The Creation of Adam is a fresco in the vault of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michel Angelo around the year 1511.
In 1505, Michel Angelo was invited to return to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II. He was commissioned to build the Pope’s tomb, which was to include forty statues and be finished in five years.
Under the patronage of the Pope, Michel Angelo experienced constant interruptions in his work at the tomb to perform many other tasks. Although Michel Angelo worked on the tomb for 40 years, it was never finished to his satisfaction.3 It is located in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and is most famous for its central figure of Moses, completed in 1516.4 Of the other statues destined for the grave, two known as the Rebel Slave and the Dying Slave, are now in the Louvre3
During the same period, Michel Angelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took approximately four years to complete (1508-1512) .4 According to Condivi’s account, Bramante, who was working on the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica, he resented Michel Ángelo’s commission for the Pope’s tomb and convinced the Pope to commission it in a medium with which he was unfamiliar, so that it might fail. on homework.5
Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the Twelve Apostles on the triangular pendentives that supported the ceiling and to cover the central part of the ceiling with ornaments.6 Michel Angelo persuaded Pope Julius to give him a free hand and proposed a different scheme and more complex, which represented the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Promise of Salvation through the prophets and the genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger decoration scheme within the chapel that represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.6
The composition extends over 500 square meters of ceiling, 7 and contains more than 300 figures.6 At its center there are nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: The Creation of the Earth by God; God’s creation of humanity and its fall from God’s grace; and finally, the state of Humanity represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives that support the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of Jesus; seven prophets of Israel and five Sibyls, prophetic women from the classical world.6 Among the most famous ceiling paintings are The Creation of Adam, Adam, and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Flood, the Prophet Jeremiah, and the Sibyl of Cumash.
Michel Angelo’s main source of inspiration for his Adam in the Creation of Adam may have been a cameo showing a naked Caesar Augustus riding a saddle on a Capricorn.8 This cameo is now in Alnwick Castle, Northumberland.9 The cameo used to belong to Cardinal Domenico Grimani who lived in Rome while Michel Angelo painted the ceiling. The evidence suggests that Michelangelo and Grimani were friends. This cameo offers an alternative theory for those scholars who are dissatisfied with the theory that Michel Angelo was primarily inspired by Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Adam in his Creation of Adam.10