Doctors see a code in Michelangelo's work
SAO PAULO -- Two Brazilian doctors and amateur art lovers believe they have uncovered a secret lesson on human anatomy hidden by Renaissance artist Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.
Completed nearly 500 years ago, the brightly colored frescoes painted on the Vatican's famous sanctuary are considered some of the world's greatest works of art. They depict biblical scenes such as the ''Creation of Adam" in which God reaches out to touch Adam's finger.
But Gilson Barreto and Marcelo de Oliveira believe Michelangelo also scattered his detailed knowledge of internal anatomy across 34 of the ceiling's 38 panels. The way they see it, a tree trunk is not just a tree trunk, but also a bronchial tube. And a green bag in one scene is really a human heart.
The key to finding the numerous organs, bones, and other human insides is to first crack a ''code" they believe was left behind by the Florentine artist. Essentially, it is a set of sometimes subtle, sometimes overt clues, like the way a figure is pointing.
Barreto and Oliveira, who have published ''The Secret Art of Michelangelo," are not the first physicians to see depictions of human organs in the Sistine Chapel.
Fifteen years ago, US doctor Frank Meshberger pointed out the figure of God and his surrounding angels in the ''Creation of Adam" panel resembled a cross-section of the human brain. He believes Michelangelo was equating God's gift of a soul for Adam with the divine gift of intelligence for mankind.
Packing up his desk as he prepared to move houses, Barreto came across Meshberger's theory.
''I said to myself, 'If there's a brain, he surely didn't just paint a brain. There have to be others,' " Barreto said.
As part of their research, they discovered another US doctor, Garabed Eknoyan, had found the figure of a kidney in the panel entitled ''Separation of the Earth from the Waters."
Eventually Barreto and Oliveira came to believe Michelangelo had left behind coded messages in each panel to help viewers find the hidden body part.
Some clues are thematic, such as ''Creation of Adam" or ''Creation of Eve," in which a tree trunk looks like a bronchial tube and God's purple robe is a representation of a lung when viewed from the side. One could say God is imparting the ''breath of life" into Eve in the scene, Barreto said.
Sometimes Michelangelo ''points" to the hidden body part.
In the ''Libyan Sibyl," a cherub pointing to his shoulder stands next to a twisting woman, her shoulder blade in the spotlight. Two other cherubs beneath the pillars point to their shoulders too.
If looked at upside down, the fold of the Sibyl's dress and the bottom of her trunk look like a rendition of the arm bone, or humerus, and the socket into which it fits on the shoulder.
''We've said it's actually a very infantile language, because it's all about looks, light, pointing," Barreto said.
When faced with the paintings and photographs of the anatomical body part side by side, Barreto and Oliveira's theory is conceivable, although some matches require a little bit of creativity. Some might say too much.
''The problem, and art historians too are certainly often guilty of this, is simply that we often see what we want to see," said Dennis Geronimus, a specialist on Renaissance art at New York University, who had a chance to examine some of Barreto and Oliveira's ''de-coded" matches.
Their proposals, he said, ''stretch the visual evidence far beyond Michelangelo's own specific vocabulary of poses, gestures, and symbolic relationships."
