This is one of the most beautiful and iconic images of Western art. The entire project that includes it is the frescoes of its ceiling. Sistine Chapel in the Vatican– also went down in history, but this one is so popular that it was reproduced countless times, in different ways. And according to the new theory, created by the famous Renaissance artist, Michael Angelos (1475-1564), assigned himself a prominent place in the famous “Creation of Adam”: the face of God, which with the tip of his finger gives life to the prototype, seems to be his own.

“Michelangelo considered himself the messiah of art, so this hypothesis makes sense,” said Adriano Marinazzo, an art critic and curator at the Mascarelle Art Museum in Williamsburg, who recently published his theory in the Wall Street Journal, a few days later. ago, the Italian scientific journal Critica d’Arte. His arguments, indeed, are based not only on Michelangelo’s notorious selfishness or slightly brash sense of humor, which is also said to have distinguished him, but on more serious research evidence.

In fact, Adriano Marinazzo (who has discovered other unknown facts about Michelangelo in the past) came to this conclusion while studying a Renaissance artist’s sonnet in which he, among other things, protested that his health was worth the hard work in the Sistine Chapel. In the margins of the poem, Michelangelos drew a man, probably himself, who, with his legs slightly crossed, drew a somewhat frightening face with his hand stretched out to the ceiling. Most scholars have focused on this sonnet as evidence of Michelangelo’s discomfort with the Sistine Chapel. However, Marinazzo wondered why the artist had painted himself next to the poem cross-legged, a dangerous thing if he was on scaffolding, as he was doing at the time. Using the technique, the art historian rotated the digital image of the drawing and was surprised to find that the pose of the body is mysteriously similar to the pose of God in The Creation of Adam. “He hid in the ceiling. His face is decorated,” said Marinazzo, “but this is the closest thing he has ever done to present himself as divine.”

Other researchers also expressed their doubts – Paul Barolsky stated that “everyone has theories”, recalled that Michelangelo in his writings often underestimated the appearance of his face and called for more solid evidence. However, it seems that some of his colleagues agree with Marinatzos from different sources. William Wallace told the Wall Street Journal that the Renaissance artist liked to mock himself, so he could take such a step. And Gary Radke remarked that “Michelangelo had an unimaginable ego. All his art was autobiographical. In that sense, he was a contemporary artist.”