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While conspiracy theorists busy themselves trying to use a fictitious novel to prove half-baked fancies about Leonardo Da Vinci, two Brazilian doctors have discovered a genuine "code" of sorts hidden in the work of Michelangelo.
Gilson Barreto and Marcelo de Oliveira have discovered what they believe is Michelangelo's research on internal human anatomy recorded in the frescoes he painted five centuries ago in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. The two doctors decided to see what could be hidden in these paintings after coming across a discovery 15 years earlier by Dr. Frank Meshberger, who discovered that the painting of God surrounded by angels in "The Creation of Adam" resembled a cross-section of the human brain (see picture left), assumed to symbolize God's gift of intelligence to humanity. Another doctor, Garabed Eknoyan, had discovered a depiction of a kidney in "Separation of the Earth from the Waters." Knowing that Michelangelo had been a keen researcher of internal human anatomy, Dr. Barreto reasoned that he must have hidden more of his discoveries in these paintings.
Barreto and Oliveira believe that Michelangelo had left clues and coded messages in the various paintings to indicate that something special and hidden was there, for example, a person pointing towards what is revealed to be an organ. Second, these organs are not thrown in merely at random. One must decipher Michelangelo's point in placing these organs where they are: God giving humanity intelligence (symbolized by the brain) and God giving "the breath of life" to Eve in "The Creation of Eve," (see picture right) where a tree trunk appears to be a bronchial tube, and God's purple robe appears to be a side view of a lung.
Other finds include a human heart, the diaphragm and the aorta, the structures of the humerus, and the shoulder socket.
The question that is being asked is why would Michelangelo hide depictions of human anatomy in these paintings? I believe there were at least two reasons. One is boredom: as many of us have done "on the job" before, Michelangelo was probably indulging in one of his great interests while working on the Sistine Chapel, a job that took him many years of long and physically tiring work. The second reason is symbolism: in these paintings which were meant to pay tribute to the Biblical record of God's work in creation, Michelangelo paid tribute to the anatomical record of the marvels of creation: the brain as the seat of human intelligence and the complicated systems by which we breathe or by which blood is pumped through our bodies.
Unfortunately, the fictional conspiracies cooked up in The Da Vinci Code will make better action film material, but for art lovers and historians the Michelangelo Code, with its recording of humanity's attempts to discover the inner workings of creation, will prove far more interesting and longer lasting. -- By Eamon Graham
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