Sun Symbolism and Cosmology in “Michelangelo’s Last Judgment” by Valerie Shrimplin
July 13, 2006 by Alun
[Cross-posted to Revise & Dissent]
Valerie Shrimplin’s Sun Symbolism and Cosmology in “Michelangelo’s Last Judgment” is a difficult book to write about. I like it, but it tackles such a varied range of sources that it raises a lot of intriguing questions. Certainly more than can be covered in one blog post so, for now, I’ll leave them for a later post. For now I’ll start from the popular, if incorrect, view of the arrival of Copernicanism.
Sometime in the 16th century Nicolaus Copernicus discovered that contrary to the teachings of the church, the Earth went round the Sun. Fearing condemnation by the Church he refused to publish his theory until his death. The next day Galileo buys a copy of the book and is inspired to discover Jupiter’s moons with a telescope. This proves Copernicus’s theory and he tells the world about it. In the Vatican all hell breaks loose, figuratively speaking. The Inquistion is sent to deal with Galileo, much to his surprise, and so the church becomes an army of darkness in the War for Enlightenment.
The above is nonsense, but perhaps a fair stereotype of the Science vs. Religion battle that continues to this day. So what would it mean if there was a depiction of a heliocentric universe in the Sistene chapel dating from the sixteenth century in full view of everyone?
In the midst of all assuredly dwells the Sun. For in this most beautiful who would place this luminary in any other or better position from which he can illuminate the whole at once? Indeed, some rightly call Him the Light of the World, others, the Mind or ruler of the Universe: Trismegistus names him the visible God, Sophocles’ Electra calls him the all-seeing. So indeed the Sun remains, as if in his kingly dominion, governing the family of Heavenly bodies which circles around him.
Shrimplin begins her book with this quote which could be read as a description of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement. It’s not. It’s from De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Ok, so Michelangelo could have been inspired by Copernicus. The problem is that Michelangelo finished his painting in 1541 and De Revolutionibus was not published until 1543.
It’s long been accepted that there is plenty that’s innovative about Michelangelo’s work. If you look at previous Last Judgements they’re quite different. It was usual for the painting to be in three strips, as shown in the Torcello Last Judgement.
Here you have the Earth between Heaven and Hell. The composition is that the image is laid out in strips which don’t bleed into each other. Each is self-contained. There’s a whole load of similiar depictions that Shrimplin can show. This is fairly straight forward symbolism, you go up to Heaven and the wretched get cast down to Hell. There are problems though when you think about how the world works. This is pre-Copernicus, so it’s thought the Sun goes round the Earth, but not necessarily a flat earth.
Dante’s Divine Comedy explores the problem. Like most educated people in the Middle Ages Dante accepted the world was round. If Hell is down, and the Earth is round then logically that puts Hell at the centre of the Earth. If the Earth is the centre of the universe then that makes the Universe Haidocentric.
I’d heard Valerie Shrimplin give a talk on the Last Judgement at the National Astronomy Meeting earlier this year, and it was the connections to Dante that perplexed me. In the book the connections are very clear. Not only is the Divine Comedy a very considered and carefully consructed cosmology, it also informed much thought on the nature of the universe in the Renaissance. It is so detailed that it pinpoints the exact centre of the Earth. In the lowest circle of Hell with Cain, Judas and whoever it is that thought unsolicted commercial email was a good idea, is Lucifer. Travelling along Lucifer’s body the centre of the earth is found on his thigh. This appears to be an inversion of Christ, who bears an inscription marking him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords on his thigh. Dante was also keenly aware of the Haidocentric problem. He decided the heavens moved about a different place, and contrasted heaven as a source of light and heat with Hell which got progressively darker and colder as one drew towards the centre. Michelangelo is known to have been thoroughly familiar with the text and also the commentary associated with it.
The commentary which came with the Divine Comedy at the time was by Cristoforo Landino who was part of the Neoplatonic movement of the Renaissance. I tend to get stuck when trying to tell the difference between something and neo-something. In the case of Neoplatonists this is difficult because in their opinion they were simply Platonists. In the Renaissance Neoplatonism is the reinterpretation of Platonic texts from a Christian viewpoint. The philosophy of Plato was digested and the mistakes like polytheism thrown out so that it could be understood in light of the Christian understanding. Light is very much a key word, and Michelangelo’s painting is accepted to be influenced by the neoplatonic symbolism of light that was in use at the time. Shrimplin also gives an interesting interpretation of the Cave of Hell which would be seen just over the altar. This could be Plato’s Cave, and the light of God is literally enlightenment for those within.
This was the section of the book I was least comfortable with. She put in a lot of evidence on Neoplatonism in the painting. For instance Jesus may have swastika arms, making him form the symbol of the Sun. If the cave is Plato’s cave, then this makes the neoplatonic interpretation of the painting more compelling, but you have to accept this neoplatonic interpretation to have the cave as Plato’s cave. This bothered me as I read it, more or less up to the point where she said that while the idea is interesting, the argument is circular.
There much more that could be said about the philosophical and theological reasons for equating Christ with a sun figure. She includes it in her book, but I’m wary of reproducing the thing wholesale - or worse reproducing it, but getting key elements of her argument wrong. However, no matter how much evidence there is that Christ is the Sun, none of this explains how Copenican heliocentrism appears in the painting. De Revolutionibus was simply printed too late to have any influence, so how could the painting be Copernican?
Arthur Koestler called De Revolutionibus “The book that nobody read”. Shrimplin points out that with its dense mathematics it would have been a difficult, if not impossible book for the layman to follow. However, the idea of of heliocentricism is fairly simple. The idea had frequently been popping up before Copernicus. Shrimiplin lists many thinkers such as Buridan and Nicholas of Cusa among the examples. Copernicus himself was also lecturing on his ideas early in his career. His Commentariolus dates from around 1515. This isn’t a full proof of heliocentricism, but an outline. Shrimplin points out that Copernicus was invited to Rome as part of a general invitation in 1514. She also notes a record by Matthias Miechow in the library of Cracow that there was a short treatise on heliocentricism. Rather than hiding from the Catholic church his work was well known, and he was in correspondance with many leading figures in the church. She also has evidence that it was a common topic to discuss in Florence in the 1530s. The Vatican would have been well aware of heliocentricism and would have spotted it if Michelangelo tried to sneak it in. So how did Michelangelo decide what to paint? Probably not like this:
You don’t paint a huge wall on a whim. Shrimplin shows how Michelangelo would have presented cartoons of the composition for discussion and would have taken theological discussion on what to include. She combines this with analysis of the technique to show what is new about the composition in terms of perspective and arrangement. She also shows that it is probable that the painting was planned from a single reference. Diagonals arranging the ranks of the adoring crowd looking to Jesus were focussed on one point - found on his thigh. The evidence Shrimplin brings forward from the theological, philosophical and scientific debates of the time show that heliocentricism was a well-known topic and that Michelangelo planned his painting with the approval of the church.
The book helps challenge the received wisdom that there has to be a conflict between religion and science. Shrimplin’s work tackles the philosophies of the time as much as the religion. In a similar vein Stillman Drake revised much of what was thought about Galileo by presenting his arrest as a philosophical dispute rather than a rejection of religion. That’s not to say there was no religious opposition, Shrimplin notes that Protestants like Martin Luther were very much opposed to Copernicanism on theological grounds.
It’s a fascinating book, and one that will bear re-reading. Shrimplin writes well, which to an extent bothers me because I have wondered if it’s the quality of the writing that I find persuasive more than the argument. That’ll be the topic of another post. It challenges a few assumptions of my own. One reason I was slow in reading this was I’d get past a couple of pages and then put it down to mull for a quarter of an hour. She has said that a popular version would sell. If there’s a market for historical secrets hidden in the heart of the Catholic church, she could be right.
