The Pope and the Painter

This month, Suffolk-based Artist, Educator and Presenter Grace Adam focuses on the visual politics of the Vatican with the story of God, Adam and Michelangelo

I thought I’d go large this month! As the Pope has been in the news recently, it got me thinking about the fabulous, forceful visual politics of the Vatican.

The Creation of Adam is a fresco completed in 1512 by Michelangelo Buonarroti; known to us as just Michelangelo, and to his contemporaries as Il Divino. Twenty metres above the ground on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, Adam and God jostle with another 340 classical and biblical figures by Michelangelo. The vast work depicts the moment God reaches out of his billowing cloak to touch Adam and imbue him with life. Whatever you believe, it’s one of the most famous images in the western world for good reason. It is a brilliant, beautiful and daring invention. Michelangelo manages to make that moment both deeply religious and deeply human, and of course his muscular, contorted heroic figures are spellbinding.

Contrary to common belief, the Catholic church allowed strictly regulated dissections for scientific purposes. Like many of his fellow artists Michelangelo attended these public events and was permitted to carry out his own dissections at the Monastery of Santo Spirito. He knew how a body was built from the inside out.

The ceiling took four years of innovation and labour and when unveiled, his fresco was largely met with wonder and awe. Those who objected felt that God should be less human, that Adam should be less slothful, and that there weren’t enough angels. To top it all, the sheer number of naked bodies on the ceiling was inappropriate! In1563, a few years before the Michelangelo’s death, artist Daniele da Volterra was employed to cover up the figures with fig leaves and loincloths. The unfortunate painter was known by his contemporaries as Il Braghettone, ‘The Breeches Maker’. Through the centuries, a total of 40 loincloths were added; about half of which were removed in the 1990s restoration, so its underwear for some, and nudity for others.

Painting on the 600 sq. metre ceiling was arduous. The artist designed and built a vast stepped scaffold from timber, iron and hemp which locked into the walls, so that religious services could continue beneath him, and no dust dropped on the Pope.

Unlike some films you may have seen, Michelangelo didn’t lie on his back but stood and painted. During restoration in the 1980s/90s, the original scaffold holes were found and used again for the modern scaffolding.

Michelangelo led the movement away from Renaissance balance and harmony into Mannerism – which was all high emotion, distortion and psychological intensity. Terribilità was a word invented to describe his work by his peers; intense, majestic, powerful.

The story goes that Raphael, his great rival snuck in while Il Divino was away in Rome, saw the unfinished work, and immediately added a portrait of Michelangelo into his famous painting The School of Athens which he was working on just next door in the Papal apartments.

Theories abound on how the artist wove secret references into the fresco. Does God’s crimson cloak hint at a uterus or is it a brain? Adam’s limp hand gives us a creature formed of clay waiting to be given his soul or consciousness. Its snug in that cloak. Nestled in there are 12 figures, but they’re not angels as you might expect.

There are no wings, and some argue that the woman looking across at Adam from under God’s left arm is Eve. Are the other eleven souls waiting to be made human?

In 1508 Pope Julius II cajoled and bullied the artist to accept this commission. The Pope persuaded Michelangelo to abandon working on his tomb to work on his ceiling! The artist wasn’t happy, thinking of himself as a sculptor, not a painter, but you don’t back out of a contract with a Pope without consequences.

Michelangelo was not what you would call a ‘finisher completer,’ but clearly it was not always his fault. Driven by his own ambition and faith, plus the demands of Popes and the Médici family (often one and the same) he was pulled in all directions; summoned to abandon one prestigious commission for another, or at the whim of an indecisive patron, it wasn’t easy.

These depictions of human beings have influenced the way western art has shown us the body for 500 years. Embraced by Rubens, Caravaggio, Rodin, Henry Moore and Francis Bacon, rejected by Realist artists of the 1840s, Impressionist artists of the 1880s, Feminist artists of the 1970s. That’s great art – it has long tentacles that stretch across histories and keep us looking, wondering and talking.

Grace Adam is hosting a Painting Workshop at Walpole Old Chapel on Saturday May 30, 2026, between 2 and 4pm. To reserve a place and for further details, contact grace@graceadam.com. Visit graceadam.co.uk and follow on Instagram. Grace is Co-Presenter on The Art Channel – watch the latest video, Hans Holbein’s ‘The Ambassadors’ in the National Gallery, London, on YouTube.

Featured image of Grace Adam – supplied