In Maeder’s groundbreaking essay,1 he proves beyond doubt that not only does Buonarroti portray the Jewish ancestors in a completely authentic array of garb, but he also clothes them in this very prestigious fabric, often used for weddings, dowries, and special celebrations—especially by people of royal blood. Obviously, Michelangelo’s Jews are not all damned and suffering.
For all of Michelangelo’s positive feelings toward the Jews, it must be noted that during his time the Talmud and other sacred texts of the Jews were being burned all over Europe. Even though Jews had not yet been forced into ghettos (the first ghetto was established in Venice in 1515), they were at best second-class citizens and had few civil rights in most countries. As early as 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council had decreed that Jews were to wear a special badge of shame to keep them separate from good Christians. Furthermore, no matter what the country or the manner of clothing, the badge had to be yellow.
This was a decree with an ancient precedent. In the ninth century, a Muslim ruler of Sicily first forced the Jews there to wear yellow circles and shawls in public. Why yellow? In the Muslim tradition, it is the color of urine and of prostitutes. This was then revived by the Church in the Middle Ages, ultimately to make yet another appearance in modern times by way of the Nazis with their yellow Star of David for Jews during the Holocaust.
With this in mind, we can appreciate an incredible detail that has just recently come to light with the cleaning of the Sistine ceiling. Near the end of his four and a half torturous years of toiling on the ceiling, Michelangelo was painting right over the elevated area where the pope would sit on his gilded throne. There he placed the portrait of Aminadab, known in the Talmud as a truly pious father of meritorious children. The best known of his children was Nachshon, a leader famous for his demonstration of great faith. When the children of Israel were trapped by Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea, it was not just the raised staff of Moses that parted the waters. According to the Midrash, God waited until the instant when Nachshon son of Aminadab threw himself into the sea, shouting, “Who is like you, O God?” and only in that moment did the Almighty divide the waters. Nachshon, with his literal leap of faith, taught humanity to trust that God would—and will—fulfill his promise of deliverance. First to fearlessly enter the Red Sea, Nachshon was also the first tribal prince to offer sacrifices at the consecration of the Holy Altar.
The sages of the Talmud credit Nachshon’s great spirituality and leadership to the education he received from his father, Aminadab. Aminadab is portrayed by Michelangelo as a vital young man in Eastern dress, with an unruly mop of curly red hair. He has an expression of rage and his eyes are darkened from crying. He is also one of the extremely rare figures in the artist’s entire career who was painted sitting perfectly straightforward, a definite signal by the artist to his peers to “pay attention to this.”
The great poet and Bible commentator Ibn Ezra wrote that exile caused the Jews’ eyes to darken from anger and sorrow. We can clearly see that this is the case with Aminadab. It was also the case with Buonarroti himself. His marathon painting over his head, with the paint and plaster dust often getting in his eyes, was wreaking havoc on his vision. In fact, after the four and a half years of toiling on the ceiling, his eyesight would never be the same again. The artist must have been furious at the time he made this portrait, since we can see, almost hidden in shadow, that the angry Jewish youth is subtly making “devil’s horns” with his fingers, pointing down toward where the ceremonial canopy would have been, over Julius’s papal throne.
On Aminadab’s upper left arm (on the viewer’s right), cleaning has revealed a bright yellow circle, a ring of cloth that has been sewn onto his garment. This is the exact badge of shame that the Fourth Lateran Council and the Inquisition had forced on the Jews of Europe. Aminadab’s Hebrew name means “from my people, a prince,” referring to his son Nachshon. However, to the Church, a “prince of the Jews” would mean only one person—Jesus. Here, directly over the head of the pope, the Vicar of Christ, Michelangelo is pointing out exactly how the Catholic Church was treating the family of Christ in his day: with hatred and persecution.
Imagine an artist hired to paint the holy ancestors of Jesus in a cathedral in Nazi Germany in the 1940s and, instead of portraying the standard Aryan haloed saint, the artist depicted a handsome, strong, angry, nonstereotypical Jew wearing a yellow star over the heads of the top dignitaries of the Third Reich. That will give you an idea of Michelangelo’s daring. He is saying to the sixteenth-century papal court: “Is this how you treat the family of our Lord?”
What protected both the artist and his secret was the fact that this tiny ring of yellow is about sixty-five feet up in the air, hard enough to spot even if you were not distracted by the pope, his retinue, the liturgy, the crowds, and the huge mass of swirling, distracting images all over the ceiling and walls. From the floor level, it would have been impossible for the pope and his inner circle to see it, since they had the papal canopy over their heads. Because of accumulated candle soot and dirt, it was truly impossible for anyone to see it for generations until the recent cleaning and restoration.
Even though this subtle message was undiscovered for centuries, Michelangelo’s cause was not forgotten. In 1962 Pope John XXIII convened the extraordinary Second Vatican Council, commonly called Vatican II. Among the many historic decrees to come out of this watershed convocation was putting an end forever to the Church’s anti-Judaic teachings. No longer would the mass include prayers for the conversion of the cursed Jews; no longer would the Church repeat the long disproved accusation of the Jews as the killers of Jesus. From now on, the Jews would be referred to by the Catholic Church as “our elder brothers and sisters”—in other words, as the family of Jesus, just as Michelangelo was saying in his hidden messages five centuries ago. Four decades after his death, Pope John XXIII himself underwent a name change. He is now officially Saint John XXIII, but he has another unofficial title that springs directly from the hearts of the common people. The Italians call him simply Il Papa Buono, the Good Pope.
Poor Michelangelo, however, had to contend with Il Papa Terribile, Julius II—and the papal censors. He had to hide his pro-Judaic feelings in every corner of the Sistine frescoes. That is where we must explore now: some of the most misunderstood images in the Sistine—the four corners of the ceiling.
Chapter Ten
THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE UNIVERSE
…you shall call your walls Salvation.
—ISAIAH 60:18
ONE OF MICHELANGELO’s most amazing technical achievements on the Sistine ceiling is also one of his most profound series of statements—and one of the most overlooked elements of the whole fresco: the four corners.
The four spandrels (in Italian, pennacchi) are the fan-shaped curved panels where the walls of the chapel meet the ceiling. In architectural terms they are called pendentives, since they resemble hanging triangles. These were the hardest sections to paint because of their shape and location, not to mention their imperfect, concave surface. Michelangelo had no previous experience at frescoing anything like this, but his photographic memory came to his rescue. When he was about thirteen years old and a beginning apprentice in Florence, he had helped his teacher Ghirlandaio (by coincidence, one of the original fifteenth-century fresco artists in the Sistine) for a very brief period with some similarly shaped panels. These were the tympana, or flat triangular panels, in the Cappella Tornabuoni in the Church of Santa Maria Novella. In order to counterbalance the irregular shape, Ghirlandaio had inserted large vertical effects in the center, with smaller images on each side.
Michelangelo, in spite of having no previous experience composing frescoes—plus the double challenge of a triangular shape with a deep inner curve—pulled off the same technique brilliantly in all four corners of the Sistine over two decades later. Because of the vertical visual emphasis on the center of each spandrel, they have the appearance of being flat, instead of deeply indented—another of t
he great artist’s optical tricks in the Sistine. It is not merely a technical solution, however; it is where he hid layer upon layer of his true messages.
At the far end of the chapel, where we started our tour with the image of Zechariah, we see the prophet flanked by the first two spandrels. These two are much simpler in design than the other two he will paint four years later, since Michelangelo is learning as he goes. On the left, we see the story of Judith, who beheaded the pagan enemy general Holofernes. On the right we see the climax of the battle between David and Goliath.
These panels have an important theme in common. They are both instances of a merciless, seemingly invincible enemy of the Jews being decapitated by outwardly weak and defenseless Hebrews. Remarkably, one incident highlights the heroic role of a woman, Judith; the other, the small shepherd boy David. As an adolescent apprentice, Michelangelo had seen Donatello’s statues of Judith and David in the courtyard of the de’ Medici palace—however, here in the Sistine, he would change their images completely, in order to conceal his forbidden messages.
On the western end of the chapel, over the altar wall, the other two spandrels tell the story of Esther and Haman in the left corner, and of the copper serpent of Moses on the right. Again, we have one male and one female hero saving the Jewish people from certain doom. Why, though, did Michelangelo choose these four particular stories and why did he paint them in these particular locations?
First, let’s quickly review the stories.
The book of Judith is from the Apocrypha, the collection of religious stories canonized in the Catholic Bible but not in the Jewish one, but nevertheless important to both faiths. The Apocrypha thus serves as a bridge between the two religions, something that would obviously have been greatly appreciated by Michelangelo. The book of Judith is linked by Jewish tradition to the book of Maccabees, which relates the war of religious liberation fought by Judah Maccabee against the Greco-Assyrian Hellenists, a victory today celebrated as the story of Hanukkah. Judith is a beautiful Jewish widow, defenseless in her city, Bethulia, in Israel as Holofernes prepares to annihilate it as a first step toward destroying Jerusalem. The terrified populace declares a public fast and prays for the Almighty’s deliverance. Judith plots a daring strategy; she adorns herself in her most enticing finery and leaves the city, accompanied only by her trusted handmaiden, entirely unarmed. Unarmed, that is, except for her faith, beauty, and wisdom. They are quickly stopped by Holofernes’ soldiers, who would surely have raped and killed them both but for Judith’s offer to submit sexually to Holofernes, as well as to provide him with secret information that will help the Hellenist army take the city without losing a single man. This convinces the armed men to take the two women directly to the tent of their leader. He immediately is seduced by Judith’s great beauty and charm. Holofernes declares an anticipatory victory celebration for his men, and a private erotic dinner for two in his tent. Judith makes him and his bodyguards drink so many toasts to the destruction of the Jews that they all pass out. She then prays for strength and, using Holofernes’ own battle sword, cuts off his head while he lies unconscious on his bed. She and her handmaiden then conceal the head in a basket and bring it back to their city. She displays it to her people, who rejoice and regain their spirit. The head is then hung on the front wall of the city. When the Greco-Assyrian troops see their leader’s head thus impaled, they lose all courage and flee. The Jews pursue them and vanquish them so completely that it takes several days to collect all the spoils of battle from the once-mighty Hellenistic army.
The David story, from the biblical book of 1 Samuel 17, begins as the Jews are being soundly trounced on the field of battle by their pagan neighbors, the Philistines. The deadliest weapon of the Philistines is their giant warrior, Goliath, undefeated in battle. He mocks the Hebrews, who cower in fear before him, and even slanders their God. David, a small shepherd boy who has come to bring food to his father and older brothers in the Hebrew army, cannot stand to hear the enemy giant blaspheming the Lord. He begs to be allowed to go into one-on-one battle with the terrifying giant. He refuses to put on armor or use a conventional weapon, depending instead on his faith and his dexterity. As a young shepherd protecting his flock from ravenous wolves, he had become an expert with a slingshot. David faces Goliath with only this frail weapon, five smooth pebbles, and his faith in the One God. Miraculously, he fells the giant with a single blow to the forehead, and then beheads Goliath with his own battle sword. In Michelangelo’s version, Goliath, at the last moment, is looking desperately back toward his fellow pagan warriors to come to his aid. They are frozen in their tracks, preferring to remain in the dark shadows rather than face the lone shepherd boy. The terrified Philistines, just like the Greco-Assyrians in the story of Judith, are useless without their “head” and are completely routed by the revitalized Jewish army.
Over the front altar wall, we see the spandrel of Esther and Haman. This story is found in both Hebrew and Christian Bibles in the book of Esther. It is read in full every year by the Jews on Purim, the holiday that celebrates the salvation of the Jews in the ancient Persian Empire, the largest community of Jews in the Diaspora at that time. The emperor Achashverosh, whom some historians think might be Xerxes II, rules over his vast empire from his capital of Shushan (Susa in modern Iran) but cannot run his personal life very well. He holds enormous marathon banquets and orgies with his decadent pagan wife, Vashti. According to the unexpurgated Talmudic version, he has her killed after she refuses to dance nude for his guests.
The Persian emperor’s vizier, or right-hand man—indeed, he practically runs the empire for him—is Haman, a power-hungry egomaniac who yearns to be as mighty as the emperor himself. He advises the newly widowed ruler to hold a sort of “beauty pageant” to find the most desirable woman in Persia to be his next wife. Esther, a beautiful young Jewess, wins the pageant and is crowned queen of Persia. However, she doesn’t tell anyone in the palace—especially the emperor or Haman—that she is a Jew. Later in the story, Haman decides to massacre all the Jews in the empire and dupes Achashverosh into validating the decree. At the last minute, Esther finds enough faith and courage to tell the king that she is a Jew, condemned to die because of Haman’s evil machinations. The emperor has Haman strung up high on the very tree upon which he wanted to hang the leaders of the Jews. In an ironic way, the wicked vizier gets his wish, being elevated high above the common crowd.
Here in the Sistine, Haman is depicted as stripped of his golden clothing and nailed up on the twisted tree, instead of merely hanging from a noose. A hanging body would not have allowed the artist to exercise his talent for portraying seemingly sculpted human musculature in a flat fresco. Michelangelo, exploring the technique of trompe l’oeuil, has the evil Persian vizier’s left arm extend seemingly straight out of the painting and into the room.
In the standard Vatican explanation of this portrayal of Haman’s death, it is supposed to prefigure the crucifixion of Jesus, whose personal sacrifice will vicariously atone for the sins of the world. However, that would mean that Michelangelo, a deeply spiritual Christian, selected a pagan who was one of the worst genocidal maniacs in the Bible to symbolize Jesus. This is doubtful, to say the least. Furthermore, the tree upon which Haman hangs is dead, with its branches cut or broken off, symbolizing that his evil family and aspirations have reached the end of the line. This, too, hardly seems a likely image for the coming Savior in the holiest chapel in Christendom.
The scene depicted in the last spandrel comes from Numbers 21:4–10, in the fourth book of the Bible. The Bible records how the camp of the wandering Israelites is stricken with a plague of poisonous snakes that threaten to exterminate them before they can reach the Promised Land. Moses has just hung a copper image of a snake on a high wooden pole. The Israelites look upward to the copper serpent, thus lifting their thoughts toward the Divine, and are saved. However, strangely enough, the hero of this story—Moses—is nowhere to be seen. Why?
In the Haggadah, th
e annual Passover recounting of the Exodus, the name of Moses is similarly strikingly absent. The ancient sages say that this is in recognition of his great humility, as well as to emphasize that human redemption comes only from the Almighty, not from a person, no matter how charismatic he or she might be. In Michelangelo’s version, too, Moses is not to be seen. We are being put in the place of the Israelites, in the middle of two choices. As God says later on in the Torah: “I have set before you life and death, a blessing and a curse; therefore, choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). On the left, going into the light, are the Israelites choosing life by looking up toward the Divine. On the right, going into the darkness, are those being killed by the snakes.
What, then, is the unifying theme, if any, of these four different corner panels that might account for their selection by Michelangelo? The obvious answer is that these four scenes represent four major salvations of the Jewish people in moments when they appeared doomed. Is it mere coincidence, though, that each facing set of spandrels depicts scenes that complement the heroism of male and female figures? Judith is flanked by David. Moses is set alongside the story of the courageous Queen Esther.
In Kabbalistic thought, much emphasis is placed on the duality of God’s sexual identity. Without reference to physical form, God is both male and female. The spiritual aspects of the two genders express the characteristics of the God of Justice who is also the God of Mercy. Masculine strength combined with maternal compassion comprises the perfect balance without which divine rule cannot function. Mystics constantly emphasize the need for perfect balance between these two polar forces. Michelangelo depicts for us the human personification of the divine sexual harmony—a mystical equilibrium that is the key to heavenly perfection according to the Kabbalah.
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