The Birth of Adam and The Death of God

A Study of The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo

What does the famous painting has to say about Man and God. Arghya Chakraborty 6/23/2012

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GOD IS DEAD (German-"Gott ist tot") --- this utterance might sound heretic or blasphemous but a German philosopher had the courage to say this in the late 19th century and his name was-Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche first proposed this groundbreaking idea in his book THE GAY SCIENCE (Published1882). The relevant paragraph reads thus--God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125, tr. Walter Kaufmann However the book which helped this concept to become popular was THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA (Composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885). God, the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent entity, was the centre of everything from the very dawn of civilization. Human beings thought themselves as mere pawns in the hands of god! God was the ultimate authority, one who was unquestionable. This started to change with the dawn of RENAISSANCE in the 15th century. The renaissance intellectuals questioned the authority of god triggering the process of de-centring of god and Nietzsches proclamation was perhaps the final nail in the coffin of god. It was during the renaissance that Man started hogging the limelight which had previously been the exclusive property of god. The renaissance art, sculpture, literature everything reflected this new belief. In this article I will take one of the most famous Renaissance paintings THE CREATION OF ADAM by Michelangelo and will try to show the painting in the light of the new renaissance belief.

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The painting is a section of Michelangelo's fresco in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Rome and it was painted in circa 1511. In the painting we can see god in the right stretching his hand towards Adam who is also stretching his hand towards god and the image of the near-touching hands has become an iconic symbol of humanity (The image has inspired NOKIAs famous Connecting People logo).The painting presents god in an eagerness to reach Adam (The symbol of Human beings at large) and no eagerness is shown on the part of Adam to reach god. Now my reading of the painting and its time period says that the eagerness shown by god to reach Adam was due to the dethronement of god during the renaissance. Earlier human beings required god to validate their existence but now the table had turned on its head and god now required human beings to validate His existence. The literary reference to this world-view can be seen in a poem namely Chad Saudagor by the Bengali poet Kalidas Ray which had these lines

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jeoC cha Ns aqlC Lfl "fl Ll ch jqj eil In the renaissance world god needed man to exist. And hence in the painting we find god desperately trying to reach Adam as only the human beings could make the existence of god possible. Faith had surged back and its place was taken by reason. And reason didnt accept the existence of god. Almost all the renaissance intellectuals held this view and this could very well explain the indifference of Adam to reach god and the desperation of god to reach Adam. It was as if god was saying Adam to breathe Life to god. The traditional giver of life here becomes the seeker of life. This might be a parodic inversion of the traditional belief. Michelangelo couldnt kill god as he was painting the ceiling of a church so he might have presented the new belief in a more nuanced and subtler way as Ive argued above. He was a genius and geniuses dont explain away things but tease the onlookers to find out the subtle tricks hidden in their creations.

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