Images at work versus words at play: Michelangelo's art and the artistry of the Hebrew Bible

Judaism, Spring, 2002 by Richard S. Ellis

Dedicated to the Memory of My Father, Murray Ellis (1923-2001)

GOD'S POSTERIOR IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL? I SUSPECT that it can be traced back to the Latin translation by Jerome of an enigmatic word in the Hebrew Bible, just like those horns on Michelangelo's statue of Moses in Rome's Church of San Pietro in Vincoli. But it is unmistakably there, on the most famous ceiling in the world that displays to the hordes of gawking tourists Michelangelo's frescoes, the crowning glory of the Renaissance.

In fresco two, Michelangelo painted a scene in which God appears twice. On the right side, face to the viewer, God is creating the heavenly bodies. On the left side, back to the viewer, God is exposing the dual moons of his own posterior, which nicely balance the newly created celestial moon on the far right. One conjectures why those angels caught in God's cape in the representation of the forward-facing deity are smiling. Perhaps they imagine, beneath the freely flowing cape, God's about-to-be-revealed tush. (1)

Although God's posterior is integral to Michelangelo's conception of the Divine, the frescoes use it as just one element in their interpretation of the narratives of Genesis. Commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508 and completed after four years of physically and emotionally exhausting labor, (2) Michelangelo's artful representations, recently restored and effulgent, consummately articulate the spirit of the Renaissance as they make a profound theological statement: about creation, about the entry of sin into the world through the fall of Adam, about the cleansing of humanity by the waters of Noah's flood, about the persistence of sin after the flood when Noah became drunk and in his drunken nakedness was ridiculed by his son Ham. As theology, the frescoes interpret the narratives of Genesis as pointing to one ineluctable conclusion: humanity cannot be saved by its own works, but needs Christ in order to be saved.

Christ, the theological focus of the frescoes, bursts out of a ball of light on the front wall of the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo painted The Last Judgment some 30 years later. Christ is the Divine Judge, a still point in the vortex of the living and the dead, the elect levitating to eternal life, the damned descending into the dark abyss. He is Adam reborn, both in spirit and in flesh, his athletic torso vivifying that of his disgraced predecessor shown in fresco six. With bulging biceps and pectorals and golden, flowing tresses, the Christ of The Last Judgment resembles more a classical Greek statue than the bearded religious figure of traditional Christian art, although in un-Greeklike fashion his genitals are covered, in contrast to Adam. Only the scar on Christ's right chest mars the perfect body.

Resplendent art. But what is a Jew to make of it?

Michelangelo's Mute God with a Flowing Gray Beard

As one stands in the Sistine Chapel in the intersecting force fields of the frescoes on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the front wall, reaction to Michelangelo's art depends on one's spiritual tradition. From a Christian perspective, Michelangelo has arrayed in splendid radiance the sweeping panorama of the human-Divine encounter: creation, fall, expulsion from the Garden of Eden, persistence of sin after the flood, redemption through Christ at the end of days. From a Jewish perspective, Michelangelo has arrayed in splendid radiance what are limited interpretations of narratives in the Book of Genesis, narratives that have been the focus of Rabbinic commentary for centuries.

Viewing Michelangelo's art, a Jew gapes into the spiritual chasm separating Christianity from Judaism. Michelangelo's portrayal of God in human form transgresses the Second Commandment and the soul of Jewish wisdom: God is unknowable, unimaginable, visually unportrayable. As Maimonides taught, the only true statement that one can make about God's essence is that no true statement about God's essence is possible. To portray God in human form in a two-dimensional fresco is to limit God's infinitude that is infinitely beyond the powers of the human mind to perceive.

Yet humans interact with God. One record of those interactions is the Hebrew Bible, which portrays the human-Divine encounter with a verbal artistry that mirrors the mystery of that encounter by being open-ended, playful, and generative of multiple interpretations. Biblical language is a multilayered language of astonishment, expressing the insight that God is present in all phenomena. It is language at the edge of its capabilities. (3) To explore this artistry and to contrast it with Michelangelo's in the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel are the purposes of this essay.

In the first five frescoes the Italian master transgresses the Second Commandment prohibition against portraying God by picturing God as a vigorous but elderly gentleman with a flowing gray beard. Fresco four, The Creation of Adam, is the most famous of all. According to the standard interpretation, the fresco shows God extending God's finger to impart to Adam the spark of life. But can we not interpret this scene reciprocally? In addition to depicting the creation of humans in the image of God, it can also be interpreted as depicting the creation of God in the image of humans. This interpretation is consistent with mystical strains of Renaissance thought and explains the shape of God's cape, which is that of a cross-section of the human brain, (4) a shape known to Michelangelo by performing dissections of the human body. (5) According to this interpretation, Adam's extending his finger to impart to God the spark of life represents the leap of his imagination above the merely earthbound to conceive of a deit y who, because of Adam's immature spirituality, is cast in human form.