The Creation of Adam
MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI, 1508-1512
Michelangelo’s magnificent fresco on the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel is one of the artistic Wonders of the World. The vast painting was done 500 years ago and Michelangelo accomplished it without the help of modern technology. In fact, the artist spent four years on a scaffold, suspended almost 70 feet into the air.
The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel, 1508-12 (fresco) by Michelangelo Buonarroti. Movement: Italian Renaissance.
The Creation of Adam is one of nine paintings within the Chapel’s scope illustrating the Biblical story of God’s creation of the world, capturing the moment when God “breathed” life into the first man. We see God moving powerfully toward Adam, accompanied by a heavenly host; God is about to transform him into a living soul. Adam, in the split-second before God’s eternal energy reaches him, is clearly alive, but his languid posture exudes weakness. He seems urgently in need of God’s empowerment.
In the years of discomfort and weariness the artist spent painting the Chapel’s ceiling, spurred on against his will by Pope Julius II, Michelangelo must also have felt the need of an enlivening divine touch to help him complete his task. Perhaps he spoke of himself when he said, “Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.” —DDG