In recent years, debates have arisen over whether certain Renaissance artists intentionally hid images or messages inside Church-commissioned art, or if the art was merely supposed to be taken as they generally were for hundreds of years: simple representations of the teachings of the Catholic Church.
New research out of Brazil adds to those in favor of the secret images, as scientists discovered the Golden Ratio inside Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam”.
For those of you who have forgotten The Da Vinci Code, the Golden Ratio—also known as the Divine Proportion or φ—is a ratio classically associated with greater structural efficiency, beauty, harmony, and perfection. The ratio is extensively present in nature—it’s found from the spiral shells of mollusks to the ratio of nervous fibers to the shape of spiral galaxies—but also in many famous works of art as well, including da Vinci’s art and Debussy’s musical compositions.
In “The Creation of Adam”, God is in the process of delivering life to Adam, but previous research has raised interesting questions about what exactly Michelangelo intended it to mean. Michelangelo was not only a master painter, but he was an expert in human anatomy after dissecting numerous cadavers, and previously discovered in The Creation is a detailed side view of the human brain surrounding God.
Some experts have interpreted this as God giving humans a touch of the divine by giving them intellect, not life—as Adam is already fully formed and apparently alive. This led the current researchers to look more closely at The Creation, because it would not be out of the realm of possibility for such an accomplished anatomist to grasp the significance of the Golden Ratio.
The researchers conducted two simple tests. First, they looked at the panel of The Creation in which God gives life to Adam. They researchers divided the panel in two at the very point in which God gives Adam his “divine part”—the gap between their fingers—and then calculated the ratio of the lengths of each section. The ratio of the two (1.6) equaled that of the Divine Proportion.
Then, they compared where the panel was in relation to the rest of the ceiling, using the finger gap again as the dividing point. Once again, they came up with the Golden Ratio.
There is a chance that this is completely coincidental, but the authors believe Michelangelo was more than capable of finding and using the Golden Ratio.
“Given this discovery, it is assumed that the beauty and harmony found in all the works of Michelangelo may not be based solely on his anatomical knowledge. We believe that in all probability, Michelangelo knew that anatomical structures incorporating the GR [Golden Ratio] offer greater structural efficiency and, therefore, used the GR to enhance the aesthetic quality of his works,” they wrote in the publication.
“We believe that this discovery will bring a new dimension to the great work of Michelangelo,” added Dr. Deivis de Campos, author of the Clinical Anatomy study, in a statement.
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Image Credit: Thinkstock
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