Customer Reviews

The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

This book describes many of Michelangelo's high Renaissance artworks in the Vatican City, Florence and elsewhere and claims Michelangelo was directly influenced by Jewish religious teachings of the Talmud, Midrash and Kabbalah in his subject matter as well as deeper symbolic messages of Christian religious art, particularly in the Sistine Chapel.

The authors note that Michelangelo was virtually adopted by Lorenzo de Medici and educated in an intellectual environment of the de Medici court that included Renaissance scholars and philosophers who were proponents of ideals of unity of religious and philosophical thought. Among other sources, the authors claim these studies included Jewish teachings and philosophical works based on Jewish teachings. The authors argue that the Jewish component of those intellectual discussions at the "School of Athens" in the de Medici family palace must have been picked up and internalized by the young Michelangelo as a lifetime intellectual influence and a sympathy to Jewish religious and mystical thought. This tenuous speculation about his early education is the basis of the central claim.

In order to accept the theme, one has to accept the central speculation about Michelangelo's alleged fascination with the Jewish teachings.

Several detailed observations, subjective interpretations and speculations about the artworks in the Sistine Chapel and elsewhere are then provided in the book to validate these claims. These interpretations of the artworks are the strength of the entire argument. The authors provide skimpy evidence of this alleged fascination in Michelangelo's letters and poetry, his known associates, or in any accounts of his contemporaries.

More conventional Christian scholarship could have provided the Old Testament subject matter and many of the subtleties revealed in the authors' observations.

The authors' theme that Jewish teaching was as central and profound as they propose, and claims of Michelangelo being directly influenced by the Jewish teaching are not well established.

Some of the observations and speculations of the book are interesting. The book has provided me with previously unfamiliar insights in the history and symbols in the Sistine Chapel. Some of the speculations the authors provide seem plausible, others are open to various interpretation, while others strain credibility or contradict my own observations.

I cannot validate or invalidate the authors claims, however, because I have been frustrated by a lack of reference in dozens of places in the text when I had a question regarding an extraordinary or even an uncontroversial statement of fact, history, observation, theory or speculation. There are other places where the authors disagree with other writings I have read on the subjects.

The book is woefully lacking in annotation and reference. I cannot assess how common or how unique the themes and subtleties of Michelangelo were in the context of wider Renaissance religious art or how common or unprecedented are the observations and speculations the authors provide.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence that the authors do not provide. What we get instead are speculations, subjective interpretations and conspiracy theory.

The result is a book that is neither fish nor fowl; neither scholarly treatise nor popular guide accessible to a larger naive audience.

I can suggest this book to readers with a particular interest in the Sistine Chapel or Michelangelo's life for its unconventional viewpoint, but I would caution the reader to read it with a critical mind.

We all love a good yarn about Vatican secrets. What are those wacky prelates up to now? But what a great tale it would be if one the Vatican's own treasures -- Michelangelo's bravura painting of the Sistine chapel ceiling and front wall -- was laden with anti-Catholic messages and secret insults against popes?

That's the idea behind Sistine Secrets. The book sets the stage by discussing little-known tales of artists embedding secret messages in their art. How many know, for instance, that sculptor Daniel French's Lincoln Memorial statue show Abe's forming the initials "A" and "L" in sign language? And what are the strange openings in the leafy canopy to either side of the head of the central figure in Botticelli's "Primavera"? Could the artist, in an age in which human dissection was taboo, have surreptitiously revealed his participation in this illicit practice by embedding the outline of human heart and lungs into his painting? I'm not sure what art historians make of this this theory, but it certainly got my attention.

Having established the fascinating possibility that artist embed "secrets" into their art, the authors move on to their main thesis. Michelangelo's tumultuous family life and apparent homosexuality come in or scrutiny. The story of how he snuck in at night to carved "Michelangelo made this" on the band across the Virgin's chest (in badly-spelled and ungrammatical Latin) was fun and accurate as far as I know.

But from here, things got dodgy. Michelangelo, taken in by the de Medici family, is supposedly instructed in the ways of the Kabala as well as neo-platonic teachings supposedly banned by the Church. I'm no scholar, but Church teaching took Plato quite seriously, seeing in his theory of the ideal forms an echo of divine perfection. Moving to the Sistine chapel painting, the book lands into trouble. While suggesting that the artist incorporated the symbols of papal families into the painting seems innocent enough, the authors claim that Michelangelo incorporated numerous insults to Julius II -- the pope who commissioned the work. Supposedly, portraying the worldly, intemperate Julius as a book-reading prophet Jeremiah was a subtle insult. But this seems too ambiguous to be truly insulting -- at best it seems like an ironic compliment. The authors then point to a putti figure behind Jeremiah who is supposedly showing the "fig" gesture -- the Italian equivalent of a raised middle finger. But the accompanying illustration is dark and obscure, and all I can see is a closed fist.

In another supposedly devastating example of Michelangelo's secret messages, the authors discuss the figures of Judith and her maidservant carrying aloft a basket holding the head of Holofernes. Tracing the figures supposedly shows the figure "T", the Hebrew letter chet, which the authors relate to the Kabalistic female principle. But the figures could just as easily be the figure "pi", suggesting...what? That Michelangelo was hungry? That he loved geometry?

By the time the authors get to the figure of Jonah, things get truly weird. Jonah is said to be the only figure shown barelegged. But his oddly-splayed legs are said to be in the form of the Hebrew character for the number 5. What does this mean? To the author, it means that Michelangelo was expressing the idea that the Hebrew Bible's Pentateuch (literally 5-"five books") must be honored along with the New Testament. But 5 could mean anything -- say, the five senses. And the Church has honored its Jewish roots from he beginning, albeit with long and irredeemable periods of persecution.

The front wall of the Sistine Chapel is supposed to be secretly in the shape of the round-topped tablets of the Ten Commandments. While many depictions show them this way, many show rectangular tablets. And the Bible doesn't say either way. The problem with the supposition is that the chapel's front wall had this shape long before Michelangelo started painting it, as the illustration on page 10 helpfully indicates.

What to make of "Sistine Secrets"? It says something that for all its controversial claims, the book contains just barely over a page of notes. I don't know the Kabala from a Cub Scout or a Medici from a medfly, and I'm not about to take the word of a couple of guys who write about a farfetched idea without a boatload of sources. Reviewers who claim that a book without references is "scholarly" are talking out of their hats. But references or no, the book finally falls apart on its own. The secret messages in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are very few and are ambiguous at best. Even if the artist camouflaged a whole alphabet of Hebrew letters in the writhing forms of his work, what would it mean? And to suggest that Michelangelo pulled the wool over the eyes of the greatest minds of his times -- and those of the last 500 years -- until now, of course, seems hubristic to say the least.

"Sistine Secrets" did make me genuinely curious about the true meaning of Michelangelo's master works. Though I don't buy this book's thesis, I'd love to know more about the weird features of his work. Why *are* Michelangelo's figures posed in such varied poses of motion -- simple variety? What is the point of the main Genesis stories he chose to portray? I would love to read a debunking of the book by an educated scholar -- in the same ay that Bart Ehrman deconstructed "The Da Vinci Code" in his book.

As of today, I'm waiting.

I love the history of art and I am often fascinated by both the psychology of the artists in renaissance Italy as well as intricate geopolitical backdrop in which this particular work was ensconced. The authors do an incredible job of painstakingly detailing the historical veracity of their claims, which to be honest I was skeptical about before reading the book.

Their discoveries are enlightening, entertaining and not the least bit shocking. I applaud them for tackling such a controversial topic with scholarly aplomb. To the critics who harp on minor points or site comparisons to the Da Vinci Code, I would firstly recommend actually reading the book, and second I would point out that this work sites references for all claims which can, with a bit of time and effort on your part, be easily corroborated. Its easy to throw stones from the peanut gallery, a bit more challenging to open your mind to these new and exciting ideas.

A most thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening read.

I was at first skeptical about yet another Dan Brown type art-history revisionist document, but was tempted by the Bruschini rave review to give it a try. Definitely not a Da Vinci Code knock-off. This is not a "whodunnit" novel. It's a very well written innovative expose. I was simply amazed by some of the insights that never occurred to me before. I am not an academic, but I still learned quite a bit from this book and strongly recommend it. Of course, the pictures are fantastic.

I have read all of the reviews on Amazon. None of them attack the factual accuracy or historic background contained in this book. The insights and evaluations are precisely delineated. Opinions are clearly separated from facts. The scholarship and erudition shown cannot be put down as passing off "a fantasy as history". It is disingenous to denigrate the book as an attempt to duplicate The Da Vinci Code formula. This book contains an enormous amount of accurate historic background that is not generally known but derived from intense, careful research. It is a page turner as well. Kudos for the excellent pictures. The eye sees what it sees. Pointing out that the right side of the brain is accurately reflected in the image of the creation is a stunning observation. There are many more illustrations that bear out the accuracy of the text. Instead of putting this masterwork down as a hoax it should be studied and enjoyed by all who want to understand the Sistine Chapel Ceiling and its creator more fully.

The authors have done a fantastic job presenting material-whether one agrees or disagrees-that is both eye-opening and informative. The cross-section of art and religion is well-known but this book takes it to another level. Read the book and draw your own conclusions. The book cover is spectacular!

The book is a "Michelangelo Code" of sorts, but like Dan Brown's novel, it offers no documentary evidence and nary a footnote to back up its claims.

As someone who has led many a tour in the Sistine Chapel, the first thing that struck me about the book was how the claims of Blech and Doliner revolve around the most frequently asked questions by visitors to the chapel.

Why is there so much Old Testament imagery in a Christian chapel, many query as they see the cycle of Moses on the walls and Genesis, painted by Michelangelo across the ceiling.

The authors declare that Michelangelo changed his original commission from the Twelve Apostles requested by Pope Julius II to the Genesis cycle out of a secret sympathy for Jews. But Pope Sixtus IV, the uncle of Julius, had already hired the finest painters in Florence 25 years earlier to decorate the lower panels with the stories of Moses paralleling the life of Christ.

As art historians and theologians know, the point of these images was to represent the seamless flow from the Old Testament to the New Testament, the fulfillment of God's covenant with man through the coming of Christ. As a consecrated chapel where the Pope would celebrate the Eucharist some 40 times a year, the theme of God's plan for man's salvation starting from the origins of our need to be saved was an apt choice for the ceiling.

But for Michelangelo, the subject of Genesis offered the possibility of accomplishing a feat never done before: Painting a narrative 60 feet off the ground and making it readable from the floor through his unique sculptural painting.

Doliner and Blech insist that Michelangelo learned about Kabala, a form of Jewish Gnosticism, in the garden of Lorenzo de Medici in Florence, when at 15 the young artist went to study sculpture there.

They hypothesize that Pico della Mirandola was the origin of Michelangelo's interest in Kabala.

Pico, a philosopher and humanist, had formed a syncretistic theory of all ancient thought from Plato to the Arab writings of Averroes to Kabala and the Bible. Like Thomas Aquinas' "Sententiae," Pico dreamed of defending his thesis before an international congress of scholars, but many of his theses were condemned as heretical and ultimately Pico retired to Florence.

Pico, at the time Michelangelo met him, was closely tied to Giacomo Savonarola, the famed Florentine Dominican preacher. By then Pico had already recanted his heterodox theories.

The authors overlook that Michelangelo was a third order Franciscan, like his hero Dante, as well as the fact that while Michelangelo never mentioned Pico, he often recalled the sermons of Savonarola throughout his life.

But what they conspicuously neglect is that Michelangelo was taking a hammer and chisel into his hands for the very first time and embarking on the greatest love affair of his life, with the art of sculpture. Michelangelo's messages would not be interesting to us if his art were not so powerful, and that richness of his works comes from the ceaseless practice of his art. We honor him today for his extraordinary talent, which he knew was God-given.

So how do Doliner and Blech turn him into a propagandist with crypto-Jewish sentiments and an anti-papal agenda?

Drawing on Dr. Frank Meshberger's 1990 article in the Journal of American Medicine, where he proposed that the cape of God in the creation of Man was shaped like a cross-section of the human brain, the authors seize on the idea, speculating that it is the right side of the brain, which according to Kabala contains secret God-given knowledge.

Even if Meshberger's theory were correct, one would only have to look at the Gospel of John 1:1, "In the beginning there was the Word," a source with which Michelangelo was certainly more familiar, to find the idea of God as Logos.

Many tourists over the years have wondered why God, in the creation of the sun and moon, is so prominently featured from the back.

In the hands of these authors, the tired old tour guide joke that this was the origin of the term "mooning," becomes the basis of their anti-papal theory. They claim that Michelangelo made God "moon" the Pope, because he was so angry about having to paint the chapel instead of work on the sculptural commission he had been promised.

From here they extrapolate that Michelangelo was disgusted with the corruption of the papal court, as well as the Church's treatment of the Jews and added figures making other obscene gestures at the Pope. Besides the fact that these other gestures are nowhere to be seen, it is ironic that two writers purporting to be familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures missed the most obvious scriptural reference to God's "back parts," when Moses in Exodus 33 asks to see God's glory and is denied because no one can see God's face and live.

God, to show his favor of Moses, allows him to look upon His "back parts." The Christian understanding of this event is that in the Old Testament man cannot see God, but with the Word made flesh, everyone could finally look upon God's face.

This theological point, which justifies Christian art, explains why Christians have a visual culture and why Michelangelo could dare to paint God.

The reason why Doliner and Blech have a chapel to study is because the people who gathered in that space and the man who painted it believed that God descended among men as Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, and in that space during the Mass, we could relive the encounter with the living God.

Ultimately, the authors claim that Michelangelo, gainfully employed and greatly respected within the Vatican walls, was betraying the trust placed in by the Pope and theologians of the court, to advertise his own interests on the walls of the Sistine Chapel.

It is perhaps not surprising that this idea occurred to co-author Roy Doliner, who despite a lack of any formal education in art history or theology has been able to earn a living giving tours at the Vatican Museums. He hangs his own agenda on isolated images from the chapel without any consideration of the chapel's meaning and function as a whole.

The book is redolent with anti-papal sentiment, despite lip service paid elsewhere by Blech to Pope John Paul II and the "good Pope John XXIII."

According to these authors, the Pope, his court and the endless stream of theologians, historians, saints and philosophers who have meditated on the chapel, were blind to this "code"; only the wisdom of Doliner and Blech could see to the mind and heart of Michelangelo. Gnosticism at its best.

In the end, Doliner and Blech's interpretation of the chapel mirrors others that see the chapel as a sort of Protestant manifesto, and is only slightly more plausible than another recent theory that the chapel contains encrypted messages from aliens.

Gender studies, psychologists, gay activists and thousands of others have seen themselves reflected in the ceiling and have co-opted Michelangelo for their own agendas over the years.

Bottom line: If everyone can find him or herself reflected in the ceiling of the chapel, it makes Michelangelo pretty universal. And isn't that the definition of Catholic?

* * *

Bought it the day it came out and couldn't put it down.

The book was fascinating, plausible and thought provoking.

I'd say the best description of the content is that it is a clever mix:

*Parts of it takes respected ideas that other scholars have noted (like Ross King's suggestion re. flipping the bird, fyi to the other reviewer), and expand them

*Parts of it respond to famous questions asked about the ceiling -and provide new theories, many of which to my mind were as credible as the "accepted" answers, or more.

The tone was great...with a sprinkling of stories, facts, pictures, and wow-moments of revelation.

The best punch line of all: 500 years ago, Michelangelo basically said what Pope John Paul did so recently -that the Church has Jewish roots and the Church should embrace that heritage. Michelangelo didn't want to become Jewish -he wanted to be a better Christian and usher in an age where all religions learn from each other.

Wouldn't it be nice if that would happen already? :(

Anyway, I highly recommend this book!

Enough has been said by other 1 star reviews with which I agree. I just want to add that every tourist visiting the Medici Chapel in Florence is told even by the lousiest guide that the Michelangelo's statue representing Lorenzo de' Medici is not THAT Lorenzo but a much less distinguished relative. These two amateurs are claiming to shed new light on Michelangelo's intentions and even lack BASIC knowledge of his work. I wasted 22 euros but I had many a laugh. Risible

What makes a book a work of art; a "classic?" A lot of things, but one is the book's ability to never grow "old" and to always be able to be seen in a new light.

Michael Angelo's Sistine Chapel is a classic. And "The Sistine Secrets" sheds new light on the subject. The recent resoration of the Sistine Frescoes combined with the recent studies of Kabbalah, provide a new and exciting perspective on the Biblical messages that make the Sistine Chapel ceiling not only a great work of art, but a source of religious teachings that now have a new glow for 21st century viewers and readers.

Benjamin Blech and Roy Doliner are to be applauded for the contribution their book makes to art and religious history. It is said that when Michael Angelo completed his sketch of Moses, he hit the knee of the statue and shouted, "Why don't you speak to me?" Because of Blech and Doliner, the Sistine Chapel now speaks to us.