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Art critic Marina Khaikina and psychoanalyst Andrey Rossokhin examine one painting and tell us about what they know and what they feel. What for? So that, (not) agreeing with them, we are more clearly aware of our own attitude towards the picture, the plot, the artist and ourselves.
The Creation of Adam (Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome, 1508–1512) is the fourth of nine central compositions in a cycle of frescoes on the theme of the creation of the world commissioned by Michelangelo Buonarroti to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Pope Julius II.
“To live is to create”
Marina Khaikina, art critic
“Michelangelo painted God in the ancient spirit: he is real in his bodily and divine incarnation. Dressed in a simple pink tunic, God flies over the created world, surrounded by wingless angels. The female figure to his right is Eve, she is still waiting for the hour of her creation, but already conceived by God. During the flight, God turns, rushes towards Adam and holds out his hand to him.
This movement towards its creation embodies the energy of life, which the Creator intends to transfer to man. The figure of the Creator is mirrored in the pose of the lying Adam, created in his image and likeness. But at the same time, Adam’s pose also repeats the outlines of the rock: he is still only part of the landscape around. There is literally not enough spark of vitality to breathe soul into it.
Hands almost meet. Michelangelo places this gesture at the very center of the fresco and pauses to enhance the impact of the images. We practically see how the energy through the hand of God is transferred to the hand of man. Choosing from the history of the creation of man this particular moment – the birth of the soul, Michelangelo equates it to creative insight. In his opinion, the ability to create and create is the most valuable gift of those given to man from above.
Between two hands outstretched to each other, a miracle is performed, inaccessible to our vision. This gesture was already met with Leonardo da Vinci; but if the angel in his painting “Madonna in the Grotto” only pointed to a miracle, then here the gesture of God embodies it. Subsequently, this gesture will be repeated by many other artists – agreeing or arguing with Michelangelo’s faith in man and in the power of creativity.
“We are born at the moment of parting”
Andrey Rossokhin, psychoanalyst
“The first thing I feel here is the moment of a unique meeting, which is full of energy and strength. God rushes towards Adam to breathe life into him. Now their fingers will close – and a sluggish body will be born, gain strength, life, and a fire will light up in Adam’s eyes. But at the same time, I have a subtle feeling that God and his retinue are moving in the other direction, flying away from Adam. This is indicated by the figures of a woman and a baby, as if they are repelled from him and thereby set the reverse movement.
Why? I suppose that unconsciously Michelangelo did not draw a meeting here, but the moment of parting that followed it. God personifies both paternal and maternal principles at the same time, their union leads to the birth of a child – baby Adam. The maternal principle of God is conveyed through the red veil, which I associate with the mother’s womb, with the mother’s universe, the womb, in which many future lives, potential human “Selves” are born. The hands of Adam and God, stretched out towards each other, are like an umbilical cord that was torn a moment ago, and this is the moment of separation that I observe in the picture.
And in this case, Adam’s melancholy posture conveys not the absence of life, but the sadness of parting. He does not yet know that only through such a separation can he be born as a person, as a separate “I”. The fingers of God and Adam in the picture are like a painter’s brush, and this seems to me very important. Michelangelo unconsciously lives the history of separation from two sides – both as Adam and as the Creator.
I see here not only the sadness of a child who was left by a parent, and the sadness of an artist forced to say goodbye to his offspring, his painting, but also the artist’s determination to take this step. After all, only when he finds the strength to part with his creation, the picture will be completed and will be able to live its own life.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), Italian sculptor, artist, architect, outstanding master of the Renaissance. Throughout the world, the name of Michelangelo is associated with the frescoes of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the statues of David and Moses, the Cathedral of St. Peter in Rome. In the art of Michelangelo, both the deeply human ideals of the High Renaissance and the tragic sense of the crisis of the humanistic worldview, characteristic of the late Renaissance era, were embodied with great force.