When Michaelangelo was forced to destroy his sketches and notes of human
anatomy, the artist secretly defied his employers even while painting
the Sistine Chapel, leaving a secret image that would not be discovered
for several years. The image is of a human brain and its anatomy, and
it's hidden among hundreds of paintings in one of the most incredible
places. It's a wonder it was never discovered before now.
Michaelangelo
himself was an intensely dedicated student of anatomy, particularly
human anatomy and spent countless hours making sketches in a church
hospital of the deceased who passed through there. Then, possibly due
to fears of persecution from a community that would have considered his
scientific interests ghastly, he destroyed the documents. But it would
seem he either saved one or committed it to memory before painting the
Sistine chapel starting after 1508, as he hid a perfect image of the
human brain in the throat of an image of God. The image clearly shows
everything in perfect detail from the optic chiasma to the anterior
median sulcus. The image is so exact and yet so well hidden that it
took a doctor from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in
Baltimore to ultimately discover it. After noticing the strange
abnormalities in the throat of the art piece, Ian Suk and Rafel Tamargo
began tracing along the contours only to discover that they matched a
diagram of a cross section of the human brain perfectly. Furthermore
they noticed that a seemingly out of place area of fabric from the robe
matched where a human spinal cord would connect to the brain. The
incredible
Of course there are those who suggest the depiction
of a human brain in God's throat was not a plea by Michaelangelo for
reason from an oppressive church, but rather merely an optical illusion
very similar to how one casually watching clouds could perceive complex
images if only they wanted to. One skeptic pointed out that this may be
merely the reverse of someone seeing an image of Buddha in a wasp's
nest or even an image of Christ in an oil slick. In these sorts of
controversies the reader becomes the one to place meaning in a strange
or anomalous image.
On the other hand, it's no secret that the
scenario that could have led to an image of the human brain could have
ended up in the Sistine chapel. Many art critics have since the
discovery speculated on the intended meaning of the image and what
Michaelangelo may have been trying to say with it. One theory is that
since the image was commissioned during a period of extreme opulence in
the Vatican and amid rumors of extreme opulence by Alexander VI, the
image of the brain could have indicated that one could reach a
connection with God without going through the church. It was this same
philosophy that would lead Martin Luther to post his famous letter and
inspire violent rebellions against the papacy.
