There's a man with some brains."

He mutters to himself, "That's what I get for creating Adam with sheep for brains."
 
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  • #95
Is that Adam in that painting or Paul Reiser?
 
  • #96
It's Adam Sandler. Look at the face!
 
  • #97
Nah, it's Paul Reiser all the way.

http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/d/domenich/adam_eve.jpg
Paul: Honestly, God, it was an accident! She mistook the apple for a sheep brain, honest mistake, honestly.
God: Silence! For this indiscretion, thou shalt receive a fate worse than death.

thousands of years later...

pr.jpg

"If I volunteer to have my guts eaten by magotts in a lake of fire, only to have them regenerate and be eaten again a thousand times over, can we retroactively cancel Mad About You after the pilot? Please?"
 
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  • #98
I'm just wondering what Michelangelo has against the cerebellum. It's not on any of his brains. :rolleyes:
 
  • #100
zoobyshoe said:
Hyp, can you paste Zechariah into the thread here sideways with his face down:

Address:http://www.abcgallery.com/M/michelangelo/michelangelo49.html

I didn't open this yet...is it the same one you posted earlier? I finally saw the angle you meant on that. The top right corner should face down. :biggrin:
 
  • #101
I did the next best thing and held my laptop upside down. :biggrin:
 
  • #102
zoobyshoe said:
Not upside down. Sideways. Start as is, and rotate 90 degrees so his face is facing down.

Technically, about 125-130 degrees places it perfectly so it is oriented as it would be in the head. But, I see what you mean anyway. It is far more human-like than the one on the Sistine Chapel painting.
 
  • #103
Moonbear said:
Technically, about 125-130 degrees places it perfectly so it is oriented as it would be in the head. But, I see what you mean anyway. It is far more human-like than the one on the Sistine Chapel painting.
This is from the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Its at the end on the ceiling closest to the wall with the last judgment. The other, non-brainey, God is also from the Sistine Chapel Ceiling.
 
  • #104
Huckleberry said:
Michelangelo was neoplatonist.
Now you're migrating from what it says in your link, that he was heavily influenced by neoplatonic ideas, to asserting he was a neoplatonist.
Neoplatonists believe that the intelligible was the divine mind. This would give meaning to the image of a brain in Michelangelo's work. I would interpret it to mean a gift of divine intelligence from the One.
From what it says there, I think it would be considered "corrupt" by a neoplatonist to associate the Divine Mind with the "matter" of a physical, anatomical human brain.
 
  • #105
I did you one better, zooby: I rotated it so it's horizontal and converted to greyscale. I guess Zechariah's head is the cerebellum here.
 

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  • #106
hypnagogue said:
I did you one better, zooby: I rotated it so it's horizontal and converted to greyscale. I guess Zechariah's head is the cerebellum here.
The grey is nice, but I think you rotated it too far. His head is not supposed to be the cerebellum. The cerebellum would be at the other side of the figure. His head should just be a tumor growing out of the frontal lobes.
 
  • #107
Funny, though, it is still pretty brainy the way you put it.

Edit: Yeah, if you want to regard his head and arms with the book as the brainstem your way is as good as mine.

Either way you can see this looks much more literally like a brain than the one with God and Adam.

Thanks Hyp.
 
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  • #108
zoobyshoe said:
The grey is nice, but I think you rotated it too far. His head is not supposed to be the cerebellum. The cerebellum would be at the other side of the figure. His head should just be a tumor growing out of the frontal lobes.

Zooby, I think you have your brain anatomy a bit confused. It's perfect as hypnogogue oriented it! The book is the brainstem. His head is pretty close to where the cerebellum should be (though not proportionally sized). The left side as hypnogogue oriented it would be the frontal lobe.
 
  • #109
Moonbear said:
Zooby, I think you have your brain anatomy a bit confused.
No. I just don't like the idea that the figures head would be sticking out the back of the brain. It would be nicer if both the brain and Zechariah were facing the same direction.
It's perfect as hypnogogue oriented it! The book is the brainstem. His head is pretty close to where the cerebellum should be (though not proportionally sized). The left side as hypnogogue oriented it would be the frontal lobe.
Yes, I realized this about the brainstem after a second look.
 
  • #110
zoobyshoe said:
Funny, though, it is still pretty brainy the way you put it.

Edit: Yeah, if you want to regard his head and arms with the book as the brainstem your way is as good as mine.

Oh, until I read this, I was seeing it the same way Hypnogogue oriented it. I mentioned earlier, there are multiple orientations I could see in this one that would have different components of the image appearing "brainy." There seems to be a lot of recurring usage of similar curvatures of components in the painting, sort of like the same shape is embedded within itself many times. Still wouldn't know if it was intended to be brain-shaped, but it does seem Michelangelo had a fondness for that basic form throughout his work. Perphaps the curves were simply aesthetically pleasing to him.
 
  • #111
Moonbear said:
but it does seem Michelangelo had a fondness for that basic form throughout his work. Perphaps the curves were simply aesthetically pleasing to him.
This is exactly what's going on. He is doing many variations of a basic form that he seems to have a thing for.
 
  • #112
zoobyshoe said:
This is exactly what's going on. He is doing many variations of a basic form that he seems to have a thing for.
Agreed. I wonder if he intentionally used the same form over and again to signify something since it appears to be a very closed form (makes me feel almost claustrophobic looking at it), or if he was just unconsciously predisposed to just liking the shape such that it became a natural part of his "style" rather than a form he intentionally chose to reuse many times.

Oh, thanks for clarifying they are all images form the Sistine Chapel. One of these days I hope I'll get to travel to Italy and see it for myself.
 
  • #113
Moonbear said:
One of these days I hope I'll get to travel to Italy and see it for myself.
Take a variety of brains with you so you can hold them up for comparison.
 
  • #114
Danger said:
Take a variety of brains with you so you can hold them up for comparison.
Don't worry, their appearances are well stuck in my own brain.
 
  • #115
Moonbear said:
Agreed. I wonder if he intentionally used the same form over and again to signify something since it appears to be a very closed form (makes me feel almost claustrophobic looking at it), or if he was just unconsciously predisposed to just liking the shape such that it became a natural part of his "style" rather than a form he intentionally chose to reuse many times.
He uses the same thing around the head of a woman in "The Deluge" panel in the ceiling. In that instance it suggests more of a half-shell. I would wager it has no signifigance whatever. He seems to use it over and over for purely compositional reasons.
Oh, thanks for clarifying they are all images form the Sistine Chapel. One of these days I hope I'll get to travel to Italy and see it for myself.
I've never seen it myself outside of books. If you get a book of the Sistine Chapel you can see he has painted more seated and reclining figures than standing ones. For some reason this appealed to him, maybe because it was a better way to fill the space he had to work with.
 
  • #116
Danger said:
Take a variety of brains with you so you can hold them up for comparison.
Everyone should own their own brain:

Brain-Mart's Catalog Brain Images: C15-C22 Brain Models
Address:http://www.brain-mart.com/c15-17.html
 
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  • #117
zoobyshoe said:
Now you're migrating from what it says in your link, that he was heavily influenced by neoplatonic ideas, to asserting he was a neoplatonist.

From what it says there, I think it would be considered "corrupt" by a neoplatonist to associate the Divine Mind with the "matter" of a physical, anatomical human brain.

If you reread the post it clearly states that matter itself is not corrupt. Neoplatonists believe that the One (God) is inexpressible. Any representation of the One is a product of the human mind. This makes the image of a brain very appropriate in 1. A representation of God, 2. The endowment of intellect upon Adam.
I've also read remarks claiming that Michelangelo was upset that God never appeared to man. I'll look for the actual poetry.

http://www.ljhammond.com/phlit/2003-09b.htm
Why would Michelangelo portray archers as though they were arrows? To answer this question, Panofsky draws upon a subject that is at the heart of his method: philosophy. He points out that Michelangelo was a literary man as well as an artist, that Michelangelo’s “worship and scholarly knowledge of Dante was a byword”, that Michelangelo’s own writings “fairly bristle with reminiscences of Petrarch.”6 During Michelangelo’s time, an important school of philosophy was the Neoplatonic school, and this school left a deep impression on Michelangelo; “Michelangelo’s poetry is full of ‘Platonic’ conceptions.”7

The leaders of the Neoplatonic school in Italy were Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Panofsky describes this school as “a philosophical system which must be reckoned among the boldest intellectual structures ever erected by the human mind. This system had its origin in the ‘Platonic Academy’ of Florence, a select group of men held together by mutual friendship, a common taste for conviviality and human culture, [and] an almost religious worship of Plato.”8 The Academy always came together on November 7, to celebrate the day of Plato’s birth and death. Panofsky says that the Academy had three main goals:

To translate Platonic works into Latin, and write commentaries on them. These works included not only Plato’s own writings, but also the writings of Plotinus, Proclus, and others, including the famous alchemist known as “Hermes Trismegistos”. (If we divide philosophy into spiritualism and materialism, the Platonic Academy is certainly on the side of spiritualism, as were the New England Transcendentalists of a later age.)
To organize these Platonic texts into a philosophical system, a system “capable of instilling a new meaning into the entire cultural heritage of the period, into Virgil and Cicero, as well as into St. Augustine and Dante, into classical mythology as well as into physics, astrology and medicine.”9
To bring this philosophical system into harmony with Christianity. Here’s an example of the Christian-izing of Plato: Ficino says that Plato’s theory of reincarnation is an anticipation of the Christian idea of resurrection — not a different theory, but rather the same theory in a different guise.10
http://www.island-of-freedom.com/MICHEL.HTM
While still in his adolescence, he was given equally extensive exposure to the art and thought of the ancient world as a privileged protege of Lorenzo de'Medici, in whose palace he encountered a celebrated collection of classical works of art and conversed with the leading humanist poets and philosophers of the day, notably Marsilio Ficino and Angelo Poliziano. After absorbing the humanist and classically oriented doctrines of neoplatonism espoused by Poliziano and Ficino, Michelangelo found his belief in rationalistic humanism tempered by the fiery sermons of the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola, whose fundamentalist attacks on pagan culture and corrupt church practices struck a responsive chord in the deeply religious young artist.
Michelangelo was neoplatonic and christian. And looking at the goals of the organisation he was involved in it seems that the opportunity to put neoplatonic philosophy into the heart of the catholic church would be a great opportunity. Perhaps Michelangelo's reluctance to take the job is not only due to his dislike for painting, but also to his religious conflict.

And if we look elsewhere in the sistine chapel we see the last judgement. And above the altar is a black pit that is the entrance to hell. Next to it is the river styx and the boatman Charon.
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/M/michelangelo/lstjudge.jpg.html
 
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  • #118
zoobyshoe said:
I've never seen it myself outside of books. If you get a book of the Sistine Chapel you can see he has painted more seated and reclining figures than standing ones. For some reason this appealed to him, maybe because it was a better way to fill the space he had to work with.

It's entirely possible that he was just better at painting seated figures. He is far better known for sculpture than painting, and from what I've read, he was actually very reluctant to accept the commission to do the Sistine Chapel ceiling because he didn't consider himself a painter. Use of the same form over and over could be a reflection of his limitations as a painter. Or, given the huge space he had to cover, could have been used for expediency to fill in a lot of gaps. It may even flow well with the curvature of the ceiling itself.

It's still not going to stop me from looking for brains in paintings now though. :smile: People will wonder why I'm laughing so hard walking through the museum next time I visit one. Probably will be the National Galleries when I'm in D.C. in November (of course, that will be for the Neuroscience meeting, so I might not be the only one seeing brains in paintings), unless I get back to NYC again before that (I LOVE the Met...it's still my favorite art museum).
 
  • #119
Moonbear said:
Don't worry, their appearances are well stuck in my own brain.
No doubt, but wouldn't you like to weird out the tourists (and more importantly the guards)?

zoobyshoe said:
Brain-Mart's Catalog Brain Images: C15-C22 Brain Models
Neat, but pretty expensive. I live near a cemetary, so I'm doing okay.
 
  • #120
Moonbear said:
It's entirely possible that he was just better at painting seated figures.
Naw. If you can paint there's no difference between seated or standing. It was either a preference or a necessity of space/composition.
He is far better known for sculpture than painting, and from what I've read, he was actually very reluctant to accept the commission to do the Sistine Chapel ceiling because he didn't consider himself a painter.
This is very true. He was pretty much ordered to do this by the Pope. In his day, critics did not like his paintings because of the very strange, unrealistic colors he used. No one really understood the objections of his contemporary critics until the ceiling was cleaned. I, for one, was very bummed out to see how he seemed to have painted with a pallette of candy colors.
Use of the same form over and over could be a reflection of his limitations as a painter.
I wouldn't say it is "used over and over." It's more like variations on a theme.
Or, given the huge space he had to cover, could have been used for expediency to fill in a lot of gaps. It may even flow well with the curvature of the ceiling itself.
All this, yes, and it might have to do with purely mechanical considerations like how big an area he could reach to paint without moving his scaffold. Planning things within this form may have simply made them easier to paint.
It's still not going to stop me from looking for brains in paintings now though.
No one has mentioned it also could be a kidney outline. What do people have against kidneys?
 
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