Tiago M. 🇳🇱🇧🇷

The Creation of Adam is the iconic ceiling fresco which forms a central panel of Michelangelo's magnum opus, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, completed in 1512. It depicts the moment in Genesis when God gives the gift of life to the first man, inspired by the passage: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." A now-common observation is that God reaches out through what appears to be the prefrontal cortex of an anatomically correct human brain, represented here by a crimson cloak. This was the famous claim published by American doctor Frank Lynn Meshberger in 1990. Although Michelangelo is not explicitly known to have studied the brain, he is well known to have been a master anatomist, who began conducting his own dissections as early as his teenage years. As the prefrontal cortex is the key area of the brain which deals with creative thinking, and because Adam is depicted already alive and conscious, it appears God is not just giving life to Adam, but bestowing upon him the gift of artistic creativity - the talent that Michelangelo believed was a divine gift to him. In the remarkable composition, the fingers of Adam and God famously do not touch, reflecting that man can never obtain divine perfection. But my favourite detail is that the finger of God is fully extended whilst Adam's is not. The implication - to find God, we need only reach towards him as vigorously as he reaches towards us.