Brains in Art

Above (top): Internet found image of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" fresco panel on the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Museum. Below that: From the article in the Guardian: Detail from the Transfiguration of Christ by Gerard David showing a resemblance to a section of the brain (right)


Brainwave casts new light on old masters

Dear Art Fan,
I am not sure if I am allowed to do this, but I also am not sure how long news articles stay online and the following is pretty cool. So, . . . someone please tell me if I will have any bad happenings because I posted someone else's writing verbatim on my blog.
The following is an article from the United Kingdom's Guardian by Maev Kennedy. I hope you enjoy it below. During my first trip to Italia, including to the Vatican Museum, I was told the brain story regarding Michelangelo's fresco composition of the Sistine Chapel's "Creation of Adam" by a tour guide. This was the only tour I took -- promoted by Alessandro Downtown, the hostel that I stay in when in Roma. It was well worth the 15 euros! I have always been interested in art and anatomy, especially when my friend Vasily stated bluntly, "Artists, not doctors, started the study of anatomy." But then, artists do have the reputation for not following rules (It is my understanding that up until the Renaissance and perhaps even beyond it, it was against the law to defame a corpse by any kind of study of it).
Enjoy!


Maev Kennedy
Friday December 28, 2007
The Guardian

Any onlooker fleetingly imagining they spotted a human brain in the flurry of cherubs and drapery swirling around the figure of God as he stretches out a hand to raise Adam to life in Michaelangelo's [sic] famous fresco from the Sistine Chapel would probably conclude there was some malfunction in their own brain.

However, four eminent scientists are convinced the swirls are not meaningless decoration, but a transverse section of the sagittal section of a human brain.

The resemblance to a brain was first suggested by another scientist, FL Meshberger, but now Alessandro Paluzzi, Antonio Belli, Peter Bain and Laura Viva, from the neurosurgery, neurosciences and radiology departments of James Cook university hospital in Middlesbrough, Teesside, Charing Cross hospital in London and Southampton University, have dissected his theory and tracked down more brains in masterpieces by other Renaissance painters. "The idea came to me while looking at Raffaello's Transfiguration. Being a neurosurgeon I could immediately see a brain in the painting," Paluzzi said.

Partly as a joke to entertain sceptical [sic] colleagues, he and the team went on a brain trawl, and found many other examples. The team is convinced the artists were fascinated by the scientific discoveries being made by anatomists, but their theories had to be concealed in the imagery of their paintings, particularly when their clients were so often senior clergy who might see their scientific interests as blasphemous or even heretical, an offence punishable by death. The study, Brain imaging in the Renaissance, features in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.


The Guardian's story

Michelangelo and Humor