Understanding art is often a matter of seeing the symbols that the artist uses to convey their message and perhaps the inside jokes he or she are playing on their audience. Scientists have found the image of the brain in a classic art piece.
Now four respected scientists are claiming that the shape is not just decoration but rather an artistic representation of a cross section of the sagittal section of the brain.
This idea was first suggested by FL Meshberger but he has since been joined in this hypothesis by Antonio Belli, Alessandro Paluzzi, Peter Bain and Laura Viva. They have also suggested that Michelangelo was not the only artist to have played this trick on their audience.
Explaining how he came to this conclusion Alessandro Paluzzi said:
"The idea came to me while looking at Raffaello's Transfiguration. Being a neurosurgeon I could immediately see a brain in the painting"
What the general public sees.
What Paluzzi and his colleagues think that they see. The right hand photo is a cross section of the human brain.
The scientist claim to have found many other examples of the human brain hidden in Renaissance art. It has long been known that Michelangelo, like many other artist of his time, often took part in dissections of human corpses, a practice frowned on by the church.
It is the opinion of the four scientist that many of these artist were enthralled by their scientific discoveries but, given the hostility of the church to science, had to hide their discoveries from the general public. Such discoveries were sometimes even seen as heretical. Galileo was hauled before the Inquisition for his claim that the earth circled the sun and many early scientist were put to death for their intellectual curiosity.
Many, however, could not resist the temptation to smuggle these images into their work as a sort of inside joke for the amusement of those who knew what they were looking at.
The "mind of God?"
If we compare the drapery behind the figure of God in Michelangelo's famous painting to a modern cross section of the brain we can see that there are some undeniable similarities.
This is your brain. Any questions?
Many art aficionados, down through the centuries, have noted the incongruous fact that there is a naked woman, whom most agree is Eve, under the left arm of God. What is she doing there at the time God is creating Adam?
If we accept, for the moment, the theory that the drapery represents a brain then it becomes possible that this is suppose to be the "mind of God" and that Eve is therefore present in God's mind, or plans, even as he is creating Adam.
We will most likely never know what was in the mind of Michelangelo when he painted this work but the idea that he was using his knowledge of human anatomy as a sort of inside joke, while at the same time making a profound statement about his deeply felt religious beliefs, is a useful tool for understanding this famous and intriguing art work.
