Michelangelo and The Human Brain
In the year 1990, an American doctor Frank Lynn Meshberger published a comparative observation in a paper titled “An Interpretation of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam Based on Neuroanatomy”. He observes that the reddish cloak surrounding God on the right side of the fresco resembles the sagittal section of a human brain. The author hypothesizes that God gave Adam the gift of intellect and the message was hidden by painting it in the anatomy of the brain.
Below God’s hand pointing towards Adam, the pink cloak has a fold that may be recognized as the Sylvian fissure as shown in the composite picture above. Similarly, following anticlockwise, the cherub’s knee assumes the shape of the optic chiasm and the back of the angel below God takes the shape of the pons. The similarities are remarkable and the paper is quite a delightful read. Scholars after Meshberger found that not just Michelangelo but paintings by other Renaissance artists have hidden human anatomical details.
So what might have pursued Michelangelo to hide these anatomical details in his frescoes? To be fair, the Renaissance saw a resurgence in the study of human anatomy and physiology like classical times. Dissection of cadavers was a common practice for artists to learn anatomical details. Leonardo da Vinci injected hot wax through a tube in the ventricular cavities of an ox brain and scraped the brain off after the wax cooled thus making accurate casts of ventricles. He drew his newly visualized ventricles as shown below. Jonathan Pevsner writes in his paper published in Lancet (a paper I highly recommend for Leonardo fans who are curious about his contributions to human neuroanatomy),
Leonardo’s experiment seemed all the more remarkable considering all the things he lacked: there was no precedent for performing this experiment, there was no useful guidance from earlier anatomists regarding the injection site, there was no atlas of anatomy to consult, he would have had to manufacture his own syringe, and there were no fixatives available to help to maintain the structure. One can only imagine the satisfaction he might have experienced at becoming the first person to inject a solidifying medium into the body to discern the shape and size of an internal body structure. He likely also experienced a satisfaction at extending his own understanding of the nature of brain structure and function.
Apart from Leonardo, there is evidence that both Raphael and Michelangelo performed dissections on cadavers to gain experience in human anatomy for gaining perspective useful in art and sculpture. Thus, human cadaver dissections were not uncommon during the Renaissance. Moreover, masters made it an issue of pride and glory if their schools carried out classes for human anatomy. For example, the Florentine sculptor Baccio Bandinelli (1493–1560), a rival of Michelangelo, in an attempt to showcase his achievements commissioned an engraving from the printmaker Enea Vico (1523–1567) depicting students surrounded by skeletons, skulls, measuring instruments, and various sculptures in their pursuit of learning human anatomy.
Let’s come back to Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam once more. What fascinates me is that God’s hand seems to be positioned through the part of the brain that has evolved last in the course of brain evolution. The frontal cortex, as shown below, the seat of higher cognitive functions like analytical planning, creativity, etc. It is touted as part of the brain that makes us different from other beings.
So, God bestowing Adam with higher intellectual capabilities hence sparking life into his otherwise organic body seems a meaningful interpretation for the hidden symbolism in the painting. The question remains as to how this apparent function of the frontal cortex was known during Renaissance or was it simply a coincidence that Michelangelo decided to paint God in the shadow of this particular section of the brain. A difficult question that may not have answers. But, we can all appreciate the labor and curiosity of Renaissance painters and sculptors who spent years on the pursuit of the knowledge of human anatomy and ended up creating some of the most beautiful art of all time.
