The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican [With Poster] [Hardcover]

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.