Michelangelo’s God Separating the Light from the Darkness
Somewhere in this author’s archives there exists a lunchtime lecture entitled, “The Sistine Chapel Ceiling: I know, I know, but have you ever really looked at it?” Its powerful images have become so familiar that we no longer stop to read them. It’s time to look. In this essay, we will pause at the foot of the altar and look up at God as he separates the light from the darkness.
Presumably we all know the image: Michelangelo’s grand vision of the Creator has shaped our mental image of God the Father for centuries. In medieval imagery, the Creator was represented as the Hand of God alone, but with the Renaissance revival of Classical ideals, he has become a full-blown, muscular, masculine figure. To Michelangelo, man was the highest measure of creation; if man was made in God’s image, then God could be represented as the perfect, ideal figure of man. And he is set in the perfect contrapposto pose, balanced, but at the same time dynamic, his solidity and simultaneous motion representing the perfect being and action of God. With one hand, he pushes back the darkness of chaos, while the other, brilliantly lit, brings the light into being. Yet the figure of God, which unlike the rest of the ceiling is seen from below, is also lit from below, as if light were emanating from the altar directly beneath him.
The Angels of Day & Night
Thus does Michelangelo give life to the first chapter of Genesis: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God separated the light from the darkness.” But he does not stop there. The verses continue, “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.”
Four figures surround the central scene, athletic male nudes perched on the fictive architectural frame. The one at the lower right, by God’s knee, hoists a garland of oak leaves (the pope’s family emblem) over his shoulder as if beginning a day’s labors. He is thus, perhaps, the personification of Day. Above him, a figure in a dark cloak closes his eyes and nods his head as if falling asleep: he is Night. Opposite him, Morning stretches as if awakening, and below him, Evening reclines in rest at the end of a day’s work.
These young males who punctuate the ceiling at intervals have long vexed art historians and are generally just called ignudi, the nudes. They are idealized masculine figures who put a great deal of strength and effort into holding up garlands: the best interpretation is that they are the angels who uphold Creation. If man is God’s highest earthly creation, how better to represent angels? And squeezed into odd corners we find their counterparts, the so-called “bronze-colored figures,” irrationally posed, twisted, upside down, screaming, the opposite of the ignudi. These, then, are probably demons, and during the famous cleaning of the ceiling, one of them was found to have horns.
The Whole Story of Scripture
Besides the angels, two more features demarcate the Separation scene, the two bronze medallions above God’s hands and below his feet. Most of the bronze medallions on the ceiling represent scenes from the Book of Maccabees, so they are generally interpreted as a reference to the military ambitions of the warlike Pope Julius II, who commissioned the decoration of the ceiling. These two medallions, however, show the sacrifice of Abraham, and Elijah in the fiery chariot. Together they can be seen as a summing-up of two of the major themes illustrated by the ceiling as a whole.
To read the ceiling in toto, we begin with the Separation of Light and Dark, move through four more Creation episodes and then encounter the Fall of Man, followed by its disastrous consequences in the story of Noah. Flanking the central panels are the prophets and sybils who foretold the coming of the Messiah, and between them the actual ancestors of Christ. We can read this as the whole story of Scripture: the goodness of Creation, the Fall, and man’s need for redemption through the coming of Christ, who will bring us back into union with God. (And, by implication, the agency of the Church—in particular via the papacy—to bring that message to the world.) These two medallions, then, Abraham and Elijah, remind us of the messianic promise to Abraham and the promise of theosis, a final reunion with God as Elijah is carried bodily up to heaven.
A Final Visionary Burst
Although the Separation is the beginning of the ceiling’s narrative sequence, it was the last panel to be painted. The ceiling is painted a fresco; that is, the pigment is applied directly to a coat of wet plaster. The paint bonds permanently with the wall, but any plaster that has dried unpainted must be cut away and fresh plaster applied the next working day. By looking at the seams, it is possible to determine how much was completed each day; one head, for example, was generally considered a good day’s work. Michelangelo seems to have painted this panel in a single eight-hour span.
The broadness of Michelangelo’s technique and the abstract sweep of his brushstrokes (without any loss of the figure’s integrity) speak of a final visionary burst of creativity. Giorgio Vasari, in his 1550 Lives of the Artists, sees it as the peak of Michelangelo’s art:
. . . to demonstrate the perfection of his art and the greatness of God, Michelangelo depicted God dividing the light from darkness in this scene, where [God] is seen in all his majesty as he, with open arms, sustains himself alone in a demonstration of love and energy.
Finally, we observed above that this panel, unlike the rest of the ceiling, is lit as if from below. The Sistine Chapel houses papal elections (and is a major tourist attraction), but in Julius II’s time, it was used for papal audiences and for special Eucharistic Masses, at which leading theologians would preach at length—for up to six hours. Eucharistic adoration followed. A screen, set on line with the Fall of Man, divided the chapel in two. As adoration began, the celebrant elevated the host in the doorway, as Christ entered into unsullied Creation and was set on the altar. Thus it is the light of Christ that shines upward and reilluminates his Father’s Creation.
Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity (St. James Press, 2023). She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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