Michelangelo Buonarroti

The Creation of Adam

Sistine Chapel

-Michelangelo Buonarroti

How beautiful? How intricately designed? How thought about? How meaningful? How magnificent?

The Creation of Adam is probably my favorite pice of art. All of it's meaning, all of it's relativity. God reaching as far as He can for Adam, who is barely trying at all and doesn't look interested at all in receiving the life God has to offer. Adam is blatantly created in the image of God, with God's beauty. Only God is elderly and Adam still looks like a youth, God has the wisdom of the ages, where Adam has none yet. Also, God's little cloud/bubble thingie He's floating around in is actually an anatomically correct human brain. It is insane how right it is. There are different interpretations, that it is a coincidence [doubtful when you realize how accurate it is], that God is a made up being that our brains created for comfort, it symbolizes God giving man intellect, that God is in complete control and knows everything while man doesn't, and so forth. I love the last one. Our minds were created to hunger for something more and made to worship. In this painting God is the most prominent feature in the brain, as He should be in MY brain and my life.

"Genius is eternal patience."

Four years. Painting. He didn't even like painting. He like sculpting. He had to learn techniques of a new medium. He had to do sketches and then recreate them on a CURVED ceiling for people to look at 60 feet below. And it STILL looks phenomenally accurate.

I fall more in love with this painting the more I look at it and study it. It really isn't just a painting, it's a true work of art. I love it. I love Michelangelo.

I really wish I had taken that art history class in high school...