Sunday, February 8, 2009

Sistine Ceiling - what's up with Lucifer and his chimera body???


When I saw this section of the ceiling, I was immediately drawn to it. Its Adam and Eve being seduced by the Serpent and thusly, being expelled from Eden at sword point. What weirded me (yeah I know, fake word) out initially was Satan's body. He's both man and snake. His human part is deceptively attractive, rightfully, and then it melts into anaconda-like huge tail manifestation. You don't even see what he's giving Eve, but perhaps that isn't the point. His depiction is rare in art. Either he is wholly serpentine or he is humanoid (mostly not), but not both at once. Michelangelo was a genius to create something so unnerving! <- Redundant comment here. Then there is the immediate shift to Adam and Eve's expulsion. Eve looks ultra masculine here, I laugh at her, but I know that Michelangelo's back must have hurt something fierce while he was painting all this. Quite a bit of the Ceiling is cause and effect scenes or perhaps one scene shown with its antithesis. Its very aesthetically pleasing, the comparisons shown on the ceiling. If it was all one mass of events without any referential points, it would be quite a "hot mess." But even in the most hectic of scenes, the Ceiling manages to be clear and Michelangelo achieved this by delineating and grouping things so as to properly inform the observer. He also made things beautifully, but not too intricate or complex, another way for him to avoid back pain. I'm sorry he had to go through all that physically pain, but he created something that will live on (hopefully) forever in the human concsiousness (sp?) as one of the greatest and largest works of art of written history. 

 Just to be silly, in the second half of this portion, it looks like Adam is saying "Piss off!" to the angel. Made me laugh. 

1 comment:

  1. some further... http://witcombe.sbc.edu/eve-women/5eveserpent.html

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