Michelango: Take that, Leonardo

Diane Evans DelMio.com

Even though they were both geniuses, Michelangelo and his elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci, were fierce rivals and they weren’t above making snarky comments about each other.

Wonder what Michelango would say now, more than 500 years later, when his Sistine ceiling gets scholarly treatment in a new book titled “The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo’s Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican” — surely, on an intellectual level, upstaging the hardly serious approach in Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code.”

If there is irony, it’s in the real possibility that Michelango did convey radical messages in his ceiling frescoes. “Sistine Secrets” authors Benjamin Blech and Roy Doliner are experts in historical Judaism. Blech is a 10th-generation rabbi with a master’s degree from Columbia University. He teaches Talmud at Yeshiva University and has lectured worldwide. The younger Doliner founded the organization RomeForJews, with a mission of teaching the history of Jews in Rome.

And Michelangelo? Unlike typical youths of his day, he, too, had opportunity to study the Talmud, Hebrew Scriptures and teachings of Jewish mysticism. That is because he grew up in the home of the famous Medici family of Florence, and Jewish scholars were among his tutors.

In painting the Sistine ceiling, it was Michelangelo’s idea to portray figures from the Hebrew Scriptures, instead of from the New Testament, as originally planned by church officials.

Of course, no one can know what the great artist intended. This new book, as with other commentary on the subject, can only raise questions and point to possibilities. Nonetheless, there is strong support for the view, as suggested by Blech and Doliner, that Michelangelo meant to advance a universal, inclusive philosophy that countered the anti-Semitism of the papacy at that time.

In July, the Chautauqua Institution in southeastern New York offered a mini-course on the Sistine ceiling and its hidden meanings.

One lecture focused on the representation of Jonah, which is not only the largest figure on the ceiling but it also appears directly over the altar. Why Jonah in such a prominent place?

One possible explanation: The story tells us that Jonah is sent to Ninevah, and that after he finally arrives (via the belly of a big fish), he delivers God’s message that the Ninevites have 40 days to repent. The people of Ninevah believe Jonah — and his God, who is the God of the Jews. Thus, Jonah brings about conversion, and in doing so, more people unite under a single God. The point: God embraces all.

It’s worth noting that Michelangelo wasn’t in the best of moods when he painted that ceiling. He didn’t want the job — because he considered himself a sculptor, not a painter. Sculpting, in his view, was the higher art. (Sniff, sniff, Leonardo.)

So, let’s say Michelangelo really did use his art to express views that were radical at the time. He not only gets away with it, but as fate would have it, he upstages his most famous rival more than 500 years later — where else, but in America?

Ingenious revenge, even if you don’t buy into the secrets.

X Diane Evans, a former Knight Ridder columnist, is president of DelMio.com, a new interactive online magazine on books for writers and readers.

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