Taking it Easy: Some New Facts I learned this Week

Last week’s post was very heavy on research. This week, I decided to focus on reading material and jotting down new ideas for future posts. Believe it or not but that is the hardest part about what I am starting to do. Finding interesting subjects to cover! I almost need a couple weeks just doing that. So, I thought I would post about some fun things I learned this

week while looking up subjects for future posts. Below are a couple facts I learned this week while reading some books and looking up things online.

Michelangelo giving the Pope “the Fig” on the Sistine Ceiling. Not once, but twice. This is the equivalent to the middle finger.

Cumaean Sibyl. Sistine Ceiling. Notice the left two putti and the hand.

The Cumaean Sibyl is dressed in the Della Rovere family colors were gold and navy blue. She is also representing Rome, which is why Michelangelo is flipping this particular Sibyl off.

Profit Zacharias (with face of Pope Julias II) from the Sistine Ceiling. Notice the Putti to the left.

The Profit Zacharias is in the grandios place on the ceiling, right at the portal entrance (original one where the pope proceeds inside the chapel to start the holy processions). Here, Michelangelo (since he was strictly using Jewish and old testament Stories and profits) replaced where Jesus would be portrayed. He chose to put the portrait of Pope Julias II (for various reasons) who was probably one of the worst popes ever at the time. Here, we can see why he would be giving him “the fig”.

As early as 1215 during the Lateran Council and the Inquisition, the Catholic Church had been prosecuting Jewish peoples and marking them with yellow (at the time a yellow circle sewn into their garment, the Muslim color of urine and prostitution. They were also forced to wear “hat of shame” shown in the Last Judgement fresco in the Sistine Chapel). Michelangelo shows this in the ceiling from his portrait of Aminadab, prince of the Levites. He is also the only figure shown frontwards facing that Michelangelo ever painted.

I’ve been reading a lot about the Sistine Chapel recently, and about Michelangelo’s feelings behind painting. During his 4 years of painting the ceiling. Because of his position of standing. No, he did not lay on his back to paint the ceiling. He even wrote poetry explaining his misery and pains he had while painting the ceiling. Historians also attribute the constant pigments and plaster he was exposed to, to his failing eyesight and future blindness to this project.

Notice the doodle on the side Michelangelo drew to explain the posture he was in for years. Photo by me. Out of Michelangelo’s Notebooks, edited by Carolyn Vaughan.

Photo by me. Out of Michelangelo’s Notebooks, edited by Carolyn Vaughan

I also learned that the oldest museum in the world is the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Located on the Capitoline Hill, or Mons Saturnius, the hill dedicated to the Roman god Saturn (or Greek Titian Cronus) founded in 1471 when Pope Sixtus IV donated a large collection of bronze statues. It didn’t really “become” a museum at the time, but the donation of these sculptures to one central location and building helped define it as such.

Next week will be a more in-depth dive into some historical information. This week was a relaxing week of reading and figuring out new subjects to cover. Which, I feel like I did get a good amount to help me out for the rest of the year :) Hope this little tid-bits lesson was cool. I thought it was.

Another fact: this is not a ferret! Let me know if you can guess what she’s holding in this famous painting hehe