Deciphering the Sistine Chapel with Liz Lev at the Notre Dame-Newman Centre for Faith and Reason

good evening everyone welcome in on a cold and rainy which is to say a Dublin Monday night and in a time when there's well-known virus going around we're delighted that so many of you have come here this evening and I can assure you you're going to be delighted that you have come here this evening our speaker tonight Elizabeth Lev who is friend and a person that I'm always inspired to here speak is an american-born art historian now she wrote this sentence and it's a different sentence today but I'm still going to read it because it's true with the good fortune to live in work in Rome life in the Eternal City allows her the perfect environment to pursue her many passions on an average day one can find her working on her latest article or book preparing for speaking engagements and especially her extraordinary gift of touring visitors through the treasures of Rome she did a PhD in art history at the University of Chicago moved to northern Italy to do graduate work at the University of Bologna and researched her thesis on the church of San Giovanni and Petronio in rome and she has lived in rome since when now this 1997 okay shortly after her decision to live in Rome she began giving tours for cultural associations she has passed the licensing exam for guides which is demanding that same year she began teaching our history and Duquesne University is Italian campus where she continues to be a faculty member along with teaching for John Cabot University in Rome she has also joined the teaching University at the Pontifical University of the angelicum as well as Christendom College when not teaching she writes she writes books she's written three books she writes articles she writes talks which we're about to be benefiting from tonight and in addition to all that assemblé yay so there's nothing that Liz can't do or no that's all the formal stuff I was walking to church this morning and thought how would I want to introduce Liz live and it's a pretty basic thought that I had which is you know when you're with children and like you're tossing your nephew in the air and they love it and they say again because children delight and when they delight in something they want to repeat it and any time I have heard Liz laugh speak about anything anywhere as soon as she's done I want to say childlike again Lizbeth [Music] well thank you for such a lovely introduction and thank you for coming out and being in the same room with me a Roman I am two minutes away from becoming typhoid Liz but for the nice evening I'm going to enjoy myself with you and bring you since apparently the Sistine Chapel will be closed until April 3rd maybe even longer it's my opportunity to bring you this incredibly beautiful space and tell you a little bit about what makes it so extraordinary and its face and of course everybody has heard of Sistine Chapel but it becomes kind of reductive to that you know those are that there's that guy of the fingers touching etc etc but really the Sistine Chapel it's extraordinary magic is that it brings together 30,000 visitors a day I mean up until two weeks ago it brings 30,000 visitors a day in high season and they all stand together and kind of a common they have a common experience and so that's what I want to explore with you this evening and so it's behind the veil stuff there are many ways different ways we can think about it but I think the very first veil we have to we have to start with is the extraordinary gift of the restoration we have the privilege of understanding the Sistine Chapel experiencing the Sistine Chapel in our day and age in a way that even Michelangelo didn't because you have all of the paintings all of the work in the Sistine Chapel restored in this all took place it was a gift of saint john paul ii so just kind of giving you a sense of what the chapel originally looked like oh I seem to be having a bit of an argument with thee there we go and it's on it's off and it's on technology not my friend okay no all right we can't move it here we go this is it usually if it touches me technology tends to fall apart I thought this was uniquely to me but our favorite motto in the VAT actually the Vatican yesterday's technology tomorrow so so I'm just before we get start with the pictures I'm just going to give you a little bit of an overview of what I want to talk about and that is how the Sistine Chapel was restored from 1981 to 1989 the beginning of the restoration was an enormous project john paul ii was elected in 1978 in a darkened chapel completely covered with a patty not literally a veil of dirt that obscured the image for for all these years and one of the very first things he wanted to work on was to allow that chapel to speak with its full voice again he really wanted that chapel cleaned and you think in a day and age where restoration we talk about restoration we love restoration in a day and age for restoration is the norm we're thinking yeah what's the problem the problem was 11 million dollars in 1978 to clean some painting was not something people thought about so the incredible campaign to clean the Sistine Chapel started out with having to sell copyrights to the Nippon Schell television company in order to get the first funding and once what with enough the new colors were revealed then everybody wanted in and so 30 years ago the found the Society of the patrons of the Vatican Museums was formed in order to be able to represent order to be able to continue the work of the restoration so that in 1994 john paul ii was able to was able to give a homily in the newly cleaned chapel meaning that the ceiling was clean the Last Judgement was clean and even the side panels had been cleaned to perfection and in that in that speech he spoke about the priceless heritage which was the Sistine Chapel for all humanity so at the end of the day what I'm going to be talking to you about is how a work of art that was made 500 years ago and if I may use the woke language by a bunch of white guys for a bunch of white guys you know all this European little group how did that space end up speaking to people from all over the world and the kind of level and the kind of numbers that we find today how are we doing on this on this clicker thing because I actually have one in my bag yeah after many many years of traveling everywhere I always I bring my own clicker so if you need one I got it there we go all right and for our first for our first miracle okay so this is just an image of showing you what it looked like this is a really really cool image look at the background of the mass taking place that's what the that's what the Last Judgement that's what the Last Judgement looked like followed by this is john paul ii speaking at the restoration of april 8th of 1994 followed by this and this is where my own personal story intersects because when this was being done i don't want you to look at the dates too closely because that would just get embarrassing but when this was being done I was studying art history and I was specifically getting a degree in Renaissance art and as I was studying these dark images I was like the Hori I'm gonna go to Dutch art that's more fun except you have to learn Dutch so that was kind of a non-starter but the my professor came in it wasn't this image but my professor came in and his he was literally shaking he was so excited and he took out the color transparency machine I know all the young people have no idea what I'm talking about but a few you know what I know of what I speak right so it takes up this color transparency machine he puts in this image of an image that looks in the cleaned one and he says we have to rethink Michelangelo and in many ways the rest of my life has simply been that rethinking Michelangelo so I have a particular debt to st. john paul ii and the cleaning of that chapel because it really did set the course of the rest of my life so let's get a little bit of the spade work of the Sistine Chapel out of the way the Sistine Chapel was painted in three different segments segment number one are the side walls done between fifty fourteen eighty 1482 they are painted by what a friend of mine calls the dream team of Florentine art including names like Botticelli pear Muccino Luca senior Ally but not Michelangelo they are the state of the art of painting of the generation when Michelangelo was five years old the next phase will be the root that's all that's that's done by by 6's the fourth and the root screen it dates to the exact same experience Rood screams which I believe you you know they are separators between laypeople and clergy they were present in churches until the counter-reformation and so it's very important when you understand the Sistine Chapel to realize that that up until the 16th century that gate in the middle of the chapel separated laypeople from clergy and that indeed clergy is the overwhelming majority and laypeople are an afterthought it speaks volumes of the kind of audience you're dealing with after that you have the vault of the Sistine Chapel done by Michelangelo with the scenes of Genesis he was between the ages of 33 and 37 when he painted the ceiling and then twenty-five years later and we'll see a lot happens in that 25 years Michelangelo paints the Last Judgement and that is something done between 1534 and 1541 he is in his late 50s early 60s when he completes the the chapel so these are the three different segments we're gonna be looking at in the course of this talk watching a very 75 years that progress home the things that happened in those 75 years and how they are reflected in the art is amazing so we start with the origins of this chapel it was built by Pope the fourth that is where the name comes from Sixtus cysteine he had it built by a military architect as far as far as we know bacio Pontellier and that is why the exterior of the building is not very exciting among the top three things I am accustomed to hearing when people walk into the Sistine Chapel one of them is oh I thought it would be bigger okay I guess the paint is not enough so III hate to break it to you but we put all the architecture chips into st. Peters if you're not impressed with st. Peter's Basilica we have a problem but otherwise it's just a chapel and so it's a relatively large chap what was meant to hold about 350 to 500 men but nonetheless it was well defended those are battlements for soldiers to be stationed but it is a building that is meant to contain it that is why it is such an ideal place for the papal election right you can shut the building off leave the Cardinals in a space where they can be well defended but once you've shut them off from the world how do you open them up to the Holy Spirit how do you how do you weigh against how do you evoke that's incredible event of the Holy Spirit they're present as they're making this Englishness this impactful decision and the church we have three privileged ways of doing this right we have music we have the liturgy and we have art and I know arts the least important but and in the Sistine Chapel on an average day you're not gonna have the liturgy you know have the music but we still have the art and we see here one of these beautiful voices of the chapel so this is what it looked like when it was completed in in 1482 you had the side panels which so showed on one side stories of Jesus and on the other side the stories of Moses they parallel each other the lower level has a false painted drapery I don't know how many times I have heard people talk about its similarity in its proportions to the Temple in Jerusalem which whoops wait just what just happened here okay this is gonna be one of those days I can tell so it says a similarity to the Temple in Jerusalem which people talk about in the proportions which okay I don't really see how that works in the bility the proportions may be similar but I find it very hard to believe that was the model another very popular model to evoke is the great chapel in Avignon maybe I've got another one for you which is a little bit more homegrown and that would be the upper Basilica of Assisi I am fairly certain that is that 6th is the 4th who was the head of the Franciscan Order who lived most of his life at the Basilica in Assisi I'm pretty sure that this is what he was thinking of and you can see in the side walls of Assisi you have what you have a series of painted stories telling the life of st. Francis and underneath it as false painted drapery and the ceiling is painted of blue sky with stars so this space which the Franciscans imagined as a space of preaching is what six is the fourth was trying to create is what I proposed to you six as the fourth was trying to create when he built his chapel and here are some of the images of the dream team and they're along these side walls so we have a one very very famous painting the calling of the first two apostles by Domenico Ghirlandaio who because he got Sistine Chapel on his TV a few years later in his workshop had a knock on his door and who was standing there but Ludovico pointer brought tea with his 13 year old son michael angelo and the question was are you one of those guys who painted in the Sistine Chapel oh yeah he did great could you teach my kid to paint so he became Michelangelo's painting teacher granted Michelangelo's up through fresco class only stuck around for three years but you know he is the man who taught him how to grind pigments and mix colors the other really fascinating pairing and this is a really cool thing that happened they brought in together a team of different painters and directly across from each other on the Moses silent on the Jesus side they brought in Botticelli and Pedro Gino these are the two most famous painters in 1480 it's like when you get Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in a movie together and this alone I got lunch I say these two together and they're painting two very different stories one is the delivery of the keys and the other one is the punishment of Cora but remember what the function of that space is one of its jobs is the election of the Pope and so in the image of the delivery of the keys Matthew 16 birth and verse 18 as Jesus gives those keys to Peter look at how peaceful it is the Apostles are all sitting around quietly in the background you have triumphal arches you have an eight-sided building a symbol of renewal look how wonderful it is when everyone agrees and gets along the parallel story of course is when Moses tried to hand off his authority to his brother Aaron and the kaurav family said well I Erin white why not us don't you think we'd have a cook-off and let God decide and so in the midst of this big you know I'm gonna make one sacrifice Aaron's gonna make another sacrifice God got irritated open to the earth and sucked the kaurav family into it and so and voltage Shelly paints this painting look what he puts in another triumphal arch he and peridot are talking to each other except the the triumphal arch up a row of divine Ponticelli falling apart and there's chaos and there's confusion what a terrific message to the Cardinals as they cross that Rood screen the last thing you see before you cross the Rood screen to go in and place that fateful vote remember the results of this decision if you accept it we have order we have peace we have renewal if you don't we have chaos so the next one is this the the chapel is completed and along comes the next person to work on the chapel whose name is julius ii della Rovere as it just so happens he was the nephew of Pope Sixtus the 4th now he was painted here as now he's standing in front of six is the fourth at the at the foundation of Vatican Library and he's actually in the Sistine Chapel painted by none other than Botticelli you probably know him best from this painting the ages julius ii painted by raphael the year before he died two years before he died in 1500 a year before he died in 1512 and he he brought michelangelo in to work on the next phase of the chapel the idea was he wanted Michelangelo to paint a new design on the chapel ceiling which had been painted as a blue sky with stars which is the most typical way of painting chapel ceilings in the world michelangelo actually thought about doing it this is an actual drawing done by Mike Wiegele at Michelangelo who was thinking about doing this kind of design and you see how he was gonna do the 12 apostles there's the arrow points to one of the Apostle figures and then all around he was going to do a kind of geometric design which would have looked something like this this is from the Borgia apartments downstairs the Sistine Chapel almost looked like that you know what that would mean I wouldn't be here tonight so the Michelangelo who was a little concerned about building the Michelangelo brand it came up with another idea and he said you know if I do those 12 apostles on the ceiling it's gonna look like every ceiling anybody's ever made and of course we can't have that so if you've got Jesus and Moses in here why don't I do Genesis why don't I do Genesis for you and me today no brainer of course Genesis go for it the Pope rolls his eyes into the back of his head and goes oh Lord artists and drives you explain to Michelangelo why this is not possible now I'm going to explain it to you in a 40 second lesson in history of perspective and so the reason why is that originally painting it was but when when painting isn't making a 3-dimensional image on a two-dimensional surface one of the first steps forward is in the 13th century 14th century when Giotto begins optical perspective so you can see the figures kind of stand at an angle and they try to make three dimensions this is followed by the development of one-point linear perspective where with with Fra Angelico we see a foreground a middle ground and all the lines converging at a single point creating foreground middle-ground background and relative distances along comes Leonardo da Vinci and says oh let me create a beautifully organized space with a group of apostles we can make a very contained space fill it up with figures and then along comes Raphael and says oh I put 60 figures in this is the state of art of painting so in 1500 when people think of painting they think in terms of making an artificial three-dimensional space and filling it up and so when Michelangelo starts talking about painting stories on the ceiling the Pope is thinking about you know a whole bunch of packed paintings on a ceiling more or less this height he thinks it's going to end up looking like a Jackson Pollock painting and so he says something along the lines of yeah Mike I'm afraid it can't be done and then Michelangelo proved it could be done and that not only that he was the only man in the world who could do it Wow because he's not a painter Michelangelo was a sculptor he had left Gillan Daioh studio hittin the sculptor of the pietá then he's the man who made the David and what does a sculptor do a sculptor takes a piece of stone and with a hammer chisel he takes away sculptors think reductively painters think additively it's that mentality of Michelangelo that makes him the perfect person as a matter of fact he had been called to Rome to design a tomb he was thinking sculpture architecture sculpture architecture every single minute and that is the secret of the Sistine Chapel he succeeds in making this sculptural architectural looks a sculptural architectural thing and so he gets permission he puts a list of his contract looked like you know one of these sick American sitcom stars and I want green M&Ms in my dressing room he had to design his own scaffolding and prior to all the talented people cuz they're gonna steal my ideas and he just one thing after another he ended up painting 80% of the painting himself while standing so I'm sorry to debunk this story but no he was not lying on his back this sketch here the stick figure is Michelangelo himself drawing by himself and it's next to the poem he wrote which you see to the right in which he complains about painting the Sistine Chapel which he did with alarming regularity and so what do we get out of all this again look at the paint look at the work without the actual panel figures look at the framework this is the work of a sculptor architect everything you look at is painting everything you're seeing is paint the marble is paint and then he made a series of little skylights that would make it possible for the story to unfold and look at how this works it's a brilliant if the impact is from that moment on everybody else has to paint ceilings so we start on the far side so the far end closest to the altar that begins in the altar with the separation of light and dark God created light separated from darkness that's the end of the first day so Michelangelo's painting is a stripe of white of the stripe of pink a stripe of gray it is evident someone forgot his Crayola box that day but what is really interesting about the work is against that simplicity of three colors look at the power he gets in that torso and that it comes from his unique and special engagement with ancient art at the same time Michelangelo was planning for the Sistine Chapel the rediscovery of an ancient sculpture mentioned by Pliny the most famous sculpture in the ancient world the lay equilon had been made before Michelangelo's eyes on January 14th the 1506 he was there when the work was uncovered he identified the work it was purchased by the Pope it was placed in the Vatican and Michelangelo found himself in front of his true forebear the last great brilliant ancient sculptor like he too was a great sculptor and what did he do with this figure he looked at this figure which is the story of laical on from the Trojan War was the pagan priest who dies trying to warn the Trojans about that big old Greek horse he looks at an image which is fundamentally a pagan priest dying and what does he do he takes the energy in that torso he confers it on the image of God bringing existence into existence you want to know what's special about Michelangelo he was probably the only man who could looking for at a work of ancient art and never be subjugated by it he never thought oh my gosh I better I better do an image of somebody being tortured to death because that that'll kind of keep with the spirit nope he took ancient art and he used it completely on his own terms he could take a pagan image of death and he could turn it into a judeo-christian image of life that's who Michelangelo was and so he moves on to the second one with the creation of the Sun and the moon and the vegetable life and yes I know this is again in the second most frequent office observations in the Sistine Chapel is God's enormous rear end which contrary to what 70% of english-speaking tours like to suggest that it perhaps might be God ruining the Pope I hate to break it to you but that does not translate into Italian it is actually much more interesting it is an allusion to the invisibility of God the Father it is a reminder that no one saw God in the Old Testament the person who came the closest was Moses who was only allowed to see God's back parts so as God is creating rushing around doing this he's flying here he's flying there for the roomful of theologians who were the people who were standing underneath that painting it addresses the most shocking thing about the Sistine Chapel the most shocking thing about the Sistine Chapel is not the nude figure it's God the Father in the body running around there like four images of extreme sports God flying around the Sistine Chapel ceiling it is unthinkable Jesus yes but what are we doing here and it's a reminder that that visibility that incarnation that is the subtext of the entire Sistine Chapel no visible God no Incarnation no Sistine Chapel there is no other religion that could have ever come up with this except for Christianity which has that unique an extraordinary idea that God became visible and knowable and Michelangelo took it to a whole new level and so this little image they own you will see is up to you hiding the crevice of my rocks or my back parts it's like the preview of the movie you always wanted to see that rear end of God is like the trailer coming up the Black Widow movie coming May 20 2008 right I think that sense of a trailer then literally a trailer anyway the separation of earth and sky this is when art historians argue about I'm gonna spare you our argument I will simply point out to you that and God saw that it was good is actually repeated seven times in Genesis and so the idea of God flying like this really seems much more convincing as the image than any of these separation of earth and sky or land and water or celestial and terrestrial firmament and that brings us to the most famous scene of all so the way the ceiling works is you have these three images of God flying around then he pauses and then the drama begins all of a sudden you have the first figure you can see clearly if you're standing at the back of the chapel and the late people sexually you're supposed to be standing them stands out he's a light figure against a dark background he's meant to be notice it's meant to be noticed of the distance and the only thing that's interesting the only thing that that's striking is we go to all this trouble to gaze upon first man and haha what's our first impression here he's looking a little lazy right there's a little something about about Adam here that looks like he's trying to hit the snooze button on the alarm clock I mean I dare say this is anything but up and Adam haha yeah making sure you're awake and then when you see that so Michelangelo the thing about his art you must always look at his figures twice this is a rule with Michelangelo it's never meant to be understood the first time around you look at him once heavy leg heavy arm look at him again look at that bent knee look at the separation between the ear in the shoulder that's not a weak lazy figure those are the muscle groups of a runner at a starting block and so what God is doing and that beautiful tension of the fingers a millimeter apart he's about to awaken that potential in Adam we are left at the edge of our seats waiting for that contact to happen when the arm will lift the leg will lift and Adam will take his place as God's greatest creation and he does not stop there the other half of the painting which is almost always neglected leads us into the image of Eve God's other arm is curled around this female figure and look at her the way her arm curls around him she's no afterthought she's no Oh r-right she's part of a divine plan from the very beginning in this painting Adam and Eve are never apart they are always together if there's an image of Adam there's an image of Eve God is creating Adam Eve is on the back of his mind as it were God's hand displays on the shoulder of the child you'll notice that he has a second knuckle just so you don't miss the image just think you don't miss this look there's a there's another figure there and that figure we believes the image of Jesus the previewing of as God is creating man he's already aware of the imminent fall and he's aware of his own plan to erupt into human history to save humanity as Jesus Christ that that preview of the Incarnation that you saw and the separation of land or the creation of a Sun Moon a vegetable life is fulfilled in the image of the creation of man also just as a note really cool article written in 1990 by Richard mesh burger in which he to kind of continue this idea of us being on God's mind but a really lovely article in which his very technical comparison to the outline of God's cape to the human brain and and reminding us that Michelangelo actually did a great many dissections during his time in in in Florence really lends credence to this idea of a a logos God as this logos and shearing that giving a tiny spark of it to man is what elevates him above all creation and also by the way I do like to point out at this point now that we've already handled the question of even the creation of woman is actually the dead center of the ceiling I know y'all think it's the creation of man but it's not the dead center of the ceiling is actually the creation of woman I have been known to suggest that's because Adam was only practice and God got it right later but the actual reason for it is the chapel is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and it's beautiful and really quite wonderful to be here in this Chapel of st. John Henry Newman because this is really he articulated it quite beautifully but this is really Mary as the new Eve we are dealing with the theology of the Immaculate Conception not laid out clearly as it was in the 19th century with the dogma behind it but this feeling its way towards the implication and the meaning and the justification of the Immaculate Conception this is a good moment for me to tell you that the person who put the Immaculate Conception on the universal calendar was none other than Sixtus the fourth and so this is all kind of converges together anyway now we're Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in which there's a Garden of Eden had they not eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil it is highly likely that Adam and Eve would have starved to death there seems to be nothing in Michelangelo's garden but by now you should be used to this it is evident that Michelangelo was not a noun guy he's really a verb guy it's it's it's it's not about what is there he's much more interested in the before and after pictures because this is essentially a before and after picture inside Eden we see Adam and Eve represented by one of the greatest sculptor in the world we see them represented as immortal a mortal immortality comes across as these luminous bodies they're buoyant they're beautiful these people are never going to age they're never going to suffer they're never gonna die they're never gonna catch coronavirus and then the people on the other side their bodies are very different to say they're still Adam and Eve but look how the bodies change look at that eye of the sculptor the erect posture you see in the in the first image hunches over the luminosity of the bodies on the left hand side drains and you can see physically gravity doggin at their every step Michelangelo shows the moment the body became a burden to manage it's an incredible way of representing this and not painting just just to be a little bit more obnoxious he placed in a very specific place look where it stands right above the choir screen or the Rood screen so were you and I could go no further in the church is where you and I get kicked out of earthly paradise and that's simply intended to rub it in now the last three scenes OS right here here by the way from this moment it's an interesting little side note since we're finishing the images of Adam and Eve together that complementarity of men and women continues throughout the rest of the throughout the rest of the painting so everywhere there's a male there's a male major male figure there's a major female figure so in the corners of the ceiling you have the stories of David and Moses but in the other two corners you're going to have Judith and Holofernes and Esther and the story of Haman and so the punishment of payment so you have two heroes and two heroines Esther and Judith by the way two two heroines always associated with the Immaculate Conception then you have the ancestors who are my favorites these are I love these these images for a number of reasons they're painted very quickly Michelangelo produced these paintings over the course of one to three Jordan at a the technique he used fresco is a slaked lime plaster applied to the wall you have to apply your pigment while the plaster is still wet and you have about six hours drying time the images I've been showing you they could take two or three weeks to paint because you only do a little section you're very meticulous you're very careful you underlying the drawings you don't want to make mistakes because if the plaster dries you have to take a chisel these are painted in one two or three days 3ds max and that just to give you an idea of what that is that's the equivalent of a digital image there's no under there's like it's like a cell phone camera image he there's no under drawing he's looking and then he's painting he's looking and then he's painting it's coming spontaneous and what's so beautiful about it is that these are this is the ancestry of Jesus this is the this is the Gospel of Matthew at the beginning of Matthew Abraham to get Isaac we get Jacob Isola and so forth the so called big ass in the begats I believe they're what seven women mentioned for you know the forty-two men in Michelangelo's ceiling every male figure is complemented by a female figure so the mothers in the genealogy they may not get names but Michelangelo gave each one of them a face and a personality so you have this mom that's really great multitasking mom like she's rocking a cradle with her foot and then she's holding the baby and he's sleeping and then you have this one she's she's arranging dinner it's gonna chatting with her baby over here this one this little overworked mother she's got three kids that are like all over her but what beautiful spontaneity and what accept images of motherhood he gives us it gives it opens up a little window to thinking a little bit differently about Michelangelo than the way art history has had handed him down over the course of the generations then we get to after that the stories of Noah we have Noah's Flood which is an image of universal salvation there are no animals on Noah's Ark nobody cares about the animals the animals show up later and that guy is sitting on an animal they get sacrificed and then we get to the end of Noah's story we know what becomes a farmer grows grapes invents wine drinks the wine gets drunk and passes out naked in his barn so I have now told you the story of the world's most famous sexy a ceiling cycle or painting cycle in the world and if you have been following you realize it starts with God creating light and and ends up with some guy blind drunk in a barn which seems a little bit like a downward spiral or my students semester abroad and the the the fact of the matter is it's a really funny way to end but it's not only that notice what he caught the contrast these two figures that Adam which is all luminous potential and then the position of Noah which is the same position but everything has become heavy limp weak that all that potential seems dissipated in the drunkenness of Noah what is more it is also the darkest scene of the entire Sistine Chapel ceiling so here on the far right hand side is where Noah as you can see on the far left is where the story starts a separation of light and dark below BA and then it gets progressively darker and chaotic till you get to the drunkenness of Noah at that point with the drunkenness of Noah right behind you is the exit entrance door the real entrance door to the to the Sistine Chapel so basically you take one more step backwards and you are literally out of the picture you are as far away from the altar as you could possibly be and there you are looking under this pathetic figure of Noah who started out by saving humanity and then turned out not to be much of a savior and you're asking yourself wait a minute how do I get out of here and this is the moment that Michelangelo finally found his Crayola box he started with a figure immediately next to that drunken Noah are the first bright colors of the whole ceiling the what it meant to clean that ceiling all of a sudden we went that's how he does it that's how he changes the story we get caught our eye gets caught by the emerald green and the Topaz yellow of the Prophet Zechariah saying what return to me says the Lord Almighty and I will return to you and that's what you're gonna do next you're gonna follow these men and women you see along the side these bright bright bright colored figures they're going to draw your eye towards the altar so then you'll see a Sibyl the Delphic civil in this particular case she draws your eye a little closer bright colors body turning inwards from the Delphic Sybil we move on to Isaiah again moving inwards the figures get bigger and bigger they get brighter and brighter you'll notice they're always illuminated on one side decide they're illuminated on is always the side that's closest to the altar look at the bright yellow on Daniels robe until you get to the very end right by the altar and the beautiful Libyan civil closes the book of prophecies in her flame colored dress look how the colors have changed from the Delphic Sibyl to the to the Libyan civil your now she's the color of fire and that brings you to the final figure the figure Michelangelo three and a half years to paint he started with Noah he was working towards the altar this is the last thing he painted on the ceiling it's the largest figure of anything on the ceiling the figure tilts towards you and yet Jonah appears to tilt backwards five people in the world could do that kind of foreshortening and if you look at his feet they are the only feet of any figure of the entire Sistine Chapel they dangle in midair you can actually see the shadow underneath it he looks like he's going to fall off the altar and where would he land he would fall off the ceiling to land on the altar below and just a little bit of a note of what every single person would have understood in 1512 we don't think about it anymore but in 1512 the presence of the figure Jonah in and all in in a chapel above an altar would have made perfect sense because Jonah is the quintessential prophet of the resurrection he is the image of Jesus's death and resurrection which of course we represent on the altar so basically for someone to walk in in 1512 and not know what the image of Jonah meant even though Jonah is sitting next to a see best because Michelangelo didn't get out much to walk out and to walk into the chapel and not know what the image of Jonah was the reaction to that would be similar to your reaction if someone walked up and saw the image of the apple with a bite taken out of it and said oh what's that you'd be like what would planet do you live on so that's it's such a common image anyway so Michelangelo with Jonah brings us through the through the beginning of creation all the way through Noah all the way through the prophets and Jonah takes us from the Old Testament into real time leading into where we are today we're and waiting for the Last Judgement so Michelangelo completes the Sistine Chapel ceiling moves back to Florence decides he's never seen I've basically slammed the door and said I'm never going back to that town again but as we all know never say never and and Michelangelo 25 years later was called back 25 years later was called back to the Sistine Chapel in the 25 years between his finishing the ceiling and he beginning the Last Judgement the world had changed I think many of us can say the world today those of us who've been around for 25 years or so we can say the world looks we've lived through times that are pretty much is drastically different we can we can sympathize with a Michelangelo what did he experience during the course of those 25 years he saw the rise of Martin Luther he saw the invention not the invention but the but the printing press coming online the Purdue has already existed but it was kind of like the cell phones in the 1980s I'm sure there are a few of you who know what I speak like he's gigantic cell phones that you carried like a person like the big like carries it in the printing presses were cumbersome they weren't quite as active by 1550 they were producing 150 million pieces of paper through Europe a year there was the sack of Rome and then finally the year that Michelangelo was approached to paint in the year that Michelangelo came to paint the Sistine Chapel's Last Judgement it's the same year that Henry the eighth's wrote a letter to the Pope Pope Clement the seventh which went something along the lines of high starting my own church club Henry signed by all the Cardinals and bishops of England except for John Fisher who got his head cut off and so you have the Pope looking at you know this letter and thinking in the Sistine Chapel with the other Cardinals they're basically wondering hmm how many of you are thinking about doing the same thing so if you need the big guns to make a very important message who do you call you call Michelangelo and so Michelangelo made his way to Rome reluctantly he put it off a lot and he produced the ultimate image of accountability because that's the purpose of this painting and the great mistakes that are made with this painting is when they figure they was made for everyday people like you and I were supposed to go in and see the Last Judgement look where it is it's the altar wall it's where only this very elite group of clergy could stand on inside of the Rood screen it is under that wall that the Cardinals elect the Pope and put the vote in the urn and so it was that painting that was meant to be the great call to order the Pope worked closely closely closely with Michelangelo so that he could produce the Last Judgement now the Last Judgement on top of everything else is a very interesting shape it's actually formed to look a bit like the Ten Commandments most people have noticed this and so you have they're tilted slightly toward you so you have this impression of the ten commandments or about to fall on you it's a it's a very large painting made up of only human figures typical last judgments would have registers if they were meant for regular people to look at they're divided up with a lot of lettering so you can find out what's going on you understand what's happening Michelangelo's is pure disruption in a room full of everything is is everything's got architectural frameworks his last judgement is just this lapis blue wall and this tumble of bodies and you're disoriented when you look at it and you are supposed to be what is more you will look in the lower corner of the very bottom of the painting now in this one you see the crucifix and that is the thing closest to your own eye level so you'll notice that first behind that crucifix is a cave of demons in which the demon on the far left is looking right at you you walk into the Sistine Chapel the first thing you see and that altar is a demon who's like coming for you and so you're thinking Oh until you realize what's in front of that demon the crucifix and there is Jesus arms spread keeping that demon at bay Michelangelo knows there's going to be that crucifix on the altar he plans the painting around that liturgical object and then right above it he adds these angels blowing their horns calling the dead back to life this incredible spiral that makes like a halo for the for the for the crucifix the angels holding open books they are showing you look what Jesus did for you and they ask that rather awkward question hey what you do for Jesus it's gonna be a bad day your giveaway is that the little bit little book contains the good deeds and the very large multi-volume tome contains the bad deeds then you have the bodies breaking away from it beautiful the bodies breaking away from the ground this image of the bodily resurrection these big huge bodies one of them is actually waiting to get his waiting to get his skin back over there in the corner ministry on the far left-hand side the battle between angels and demons this incredibly active physical pulling away from the dirt that binds you then you move up to this next section which is a little mysterious this is that this confuses a lot of people because some gifts have a both suggests that it's purgatory no purgatory in the day The Last Judgment what you have is an interesting group of people of which none of which can be identified and that's when the painting I think it's very interesting because that's what reveals this painting is a Catholic painting you have a whole bunch of people who are helping each other up to heaven these people are clearly helping each other up now one of them has a single identify an identifying symbol except for maybe just maybe the guy on the right-hand side the rosary beads could be st. Dominic but hard to tell because he's got no clothes on and so the idea is you're looking at people who are helping other people into heaven this practice that we have in the Church of praying for the dead and the dead pray for us and we help each other Michelangelo creates an entire register of people helping each other and he doesn't stop there Michelangelo is a child of the Age of Discovery he was he was 17 years old when Christopher Columbus found the new world when he painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling it was the same year as the same he was the same year that julius ii was setting up the first diocese in the new world in haiti there was a whole new world that had to be evangelized when he came along to paint this Magellan had already found his way into the Pacific Ocean the church's mission had just gone global so Michelangelo added a kind of interesting little detail and what you see here on the right-hand side these two people being pulled up by rosaries one is an African man when it's a Caucasian man you are 400 years before the American Civil Rights Movement and yet Michelangelo has given you an image of universal salvation so this idea of salvation meant for everyone's very front and center in the painting so then he works his way up to the next section the people helping other people getting into heaven and of course after that we reach the saints and that's where the trouble begins let's evoke a way of showing saints is what I'm showing you here I'm not going to give you 35 images to make my art historical point but if you like you can find them the typical way of showing saints in heaven is that there is actually a little Saint uniform you get a long pastel dress you get a big gold halo looka cinderelly Fra Angelico both gave you paradise with these beautiful Saints and their fabulous outfits Michelangelo went in a slightly different direction so if job DOS Saints again passed dresses big gold halos marching towards the heavens the little bunnies coming out of the ground are naked the people who are going to heaven get some clothes not Michelangelo who apparently was taking the attitude if you've got it flaunt it and so you have these incredibly beautiful bodies that are meant to represent these glorious bodies they are given in heaven there's no shame to these bodies and there's no defect to these bodies they're perfect these people who have exercised heroic virtue have these beautiful bodies so let's take one example I think a really obvious one John the Baptist who we know oddly enough his diet we don't get everyone side of Daniels apparently and John the Baptist John the Baptist lived on locusts and wild honey which as far as I know is not a bulk up diet and so on the left-hand side the typical less typical judge John the Baptist is kind of the skinny emaciated guy he amazingly enough turned into mr. universe in the hand and I mean apparently he was eating like GMO locusts or something anyway he's huge and then you move on to st. Peter he's looking fabulous at 70 we can all agree but he forgot his clothes these little overexcited so I change in Peter is not it not nothing different and and so the idea behind there is a reasoning behind what he's doing this is not Michelangelo I just like to paint naked men there's a reason behind this it is really a question one of the fundamental questions they have and that's coming up after the in the midst of the Reformation what does what you do matter in salvation how much does what you do matter and so these saints who are seen as heavens athletes because they have done extraordinary things are represented in heaven as figures that are athletic the typical way of showing martyrs does that mean you know how you see the high as a martyr in art I've really high hopes for you Ireland don't let me down I'm accustomed to my students not knowing but I'm really high hopes didn't you people save civilization yes thank you thank you faith faith restored okay yes it's a palm frond how do you spot a martyr a martyr holds a palm front okay those are the martyrs in the last judge what we have in the Vatican Museums painted 1150 all these people that Steven on the right all the people are nameless they're all martyrs they all wear long pastel dresses and they were big gold halos and they hold palm fronds why are they holding palm fronds because they're athletes and in the ancient in ancient art always when you want to see the victorious wrestler the wrestlers holding his crown of victory and he's holding his palm front it's a symbol of athletic victory from time immemorial we talked about the martyrs as heavens athletes they cross the finish line of heaven first but instead of showing them nude because you can imagine we have a few issues with that instead we show them with these long pastel dresses and they hold the symbol of victory until Michelangelo comes along and decides yeah no and he decides to show you this external he shows the internal fortitude that the martyrs have the only way he knows which is to show it as exterior strength for a roomful of men who collected those ancient sculptures it's gonna make perfect sense they won't understand perfectly but then things go wrong this is the famous portrait that in the figure of Saint Bartholomew who by the way was skinned alive but his skin grew back and so it all worked out okay and then you see him holding his old skin which was identified in 1925 as a caricature of Michelangelo I put down this quote from a poem he wrote exactly at this time I think it's a very beautiful thing to realize that Michelangelo really was a faith-filled faithful man and that particularly in painting the Last Judgement he was deeply concerned he was very very much taken with thoughts at the end of his life and so he uses this idea of like shedding this old skin to become something new and it's kind of a lovely image that reinforces this idea of Michelangelo showing himself as this old husk and then of course we have the women of heaven who I think are fabulous but then in the lineup of things that people say in the Vatican Museums we have we have Michelangelo showing these incredibly powerful women that's Catherine Alexander over there looked like she could bench press several wheels the two women over here on the left-hand side I tend to think are probably perpetuating Felicity but you see a whole bunch of holy women who are super tough and it's a reminder as we see here in the hagiography of female saints that no less are the women as no less are women martyrs or women's Saints they are no less powerful they are no less determined they're no less courageous than men there is nothing lesser in the sacrifice of st. Agnes or Saint Agatha are saying to chia than there is of a Sebastian or Laurence we have never had second to your ideas and the martyrs they are equally equally brave and courageous and so we have these images Michelangelo again applies the only way he understands to represent that kind of fortitude by giving us this is extraordinarily powerful figures which of course every day I'm listening to people say yeah they didn't like women because they they're just you know boys with breasts and they don't understand why just make them look so masculine I don't understand I mean knew I had visits very demeaning and I can't imagine why they would possibly think that that was a good idea III just leave it at that is it the the things about this this modern age that I don't understand the and then also there's another aspect of the painting that will throw people in the old age in in in in that age you'll notice that people are very affectionate in the age of Korus the image on the right is deeply disturbing where is your 1 meter distance people but you know what Michelangelo is not doing anything new look what fra angelico has on the other side it's the same thing this idea that we get to be reunited we get to hug each other and kiss each other and feel that joy of being together in heaven is something that that patron saint of painting shows us and Michelangelo that's the difference is of course the lack of clothes and so the real problem with this painting this will be the thing that people focus in on the real problem with the painting is the imagery of Jesus himself Jesus has never really been seen this way Jesus is often seen in seated on a throne usually dressed but this is an unusual way of showing him Michelangelo shows that Jesus who I actually call terminator Jesus he was the toughest brought this Jesus in the history of art he looks away he doesn't seem particularly interested in you and he seems terribly powerful and somewhat daunting so for a member of the of the clergy who is you endowed a million monasteries to pray for his soul thinking got everything under control running into that guy might make you think tricep twice and that's the point of this Jesus Jesus is supposed to impress a bunch of people who have been paying for Jesus paintings for the past thirty years of their lives the middle guy with the long year in sandals is not going to do a thing for them they need a Jesus they need to produce a Jesus that will make them think twice Michelangelo drew together two ancient sculptures that were in the Vatican collection the power of this work known as the Belvedere torso is 60 BC sculptures signed actually on the base and the head of the most beautiful work we have the Apollo Belvedere given by Julius the second is the first work of the Vatican Museum he's a classical sculpture with all that perfect few physical beauty but the aloofness of the face so he put together this incredibly powerful body and this incredibly aloof a face this Hellenistic in classical to make of Jesus who seems absolutely unapproachable except for one thing the figure of Mary had never been placed where he placed her so Jesus usually stands alone as I showed you in the earlier paintings as a matter of fact never before had someone had Mary showing Jesus's throne and as a matter of fact if you look closely there's another example she's down here in the corner su she's wearing white on the left-hand side here she's right next to him she's right by the wound in Jesus's side from whence the church sprained and so we see a Mary very very differently orchestrated and the best part of this is when those wonderful moments in the history of art when I can prove to you what I'm saying because in our history that's that's not always a given and so you have the first drawing he does on the left he is Jesus seed seated isolated as you would typically do Mary sits on the lower left-hand side her hands raised actively pleading for people version number two Jesus is still in the same position mary has gotten up from her chair she approaches him with her arms open the way she does in the Madonna of the misericordia when she has her Cape and she's bringing a whole slew of people who are coming up right behind her and in version number three he places her right by his side let's not kid around you want to talk to Jesus talk to her she'll get you in and by the way at this point you've noticed that virtually everyone in the painting is saved and in my favorite fun fact regarding the Last Judgement there are apparently no women in hell my husband claims as an oversight but I'll take it the the image of the image of Mary is a beautiful conglomeration we'll show you the other half but look how lovely why is she so powerful she's so powerful because of that moment that image is very recognizable as the moment she says to the angel Gabriel I am the handmaiden of the Lord let it be done to me according to thy will that yes that active yes that continuous yes means that even at that moment he will say yes to her and then the other half of this figure oh I see it she's not there so in the other side of it back up for a second so from here we see the figures casting down from here we see the figures on the other side casting down into hell there aren't very many at all it's a very limited number of figures that are cast into hell and the interesting thing is there's no real definition of what gets you sent to hell the only crime that's actually Illustrated clearly is the moneybags with the with the keys so that's the crime of simony that's the only one that he specifically identifies and then we end up with this lower figure on the bottom this painting all of this a lot of my discussion with you is to help you understand why this painting got into so much trouble it got into so much trouble that it was nearly scraped off the wall it had to do with people being so much shocked at a disorienting painting that used images that were not familiar to people the real troublemaker was the printing press which means an internal argument between a couple of Cardinals you know there may be too many figures that are nude I don't know what do you think that went public it went viral and so if you will people all over Europe we're seeing cheap copies of this image each one more scandalized than the other oh my gosh they're unrolling a piece of paper expecting a lot of figures with fluttering drapery and wringing hands they see 390 one naked gyrating men and they're thinking oh my goodness Martin Luther's right they're a bunch of perverts in Rome so overnight this painting becomes the biggest liability of the Catholic Church someone who didn't like Michelangelo of course took advantage to call him a pornographer Michelangelo famously got even by painting him into the figure into the painting with the years of a donkey and a snake wrapped around himself but ultimately the painting had to be censored as it were when in 1560 for the year Michelangelo died an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Trent ordered that 30 of the most offensive figures be covered and somehow that has become what we focus on when we look at the Last Judgement but what he really gave us Michael and whoops what he really gave us Michelangelo in this work in this space is this remarkable universality so to not end on a note of the naked figures in the censorship I'd like to end on the note of what that space means and again it's a joy and a particular privilege of mine to be able to sit in the back of that Chapel and watch people come in from all over the world every day and they stand in a space where they're all brought together they're shoulder-to-shoulder but everybody's looking up everybody's looking in the same direction they're looking up they're looking forward and the way that he unfolded this story the nudity of those figures is a key part of it they're not stuck in a time nor space or location they're just these beautiful bodies they represent the best that we could be those bodies are so perfect and so beautiful they are the best that we can be and so he brought us together to take us through this story of the beginning and ending and so I think the person I would like him with him and I'd like to end with him the person who I've always found the most Inspira inspiring in understanding the Sistine Chapel was st. John Paul the second st. John Paul the second is the one who opened my eyes to understanding this complementarity to men and women when he called it the sanctuary of the theology of the body and for years I've been working on this office off this idea but also john paul ii and artist himself wrote his beautiful roman triptych these poems one of the three poems takes place in the Sistine Chappell and in many ways I think he he explains it when he says the beginning is invisible everything here points to it all this abundant disability released by human genius here the n2 is invisible though traveler your eye is caught by the vision of the Last Judgement how to make the invisible visible how to penetrate beyond the bounds of good and evil the visible and invisible pierces from these walls Michelangelo Buonarroti in these two cycles two systems succeeded taking one extraordinary man an extraordinary time taking the beginning of the Bible and the end of the Bible making it visible making it meaningful making it something that would continue to speak to people for 500 years running and hopefully for 500 years more thank you [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] we do have as you've seen a reception set up in the rear but liz has agreed to take a few questions so if you have a brief question but I would like to take the privilege of the first question which is could you just expand a little on the layout on story my recollection from the first time you explained it to me is he came looking for it thinking they had it in Rome so so we delay it what makes the lyac one famous so that the sculpture I was showing you before it's that ring about the de Leon coin sculpture the the sculpture of the guy it's very very very famous it's famous for two reasons reason number one is that the Leia Cohen is a story from Virgil's Aeneid which is one of the best-known stories lay echo on I again am I'm very excited to be here in a country where I'm automatically presuming you are more literate than my sophomore students and the Atlanta wants for Virgil's Aeneid he's the guy who coined the most famous phrase in ancient literature you must fear the Greeks especially when they bear gifts so he's very famous for that to begin with he's crushed to death by two to giant two giant sea serpents sent by the gods so everybody knows that image because already in the ancient world it's the death of laQuan means that Troy Falls and that means Aeneas leaves and he has ends up in lot CO and his great great grandsons of Romulus and Remus there was no Roman kid who doesn't know lay out wine the other reason why the sculpture is famous it was written up 2,000 years ago by a man named Pliny the Elder he was a Roman statesman an aristocrat he went everywhere he saw everything he wrote everything down and so we have this amazing book art historians look at plenties natural histories as a Michelin Guide to the ancient world best stuff where it is what's great about it and in that book he describes the echo on he says it's in Rome he says it's by three Greek artists from the island of roe and he says this is his commentary it surpasses anything done in painting or sculpture up to this point I mean that's like you know it's a five-star TripAdvisor review and so Michelangelo the plenties book when Pliny died trying to watch the exposure the Sioux vyas from to close he didn't have the book with him so the book survived it was translated into Italian when Michelangelo was three that means he grew up studying sculpture reading plenty as a copy was in the Medici house he gets to Rome right and you know there he is working on this giant sculptural project for julius ii and he's in julie is the sculpture garden he's saying things like you know guys this anybody ever see him elaoi because i heard about this laughs it's that one and the answer is always no Mike sorry laughs once been lost for about a thousand years so you know maybe like look at our Paolo or something January 14th of 1506 he was called away from breakfast he was having breakfast at his friend Julian Assange Gallo's house the two of them were brought over to the other side of the hill to inside the city to the opnion Hill right next to the Colosseum or some guy named Dave Freddy was digging out of Minyard they walked through the newly tilled earth they came to a hole in the ground they looked in the hole and there was the layout one covered boots dirt and leaves Michelangelo Giuliano go there's the long-lost laughs go on I mean if there was ever a situation where it really sounded like God was saying a hey Mike I think you should be sculpting it was pretty much when he found the layout go on and then the Pope buys it for him I mean not for him but I mean buys it the line of Meyers who spent a mile long the Pope buys it it shows up in the Vatican Michelangelo obviously all my destiny is sculpture and then the Pope says yeah I need 12 apostles on the Sistine Chapel ceiling so I mean he's one of the things I find so admirable about Michelangelo and Raphael and to a lesser extent Leonardo what I find so remarkable about them I always use them as kind of a as a personal guide and you get a project that you don't want to do just take it and make it your own it's my it's my something young people advise is he I wasn't planning on making my mark this way yeah take it and then make your mark that way it's it's one of the really great stories about people playing to their strengths and I love that very much about both Michelangelo Raphael madolora ah Sybil's I love symbols because this symbols the symbols are let's see if we can get back to them very quickly civils are figures that I love very much symbols are pagan prophetesses and what they are they the symbols to make these prophecies for the pagan world and actually interestingly about the civils is that they come from there we go these are my two favorites civils come from all different parts of the ancient world you have a Persian civil Libyan civil Delphic civil so you actually have representatives of all the known continents at the time Sybil's are these pagan prophetesses they make prophecies that for a very long complicated reason that I would really love to tell you but I think father would hit me over the head if I got into this for a very long complicated reason they sound really apocalyptic myths ionic and they fit right in with Christianity so these pagan prophetesses are making these prophecies which when they start reading them in 1200 1300 1400 they sound a lot they're talking about things like a virgins gonna bear a child it's gonna bring peace in the world is going to be this and they're like oh my gosh these Sybil's new so the Renaissance starts to use Sybil's as compliments to the prophets to suggest that while the prophets clearly prepare the world for the coming of Christ because Jesus because God is talking to them the sibyl's are getting a more like muddled messed up frequency alert so that the pagan world is somewhere somehow being prepared for the coming of Christ as well so it's kind of a way of understanding that when it that appointed time in the reign of Augustus is not a happenstance it's that the world was prepared for that moment and for the Renaissance of course it's a justification for them to be able to draw from the pagan world as they like but more for artists what it offers them is the possibility to paint female figures next to male figures otherwise it's gonna be apostles church fathers patriarchs mom Obama and then when that way they can put female figures and male figures and it just becomes more aesthetically pleasing and more representative of the world that surrounds them thank you I love symbols [Laughter] yes sorry so it's a really interesting question there are parallels between the ceiling and the Last Judgement those parallels fall particularly in the new Adam and the new Eve there's a sort of a visual parallel when you see the image of the visual parallel in the in Noah's Ark just because it's very chaotic the scene of Noah's Ark is as you can see he drew on those same skills to create figures in motion in the lower left and the lower right hand side of the painting and then the the imagery of particularly the creation of woman this is the dead center of the ceiling in the dead center of the ceiling you have Eve stepping out of Adam's side look at how look at how this works there you are so she moves out of literally Adam side and look at her with her hands and that is actually the first drawing that he did of Mary coming to Jesus when he was thinking about the Last Judgement so this is a he matures that concept of the new Adam the new Eve Heath by the time he paints the last judgment against 25 years he's really matured and to the point where he's confident enough to make that imagery of Mary and Jesus which is not that that's just not the norm and as a matter of fact go step further I think a lot of what makes the painting upsetting to people are things like that this representation of Mary and Jesus Mary kind of Mediatrix idea that he's showing it's it's kind of like wait wait wait wait wait wait and so it's easier for people to say yeah everyone's naked then to really articulate this aloofness of Jesus and the strange interaction with Mary which is a little hard to follow it's just easier to say I'm offended by the nudity than to try to articulate that I think that was a great question sometimes on tours because it takes me so long to answer your question it's a fun thing so it's a dress and please don't ask for any more two very separate things so the question being requiring fruit in those you didn't hear it requiring faith to appreciate the artwork and requiring faith to requiring faith to produce the artwork requiring faith to appreciate the artwork I don't think is absolutely necessary as in fact that is the fact that tests that there are people who come in come out of the Sistine Chapel with no faith whatsoever and are still dazzled by just like Saint Peters is a church that knocks everyone's socks off regardless of faith or no faith so I'm not entirely sure how much faith you have to have to appreciate it but in your emphasis on really appreciate it I can I think I think the best way for me to speak to that is to just give you a little anecdote of my own life I went to University of Chicago aka the great the great atheist maker and then I went to University of Bologna which of course is as well none of course but it was in a communist City and not particularly religious and friendly so my entire experience of art history my entire study of art history was completely faith absent so you know this is this is not about this is not about Adam and Eve it's totally secondary but it's important about the work is that the reclining figures come from the Endymion figures which we see in the Roman sarcophagi that Michelangelo had access to that's how we look at these works of art the resistance but we just had a very technical and very formal way of looking at it and and that was basically how I studied art the University of Bologna had a thesis there they're their primary leading light had a methodology involving context and so his theory was you must understand the soil in which part is produced to understand how special and unique it is this is how the so many a thing eventually happens but neither here nor there in the in in Bologna the reason why they liked it is because they're always competing with the Florentines and so the idea is you have to understand the polling is a so soil to understand that the Bolognese you produce Renaissance art that's better than the Florentines but when I came to Rome and applied that methodology to the Sistine Chapel and then I began to realize rule the soil that these people are as they're always questions in the back of my head that didn't make sense and it couldn't find answers to and the books didn't give it to me so I would say to myself well you know I guess I just have to do this use this methodology all understand the soil that this comes from so I took these nine theology classes started studying a little bit about scripture and interpretation of Scripture and the more I did it the more I realized wait a minute if I look at this if I look at the Sistine Chapel from the point of view that Michelangelo believes this stuff then there is no question that I cannot give you there is no question that I cannot give you a plausible answer for like dariya I there is a it is I'd and you realize that once you use death lends it all makes sense and once I started using that lens it began to occur to me not only does he believe this stuff but why don't and so really it means things like the Sistine Chapel st. Peter's the Pieta my husband very good friend of mine these are the things that brought me back to the faith III and I was but that was not where I was going at all but really I so in answer to your question not only does the appreciation of this art grow with faith but it there comes a point where it seemed to me to be absurd to not believe this how could there be I felt a bit like Peter well where else am I gonna go and so it really is so I do think at the end of the end and and that kind of argument that kind of witness that kind of witness that is that compelling can only come from someone who believes this too so that this kind of art also has to be made by someone who has faith the the beauty of the Sistine Chapel to me when I look at it when I see it it's uh it's kind of discovered world's weirdest comparison it's like when neo sees the matrix and just I can see all the lines working together I can see the the history of the faith and the beauty of the art with circumstances of the history and the people that I can see it all working together and there's no way that I can't fathom a Sistine Chapel that was made by atheists for atheists it just can't be that makes sense yes previously shortest that beautiful tender image of God the Father with with his arm you know that the intimate embrace he's breathing life into Adam that that Eve seems like a different person it's not just another thing that you would have yeah it's a very very interesting it's a very interesting and highly problematic point this Eve who has her hair up looks a little bit so it seems to me that these a this Eve kind of becomes more concrete as she becomes more real that's about the best I can I can do for you here but I mean she starts here as a figure who was really just a sort of a very feminine figure by the way I'm always hearing about Michelangelo doesn't know anything about women but that face that sort of high cheekbone that that's a she's a quite a beautiful feminine face her body seems a slimmer up here than usual then the Eve that comes out of Adam's side gets a little bit more solid I we didn't see her from but I think the reason why she's much more saw because she has to occupy a lot of space so he makes these alternate Lisa slate Alton and then alter alterations to Eve and then the one that gets strangest her hair gets dark over here she's suddenly he apparently dyed her hair in the Garden of Eden and again in this one the aspect of the body that he really wants to emphasize is the immortality versus the mortality so I think he's is is introduced with the body of Eve really is a very kind of technical problem of in this case the contrast between the two in the other one I'm the other one occupying a very large space but what is really really interesting about this one this one is she's the link between God and man she really is the link between God and man the feet are in his side her hand is before God she is she is the bridge so she needs to be noticeable right that's a technical point at i/o I promise I'll be fast it's it's a technical point the the extra knuckle the extra hand when you do that it means you want the figure it means you want the figure to be emphasized you want people to notice so he's intentionally elongated the hand then elongated the finger so that you will understand that figure is part of the mix like he's not like all the other angels around that little figure over there the one that looks at you is different from the others and it's part of a connector from one finger which is elongated to give life to Adam to the other figure that is already perched on the shoulder of the new Adam okay okay I'm going we're going to leave it there because I still have to feed Tom but we want to have a few minutes for her to mingle with folks in the back during our reception so what always happens is our speakers get trapped here so we're going to give you a minute to be the first to go back and have a bit of wine or some tea if you'd like and just wanna thank you Liz this was extraordinary you always perform even the highest of expectations that we have and I'm sure everyone here feels as I do again [Applause] [Applause]

Channel: Notre Dame Newman Centre

Views: 1,059

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, Notre Dame, Liz Lev, Art History, Dublin, Lecture, Faith and Reason

Id: b5DcbqN1mQA

Length: 83min 42sec (5022 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020