Scientists Spot Secret in Michelangelo God

Sistine painting contains brain diagram
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Suggested by Disillusioned
Posted May 28, 2010 6:23 AM CDT
Scientists Spot Secret in Michelangelo God
God's strangely lumpy throat in "The Separation of Light and Darkness" is actually a message from Michelangelo, according to two neuroanatomists.   (Wikipedia)

Michelangelo used the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to conceal a message the church would have found blasphemous, according to a pair of neuroanatomists. God's oddly lumpy neck in The Separation of Light from Darkness, a detail that has long puzzled art historians, is actually a completely accurate depiction of the human brain painted by the artist, who was a highly skilled anatomist.

The neuroanatomists haven't speculated on what Michelangelo meant by including the brain diagram in the image of God, but it could well have been a comment on "the enduring clash between science and religion," neurosurgeon R. Thomas Fields writes in Scientific American. It may also be the case, Field writes, that Michelangelo—who had a strained relationship with the Catholic Church—was signaling that "intelligence and observation and the bodily organ that makes them possible lead, without the necessity of Church, directly to God." (More Michelangelo stories.)

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