The Sistine Secrets (22 page)

Here in the Sistine, Haman is depicted as stripped of his golden clothing and nailed up on the twisted tree, instead of merely hanging from a noose. A hanging body would not have allowed the artist to exercise his talent for portraying seemingly sculpted human musculature in a flat fresco. Michelangelo, exploring the technique of trompe l’oeuil, has the evil Persian vizier’s left arm extend seemingly straight out of the painting and into the room.

In the standard Vatican explanation of this portrayal of Haman’s death, it is supposed to prefigure the crucifixion of Jesus, whose personal sacrifice will vicariously atone for the sins of the world. However, that would mean that Michelangelo, a deeply spiritual Christian, selected a pagan who was one of the worst genocidal maniacs in the Bible to symbolize Jesus. This is doubtful, to say the least. Furthermore, the tree upon which Haman hangs is dead, with its branches cut or broken off, symbolizing that his evil family and aspirations have reached the end of the line. This, too, hardly seems a likely image for the coming Savior in the holiest chapel in Christendom.

The scene depicted in the last spandrel comes from Numbers 21:4–10, in the fourth book of the Bible. The Bible records how the camp of the wandering Israelites is stricken with a plague of poisonous snakes that threaten to exterminate them before they can reach the Promised Land. Moses has just hung a copper image of a snake on a high wooden pole. The Israelites look upward to the copper serpent, thus lifting their thoughts toward the Divine, and are saved. However, strangely enough, the hero of this story—Moses—is nowhere to be seen. Why?

In the Haggadah, the annual Passover recounting of the Exodus, the name of Moses is similarly strikingly absent. The ancient sages say that this is in recognition of his great humility, as well as to emphasize that human redemption comes only from the Almighty, not from a person, no matter how charismatic he or she might be. In Michelangelo’s version, too, Moses is not to be seen. We are being put in the place of the Israelites, in the middle of two choices. As God says later on in the Torah: “I have set before you life and death, a blessing and a curse; therefore, choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). On the left, going into the light, are the Israelites choosing life by looking up toward the Divine. On the right, going into the darkness, are those being killed by the snakes.

What, then, is the unifying theme, if any, of these four different corner panels that might account for their selection by Michelangelo? The obvious answer is that these four scenes represent four major salvations of the Jewish people in moments when they appeared doomed. Is it mere coincidence, though, that each facing set of spandrels depicts scenes that complement the heroism of male and female figures? Judith is flanked by David. Moses is set alongside the story of the courageous Queen Esther.

In Kabbalistic thought, much emphasis is placed on the duality of God’s sexual identity. Without reference to physical form, God is both male and female. The spiritual aspects of the two genders express the characteristics of the God of Justice who is also the God of Mercy. Masculine strength combined with maternal compassion comprises the perfect balance without which divine rule cannot function. Mystics constantly emphasize the need for perfect balance between these two polar forces. Michelangelo depicts for us the human personification of the divine sexual harmony—a mystical equilibrium that is the key to heavenly perfection according to the Kabbalah.

The positioning of the stories is also well planned. On the eastern wall, in the direction of the Holy Land, are the two salvations that take place in Israel. On the western wall, away from Israel, are the two stories that take place in Persia and in the wilderness, both outside the Promised Land.

Yet these four moments of divine deliverance share a more powerful bond, a connection noted long before Michelangelo chose them for “starring roles” in the corners of the Sistine Chapel. For those who know the Midrash it surely seems more than coincidental that both the artist and the rabbis of old linked just these particular stories. In Deuteronomy 26:8, Moses recalls for the Jews that God redeems them with “a mighty hand, an outstretched arm, with great fear, and with signs and wonders.” The seeming redundancy of these phrases is explained by the Jewish commentators in a remarkable manner: Only the last of these expressions relates to an event the children of Israel have already witnessed. The rest refer prophetically to moments still in the future. All together they are to be understood as four ultimate instances of divine intervention. For this very reason, Jews recite this biblical verse at the seder, the Passover festive meal commemorating the deliverance from Egypt, and drink four cups of wine, one for each of the times that God ensured their salvation.

With the four pendentives, Michelangelo seems to be recalling these very same redemptions alluded to in the verse in Deuteronomy.

What is the significance of the promise of redemption in the phrase “with a mighty hand”? The Midrash notes that in the book of Judith, the heroine prays fervently, “Give to me, a widow,
a mighty hand
to do what I plan” (Judith 9:9; emphasis added). The expression is an exact parallel of the verse in the Torah. Indeed, it was the divine response to her impassioned plea, the mighty hand that enabled Judith to chop off the head of her enemy, that allowed for the miracle of the Hanukkah story and the Jewish deliverance from Greek annihilation.

The sages related the next phrase, “outstretched arm,” to the sword of David. It is captured in the central image of the David spandrel by way of the boy’s outstretched arm holding the sword of Goliath. Here Michelangelo chooses a powerfully symbolic way to stress the role of divine aid to the small shepherd boy’s arm. Strength in Kabbalah is the sphere of G’vurah, symbolized by the Hebrew letter gimel:
. Looking at the outline of the vertical image of the sword, David, and the inverted V of Goliath’s head and arms, one can see the shape of this Hebrew letter, which supplies the strength to the boy’s outstretched arm.

The deeper meaning of the next words in the prophetic verse, “great fear,” prefigures the story of Esther. The connection is predicated on three arguments. First, the Talmud says that the
fear
of Haman’s genocidal plan brought more Jews back to the proper path of faith than all the prophets put together. This is a Talmudic variation on the old proverb that “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Second, according to the biblical text, when Esther finally discloses to the Persian king that someone wants to murder her and all her people, Achashverosh demands: “Who is he, and where is he, that doth presume in his heart to do so?” Haman, the scheming social climber, had even invited himself to be sitting at the royal banquet table at the time, right near the king. At this point, the Talmud adds that an angel of the Lord came along to guide Esther’s hand to indicate the wicked vizier. This is exactly the moment that Michelangelo illustrated in the left part of the spandrel. (The angel, like Moses in the
Plague of Serpents
panel, is felt but not seen.) The Scripture simply says: “Then Haman was
afraid
before the King and Queen.” Finally, in chapters 8 and 9 when the Jews are allowed by the king to defend themselves and fight back, the book of Esther says three times that the pagan Persians had
fear
of the Jews.

Finally, the sages explain that “with signs and wonders” refers to the rod of Moses, as God said to Moses in Exodus 4:17: “Take this rod in your hand, with which you will do
signs.
” In Michelangelo’s pendentive of the
Plague of Serpents,
the central image is in fact the rod upon which Moses hangs the redemptive
sign
of the copper serpent.

Only if we know how Michelangelo used Talmud and Midrash can we understand the otherwise inexplicable linkage of these unusual images. The four corners of Christianity’s holiest chapel and the four cups of the Passover seder have found common voice to proclaim God’s ongoing role in the major moments of history.

There is still one final layer of meaning. The corner scenes near the papal entrance represent two existential threats, Holofernes and Goliath, whose common fate was to be cut down. At the altar side, two other deadly foes, Haman and the serpents, in the end are raised up. Here, too, is a magnificent example of counterpoint. Evil can be destroyed in either direction. Some are meant to be cast down. Others rise, but their elevation is meant to bring about their downfall. Underlying all, as the very cornerstone of human existence, is a universal message of hope to all people, never to give up even when the future looks bleakest. That is why these four corners of faith seem to hold up the whole ceiling, another classic subliminal and powerful message from Michelangelo.

As we get further and further into the frescoes, Michelangelo seems to be taking us deeper and deeper into his private beliefs: humanism, Neoplatonism, Judaism, Talmud, and Kabbalah. With this in mind, let’s move on to the next layer, the one that has challenged art experts for centuries—a baffling assortment of sibyls and prophets.

Chapter Eleven

A COMPANY OF PROPHETS

With all forms of wisdom has she built her house,
she carved out its seven pillars.

—PROVERBS 9:1

T
HEY LOOM OVER US, sixty-five feet in the air, these giant figures from the ancient world. They are not looking down at us, though. They have something much more important on their minds: the future. They are a strangely assorted group: pagan female fortune-tellers and Jewish male prophets. In a sense, they are polar opposites. The empires represented by the sibyls—Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman—tried, one after another, to wipe out the Jews and Judaism. Conversely, the seven selected Hebrew prophets preached fervently for the eradication of pagan worship within the borders of the Holy Land of Israel in order to ensure the preservation of the Jewish people.

What could they possibly have in common? Combining the images of pagan seeresses and Hebrew prophets, although not unheard of, was not a common practice in Christian art. It wasn’t, that is, until Michelangelo. Here he is, in his work on the Sistine ceiling, showing us his roots in Neoplatonism and in Talmud by creating a whole new genre of art that is both inclusionary and multilayered in meaning. After he painted the ceiling, this combination became a trend in Renaissance painting, copied by many artists of the day, including Raphael. However, no one—including Buonarroti’s beloved Tommaso dei Cavalieri and his closest surviving assistant, Daniele da Volterra—chose to portray the same five sibyls that we find on the Sistine ceiling. Obviously, Michelangelo had a secret reason for these choices. What was it?

Our first clue, included in each of the Sistine portraits of the sibyls and prophets—save one—is a scroll or a book, symbolizing literacy. Through his use of books and writing, Michelangelo is showing us that he believes these seers were the intellectuals of their respective times and places. In fact, the Latin root of the word
literacy
is the same as for the word
intellect: leggere,
“to read.” The source for the word
intellectual
also gives us its true meaning:
inter-leggere,
“to read between.” An intellectual is defined by an ability to read between the lines, to analyze and to think critically, to understand things on many levels at the same time. This is exactly what we must do to appreciate fully the works of Michelangelo and his fellow Renaissance artists.

Let’s read between the lines here, since there is probably yet another reason that Michelangelo put books and scrolls in the hands of these seers. Only months earlier he had completed a hated task, the casting of the large bronze statue of Julius II for the Cathedral of Bologna, the Warrior Pope’s symbolic seal on his dominion over the rebellious citizenry. Buonarroti loathed everything about the job: working in bronze, doing a banal portrait, having to cope with Bologna’s rainy climate and even its wine, which did not get along with his Florentine stomach. The lowest point occurred when he had to obtain papal approval to begin the project.

Showing Julius a clay model of the proposed design for the statue, Michelangelo asked the pope if he would like to be shown holding a book. “What, a
book
?” sneered
Il Papa Terribile.
“A
sword.
Me, I am no scholar.” Michelangelo, for once (as far as we know), dutifully complied. (Four years later, just as Buonarroti was finishing the ceiling frescoes, the independent-minded Bolognesi rose up against the pope and melted down his bronze likeness. They reused the metal to make a huge cannon to be used in their continuing struggle for freedom, sarcastically christening the weapon with the name Julia.)

Michelangelo’s very next commission after the bronze statue was the Sistine ceiling project. The pope’s dismissive attitude toward literature and scholarship undoubtedly was still fresh in Buonarroti’s mind as he conceived what the art historian Professor Howard Hibbard calls his “interpenetrating levels of meaning.” To distinguish the wise seers of yore from the antiintellectual pope, the artist showed all the sibyls and prophets (save Jonah) with books and writings—a subtle and barely concealed put-down that must have given Michelangelo pleasure during his long labors up on the ceiling.