Tag: Michelangelo
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Michelangelo’s David and the anatomical politics of religious art
Sam ShusterWoodbridge, Suffolk It is impossible to see Michelangelo’s David without marvelling at the way its power and humanity have been fashioned from coarse stone. Apart from its living warmth, there is a unique display of human anatomy, each feature of which stands out in perfection, and together make an image that can be looked…
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Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam
Jessica LoboLondon, Ontario, Canada Michelangelo painted some of his most famous work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, covering it with the world’s most beautiful frescoes, of which The Creation of Adam is the most iconic.1 He worked during the Italian Renaissance, and this was a time when “the personality of the Western artist became a…
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The feast of health: the Christian legacy of Hygeia
Wilson F. Engel, IIIGilbert, Arizona, United States Michelangelo’s famous fresco in the Sistine Chapel (Figure 1) shows the serpent tempting Eve on the left, and the archangel Raphael expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden on the right. The image oddly enough shows the serpent having a female face, its massive body doubled…
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The anatomy of Michelangelo (1475–1564)
JMS PearceEast Yorks, England Michelangelo Buonarroti was an exception to the rule that the qualities of many brilliant artists and composers are realized and extolled only after death. He was recognized by contemporaries as a genius, a “Hero of the High Renaissance,” the only artist of whom it was claimed in his lifetime that he…
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Realdo Colombo (ca. 1515–1559)
Although Italy during the Renaissance consisted of a mosaic of independent states, its inhabitants and particularly academicians seem to have moved freely from one city state to another. Thus it came about that the anatomist Matteo Realdo Colombo was born and educated in the principality of Milan (in philosophy and later as an apothecary); was…
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My tragedy in retrospect
Mary OsborneChicago, Illinois, United States From a scaffold, neck craned, Michelangelo Buonarroti painted scenes from the book of Genesis, prophets, and sibyls upon the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Considering himself a sculptor, he wanted no part of the assignment, but one did not decline a commission from the Pope. Wishing all the while to…
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Divine birth: Eve, fashioned from Adam’s rib
It was written in the Bible that it is not good for the man to be alone. So the Lord fashioned from Adam’s rib a companion by an innovative birthing method, as documented in the fresco of Michelangelo. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he…
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Surgeon’s hands in Vesalius’s portraits and Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp
Adéla JaníčkováPrague, Czech Republic “To extol the human hand as a monument to God’s wisdom, an instrument that permits humans to create civilization” This statement by Dolores Mitchell1 describes the human hand as both a monument to divinity and an instrument for great accomplishments. In the medical environment of surgery and anatomical studies, physiological illustrations of…