The Sistine Secrets (6 page)

CODED PROTESTS AND INSULTS

Far more intriguing, though, are the secret symbols embedded in the artwork by the artist without the knowledge or permission of the commissioning patron. This occurs less often than authorized symbolism in Renaissance and Baroque art, because it was clearly a dangerous practice, given the power or potential anger of the person paying for the piece. Yet it was far from uncommon in spite of its peril.

This prompts the question, why did prominent artists run the risk of incurring their patron’s ire? There are many answers.

First, there was the anger or at least the righteous indignation of many of the creative geniuses forced to humble themselves before their financial supporters. In those times, artists were considered merely hired help. Federico Zeri, an internationally respected art historian, vice-president of the Italian Consiglio Nazionale dei Beni Culturali, and a member of the illustrious Academie des Beaux-Arts of Paris, writes in his book on Titian’s masterpiece,
Sacred and Profane Love:
“One need not forget that in the 1500’s, in the middle of the Italian Renaissance, the painters—even the great ones—were considered no more than artisans on call: well-paid, but deprived of any such freedom that would allow them to refuse labors that today would seem very demeaning.”
¹
The first artist to break through all this and become his own master—indeed, to refuse commissions even from the pope himself—was none other than Michelangelo Buonarroti. Moreover, like many other mistreated artists, Michelangelo often slipped in sexual allusions and rude insults to his patrons—obviously without their knowledge—whenever he needed to release his pent-up frustrations. Some of these are part of the secrets of the Sistine Chapel that we will discuss more fully later.

Artists of the era were encumbered and limited by many prohibitions. Perhaps foremost among these was that they were not allowed to sign their works. However, the patron paying for the piece would have his name or image or family symbol prominently displayed. This is the reason that so many artists would somehow manage to insert their own face somewhere in the work. Sometimes, as in the case of Botticelli and Raphael, it would be obvious, since they enjoyed their patrons’ consent; at other times, it would be less apparent. Michelangelo inserted his face into his works on several occasions, sometimes quite openly, but more often slipped in as a secret sign of protest. This will show up again and again as we explain the secrets of the Sistine ceiling and other of his later works.

Raphael, even though he was allowed to interpose his face clearly in many of his most famous pieces, was still not permitted to sign his name. That’s why, when he completed his most famous masterpiece of all, the huge fresco of
The School of Athens
(a work that has so many secrets in it that whole books have been written about it), he added a last tiny detail. On the lower front on the right side, the great sage Euclid is bent over a slate, explaining to his students one of his geometrical theorems. On the back of his golden embroidered collar, under close scrutiny, four tiny initials appear: R.U.S.M. This stands for
Raphael Urbinas Sua Manu,
Latin for “Raphael of Urbino, by his own hand.” (By the way, dressed up as Euclid is none other than Raphael’s conspiratorial “godfather” in the Vatican, the architect Bramante. More on this later as well…)

CONCEALING FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

Another strong limitation on Renaissance artists was the prohibition on dissecting corpses. Scientists wanted to dissect the corpses of executed criminals in order to increase their knowledge of anatomy and also to try to reclaim the lost medical knowledge of the ancients. Artists wanted to learn all they could about the inner structure of the human body in order to come up to the level of expertise of the ancient Greco-Roman artists in representing the human form. The Church had forbidden any such dissections, since it considered the human body a divine mystery. In addition, it was still leery of perfect representations of human and mythological figures, which it thought might lead to a sort of spiritual recidivism, a return to pagan idolatry. This is the reason that medieval portrayals of the human figure seem so flat and unnatural compared to those found in Classical and Renaissance artwork. The only place in medieval and Renaissance Italy where occasional scientific dissections were allowed was the University of Bologna. However, for those ambitious artists who could not get to Bologna or for whom these rare occasions did not suffice, frustration led them very often to illegal efforts. They hired professional body snatchers, common criminals who would steal the fresh corpses of executed convicts out of their graves and smuggle them under cover of night to secret laboratories where the artists would dissect and explore the bodies, sketch every detail that they could by candlelight, and then get rid of the evidence before dawn.

The great Renaissance genius par excellence, Leonardo da Vinci, was brought to the Vatican in 1513 by the new pope, Leo X, and given a list of commissions to create for the greater glory of the pope and his family. After three years of living in the papal palace and exploring Rome, the great Leonardo had produced almost nothing. The furious Pope Leo decided to have a surprise showdown with the capricious artist and intimidate him into completing some of his commissions. In the middle of the night, surrounded by several imposing Swiss Guardsmen, the pope burst through the door to Leonardo’s private palace chambers, thinking to shake him out of a sound sleep. Instead, he was horrified to find Leonardo wide awake, with a pair of grave robbers, in the midst of dissecting a freshly stolen corpse—right under the pope’s own roof. Pope Leo let out a nonregal scream and had the Swiss soldiers immediately pack up Leonardo’s belongings and throw them and the divine Leonardo himself outside the fortress wall of the Vatican, never to return again. Shortly afterward, Leonardo decided it was probably healthier to get out of Italy and move to France, where he spent the rest of his days. This, by the way, is why the great Italian genius’s most famous oil paintings, including the Mona Lisa, are all in Paris, in the Louvre museum.

Sandro Botticelli, even though the favorite artist of the liberal de’ Medici family in Florence a generation before Michelangelo, was still not allowed openly to explore the human body. In one of his most famous—and also one of his most mysterious—paintings, he hides several secrets. The painting is the allegorical work
Primavera
(Spring). Just as in the case of Raphael’s
School of Athens,
whole books have been written about it, each one promoting a different interpretation of the masterpiece. It is set in a mystical forest clearing, and the action moves from right to left, starting with the mythological Zephyr, the wind of Spring, who transforms the forest nymph Cloris into the figure of Flora, the symbol of Spring and its fertility. Then, in the central position in front of two odd openings in the canopy of branches above, is Venus, the goddess of Love. Hovering over her head is the blindfolded Cupid, about to shoot his phallic arrow at the central woman of the three Graces, the figure of Chastity. The last figure, on the far left and detached from the rest, is Mercury, the god of change and hidden wisdom, stirring up the clouds. No one before has discussed the strange gaps in the branches in the center of the work, but it is exactly there that Botticelli embedded his biggest secret in the painting, one that is the key to understanding the whole work. If you look carefully at the shape, angle, and juxtaposition of the two openings, a very clear anatomical image appears—a pair of human lungs, just as they would appear during an illegal dissection in a secret Renaissance laboratory.

The painting, a wedding gift, is celebrating the cycle of life that was originally created, according to Judaic and Kabbalistic lore, by
ruach HaShem,
the Divine Wind, or Breath—the same breath of life that created Adam, the first human. If one could take the painting out of its frame and curl it into a cylinder so that the two edges met, one would see that the clouds that Mercury/Hermes stirs up on the left become Zephyr on the right, showing that the Divine Wind, the Breath of Life, has no beginning and no end. In the exact middle, framing Venus and her heart-red pendant, are the two lungs, to reaffirm the connection of Love and Life. Thus, this famous masterpiece is an early example of secret Neoplatonic imagery, which was just taking form at that time in freethinking Florence under the de’ Medicis, the commissioning patrons of this painting.

DECIPHERING THE ESOTERIC

Our next category of secret symbolism in Renaissance works, of prime importance for deciphering Michelangelo’s hidden messages in the Sistine Chapel, is the use of “esoteric knowledge”—images, symbols, and codes known only to a few initiates—to pass on a hidden message not intended for the masses. Some of these have since been revealed, such as Mozart’s use of Masonic symbolism in his opera
The Magic Flute,
and the seventeenth-century Baroque architect Borromini’s use of Masonic-Kabbalistic symbols in his Church of Sant’Ivo in Rome. Others have still not been deciphered, such as the “dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets and the “Enigma Variations” symphony of Edward Elgar.

A very recent example of decoding hidden symbols in well-known artwork is that of the designs of what we in the Occident call Oriental carpets: the beautiful, intricate carpets found all along the ancient Silk Road, from Turkey through India and on to China. According to the Textilia Institute’s findings, presented in its exhibit and catalogue in Rome and New York in 2005,
Il giardino dei melograni
(The garden of the pomegranates), Jews fleeing the deadly persecutions of the Holy Inquisition in Spain in 1492 were searching for a way to preserve the arcane knowledge of the Kabbalah and its practice of mystical meditations. Upon finding refuge in the East, they discovered the art of carpet weaving. Soon thereafter, these carpets, either designed and commissioned by Jews or woven by Jewish artisans themselves, took on a whole new look. This innovative fashion incorporated pomegranates, Jacob’s Ladders, Gardens of Eden, and Trees of Life into the rugs in order to make them vehicles for transmitting the forbidden wisdom of the Kabbalah, as well as to serve as devices for Kabbalistic meditation. These carpets, even though not understood by the masses, were greatly esteemed and were found in very unexpected places. Thus, the unsuspecting Muslim Mogul rulers of northern India had Jewish Kabbalistic carpets hanging in their royal palaces and the Confucian emperors of China had the same secret symbolism in huge carpets decorating the Royal Pavilion in the heart of the Forbidden City.

Another fascinating example of esoteric knowledge adopted by the informed to communicate secretly was the use of sign language for the deaf. Unknown to most people today, Renaissance Italian artists had no difficulties working with their hearing-impaired friends and colleagues. Even today, especially in southern Italy, there is a deeply engrained tradition of expressing oneself through nonverbal communication, using hand gestures, facial expressions, and body language in general. Leonardo da Vinci, in his day, encouraged other hearing artists to learn from the expressivity of the deaf.

We know of two successful deaf artists in Renaissance Italy. One is Pinturicchio, whose frescoes from the fifteenth century appear in some of the most prestigious settings in Rome, including the Sistine Chapel. The other is Cristoforo de Pretis, who collaborated with his hearing half-brother Ambrogio de Pretis. The brothers, who worked together in sign language, were among the first to welcome Leonardo da Vinci when he moved to Milan in 1483. They were a great influence on Leonardo and when, in the same year, he created his first work in his new location, he wanted to thank the brothers in their own language that he had grown to admire. There are even some art historians who say that Ambrogio de Pretis actually worked on the piece with Leonardo. This painting, called
The Madonna of the Rocks,
can be found today in the Louvre in Paris. It depicts the Virgin Mary inside a dark cavern, with two infants at her feet, commonly interpreted as the infant John the Baptist and the baby Jesus. She is embracing the infant on her right while blessing the other with her left hand. Next to her left hand is a mysterious angel who protects that child while pointing across the painting to the infant on Mary’s other side. The baby under the hands of Mary and the angel is holding up his own hand in a two-fingered blessing toward the other child. Obviously fresh from the excitement of his discovery of sign language, Leonardo incorporated a number of hand gestures in this work. What most observers and even art experts do not know is that Leonardo signed this work—by “signing” his name. The vertical alignment of the three hands on the right side of the painting forms a straight downward line—Mary → angel → infant Jesus. Mary’s hand is in the archaic finger-spelling formation for the letter
L.
The angel’s hand is the letter
D.
The baby Jesus’s hand is the letter
V.
LDV—Leonardo da Vinci.

Skeptical readers who doubt that Mary’s hand is the letter
L
need look no further than the gigantic sculpture of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. It was created by Daniel French, the same artist who made the sculpture of Thomas Gallaudet, the founder of the eponymous university for the deaf in Washington, teaching finger spelling to a little girl by way of the signed letter
A.
In French’s monumental sculpture of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator’s hands (his left and right, respectively) sign his initials,
A
and
L,
using the identical kind of old-fashioned
L
that Leonardo painted centuries before.

THE MAGIC OF SPECIAL EFFECTS

Yet another strategy for encoding in Renaissance works involved environmental “special effects.” Messages were ingeniously inserted so that they could be viewed only when one was in situ, in the very spot where the artist intended for the viewer to receive his true intent. Often this would be determined by how light coming from an actual window at the site would stream into the painting, thus literally and figuratively
illuminating
the piece. Leonardo did this with the light in his
Last Supper
fresco, and in the seventeenth century Caravaggio became world-famous for this special effect. Later on, we will see how Michelangelo based the entire concept, design, and revision of his
Moses
sculpture on its interaction with the light source in its predetermined setting.