The creation of Adam and God-placenta

Art has always interested scientists, and scholars of medicine and science have often discovered scientific likenesses and symbols in artworks and paintings, as recently revealed, for example in the book The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

The art of Michelangelo has not escaped such analysis and, among his most well known masterpieces, the paintings in the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City have been the subject of much interest over time. A particular portion of the painting, ‘the touch’ between God and Adam, has been widely reproduced for cultural and commercial purposes.

We recently had the opportunity to visit the restored Sistine Chapel and we were astonished by the richness and splendor of the frescoes, which reveal the genius of Michelangelo and other Italian painters of the 16th century. We were struck by the central ceiling painting, the renowned Creation of Adam (Figure 1), and looking ‘through’ the painting, we saw something we considered worthy of investigation: an evident obstetric symbolism. We know that others have identified the profile of human organs in the paintings of Michelangelo and especially in this ‘birth’; for example, the profile of the brain [1] and, more recently, lungs [2]. However, we disagree with such views and interpretations. Given that Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint an ideal birth, we find our obstetric analogy far more convincing and worthy of investigation.

Figure 1 Creation of Adam; fresco by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City.

Maybe we are prejudiced by our medical backgrounds (I am a gynecologist, and my wife works on the molecular biology of placental enzymes), but we have seen, without doubt, that Adam is born (created) from a uterus and a human placenta. We will discuss the reasons for our strong feelings in terms of shapes, colors, and hidden meanings.

The choir of angels resembles the placenta (maternal surface). The distribution of the heads and the colors are the same as the cotyledons of the placenta (Figure 2).

Figure 2 A placenta.

The two arms that intersect – the right arm of God, together with the left arm of Adam – recall the umbilical cord in shape and color, with the muscle torsion of the arms reproducing the torsion of umbilical arteries around the vein (Figure 3). The anatomic proportion of this ‘umbilical cord’ to the placenta is perfectly maintained.

Figure 3 God-placenta. The image of the placenta, made semi-transparent, covers the angel's choir and the umbilical cord fits in the space of the two arms ‘touching’ each other.

It is also possible to discover other obstetric symbolism. The water flow in the lower right side of the painting, below God's body, is a clear symbol of the amniotic fluid that flows through the dilated cervix out of the vagina, whose shape and axis is somehow hidden and outlined by the two legs that protrude from the lower profile (Figure 4). Another symbol may be seen in God's vest – white and transparent like the amniotic membranes.

Figure 4 Amniotic fluid flow. On the right side: a detail of God's vest and a specimen of amniotic membranes. In the circle: round ligament and the salpinx.

In terms of anatomy, the robe of God is round as an open uterus: if we imagine the opening to the right side of a uterus sagittally, just behind the emergence of the broad and round ligament and look inside, we may follow the axes of anteversion and anteflexion of the uterus and, on the extreme right of the painting, we may also see the round ligament in its real oval flat shape and the salpinx, cut, on the right upper corner (Figure 4). The color is dark wine-red, exactly as the uterus is.

The last discovery we wish to discuss about this painting, and this is not related to anatomy, deals with the faces of the two characters of the scene. Our impression is that the actors are Leonardo da Vinci as God and Raphael Sanzio as Adam. In the room next to the Sistine Chapel, during the same years Michelangelo created the frescos, Raphael Sanzio was painting the philosophic School of Athens and – as a devotional joke – gave the face of Leonardo to the philosopher Plato, the Master of all philosophers, the face of Michelangelo to the pessimist Heraclit, and painted himself in a corner (Figure 5).

Figure 5 School of Athens by Raphael Sanzio; fresco in the rooms adjacent to the Sistine Chapel. Raphael depicts Plato with the face of Leonardo (left in the middle frame), Heraclit with the face of Michelangelo (below, left), and himself in the crowd of scholars (below, right).

Michelangelo ‘shook on the bet’, and responded by painting the Master genius Leonardo and Raphael in his ‘Creation’. To see the resemblance, just compare the two artworks: the head of Plato in Raphael's School of Athens and the head of God in Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. You will see a strong similarity, showing that the two younger men had the same idea with regard to their admired Master Leonardo (Figure 6). What is more intriguing, however, is that if we mirror Raphael's self portrait in the School of Athens fresco, the face of Adam looks very much like that of the portrait!

Figure 6 The head of God by Michelangelo (below, extreme right) as compared to the head of Plato, depicting Leonardo, by Raphael (below, right). The head of Adam by Michelangelo (below, extreme left) as compared to the head of Raphael in his self-portrait (below, left) as it appears mirrored by computer graphics.

This is the first observation of obstetric symbolism in the paintings of Michelangelo. Furthermore, it is the first time that the faces of the two characters have been given an identity.

If we would like to identify a common ideology in the art of Renaissance, it can only be found in the frame of Neoplatonism. None of those great Renaissance figures, from Botticelli to Leonardo da Vinci, escape its suggestions and its themes. Cusano was the first mediator between ancient Platonism and the renaissance, but Marsilio Ficino was the first to renew the tie between philosophy and religion and to elaborate a theory that puts man at the center of the universe. Man is central in the levels of life: above him there is God and the angels, below him living nature and still nature. Neoplatonism is the background of all the cultural phenomena of the Renaissance world, and figurative arts represent the expression of such philosophic thought.

The work of Michelangelo, always permeated by religious inspiration, finds its roots in Neoplatonism. In such a conceptual context, we may frame our interpretation of the Creation's theme. The image, among the most reproduced and recognizable, caught God and Adam at the moment of the creation. All the energy and power is concentrated on God creator and the choir of angels, rather than on the figure of Adam; and the presence of the female figure enforces the concept that this Creation is a human birth and that love is the main force and inspiration of the Neoplatonic ideological universe.

Hermeneutic work provides several interpretations. The image of God is dominant in the scene and the robe of God is evocative and not just a background. The suggestion of the placenta and the other obstetric symbols are coherent with the creation as an ideal birth. God's robe looks like a uterus, inside which there are the placenta, the membranes and the amniotic fluid. The two arms are portions of the umbilical cord, and the reciprocal position of the two hands is such that we are not viewing the ‘touch’ of life, but a hold that is releasing. Birth is in the moment the umbilical cord is cut. God does not ‘touch’ Adam, but leaves him. And Adam has a sad expression as one who is abandoned on the Earth.

Michelangelo was a pessimist, and in his doubtful and anguished view, Neoplatonism could not be totally positive and optimistic. Although the spirit of God lives in man, man is abandoned on Earth. Those fingers that seem to search for each other, just because they are not in contact, are evidence of the loss of a tie. Hence, man is central between God and nature, but this position brings autonomy and responsibility and sufferance. Adam is no longer in Eden, and has to live real life. The scene does not represent the transmission of thought (logos), nor the spark of life, nor even the breath of life, but the scene is a real birth. And, similar to Greek and Roman mythology, with his left arm God girds a woman and the two give birth to the first mythic man, Adam, through a real delivery.

Michelangelo knew anatomy well. He had often practiced human body dissection in Florence and then in Rome, with an interest that went beyond artistic expression and was intended to be a more general project of knowledge acquisition. Studies of the human body, from the renaissance of anatomy as a science, were reprised when Pope Sistus IV, the pope after whom the Sistine chapel was named, permitted scientific studies of human corpses. This gave new input to the study of anatomy and physiology. Among the artists who became popular for their anatomic studies we may recall: Leonardo, who undertook his research with Marcantonio Della Torre; Calcar, mentored by Titian, who worked with Andrew Vesalio producing elegant anatomic tables; and Michelangelo, who consulted with Realdo Colombo, teacher at the Medical Faculty of Padua.

In conclusion, in this painting, Michelangelo explores anatomy and philosophy and pays tribute to the commissioner of the fresco, but also to the two more distinguished painters of the time: Leonardo and Raphael.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the collaboration of Dr Giorgia Buscicchio and Dr Elisa Carboni who helped in building the images. The image of the uterus is modified from Primal Pictures.