Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam
Creation of Adam 1510
Fresco, 280 x 570 cm
Cappella Sistina, Vatican
Michelangelo's Creation of Adam is one of the most famous and theologically complex images in the history of art. Adam, the most spectacular of God's creations, has been wonderfully formed, but his limp body still stretches across the earth from which it was made. God is about to give Adam the final touch of life. This will cause Adam to stand up, setting him apart from the material out of which he was made and from the rest of creation.
In keeping with the foreshadowing theme, Adam prefigures Christ, the second Adam. Just as Adam was the first man created and raised to life from the earth, Christ was the first man resurrected from the tomb in a restored relationship with God. All those who worship in the Sistine Chapel find themselves between these two creative acts. Adam's body is almost completely enveloped by the earth; this reminds us that we were formed from the earth and will return to it, where we will wait to be resurrected at the Last Judgment. Michelangelo, who probably did not foresee being called back to the Sistine Chapel 24 years later to paint The Last Judgment on the altar wall, made his Creation of Adam a picture of humanity's origin and end.
There is something unusual about The Creation of Adam, however: Adam appears to be alive before God has endowed him with life. If he already has a living body, what is he about to receive from God? This problem has troubled many scholars, but it is possible that Michelangelo was very consciously not depicting the physical creation of Adam in order to evoke a profound theological question: What does it mean to be created "in the image of God"?
Michelangelo's representations of the human figure are so brilliant that they can distract us from the artist's underlying purpose. Adam has the perfect human form, but is it his physical beauty alone that shows that he is created in the image of God? Though the artist is symbolically portraying God in human form, it would be wrong to think Michelangelo believed God, the Father, had a physical body. He avoids the theological blunder that Adam was created to look like God. The image of God is spiritual and creative, not physical. Therefore, instead of showing the moment when God forms Adam's body out of the dirt, Michelangelo shows God giving Adam the spirit of his creativity. Adam receives this gift with an expression of adoration. God creates man, before the fall, not as a toiler but as a creative being.
In this masterpiece, Michelangelo is doing more than representing the moment of creation. He is employing his own creativity as a means of studying God's creative nature. If our creative capacity is a part of the image of God in us, then exploring and exercising our creativity can be a means of better knowing him. Art-making can be a form of visual theology. The Genesis narrative attracted Michelangelo because it resonated with him as a Christian and an artist. It laid out a biblical, Trinitarian understanding of creativity that he found necessary to his art.
Through his composition and forms, Michelangelo conveys a reciprocal love and longing between God and Adam as they reach for each other. The Bible describes God breathing into Adam to give him life; we ourselves are breathless in anticipation of their touch.
By causing us to anticipate God's touch, which will awaken Adam's creativity and make him more fully human, Michelangelo arouses those same qualities in us and inspires us to a more creative, dynamic, and living faith. And in exercising his own massive artistic gifts, Michelangelo brings the theme of divine grace, foretold and fulfilled from the very first moments of creation, into the present moment of the church's worship.
James Romaine is an instructor of art history at the New York Center for Arts and Media Studies and a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. This essay is adapted from his article
"Creator, Creation, and Creativity" in It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God and is reprinted with permission
of Square Halo Books Inc. The article is found on page 87 of the second edition, published in 2006.
Source: James Romaine. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/2006/issue91/10.22.html?