Michelangelo painted a ‘secret feminist code’ in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, says new study

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searchers say that Renaissance painter and sculptor Michelangelo hid multiple symbols of female reproductive organs and pagan symbols for femininity and fertility within his art in Rome’s Sistine Chapel.

The Daily Mail reported Friday on work by a team of researchers from Porto Alegre, Brazil’s Federal University of Health Sciences who say that the artist flouted Catholic religious law by quietly inserting the symbols into his work.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Deivis de Campos said that eight of the ram skulls painted around the chapel dome are meant to echo the shapes of a uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes. Male and female figures representing Adam and Eve are positioned so that Eve’s arms are located at the center of the ceiling. The painter styled them into the form of a chalice, a pagan symbol of fertility.

Dr. de Campos and his colleagues presented their findings in the academic journal Clinical Anatomy. The study abstract said:

A number of published articles have suggested that each element of Renaissance art contains an inner meaning. Some of these elements include the choice of theme and protagonists, faces selected for the characters, colors used, species of flowers and trees chosen, animals depicted, positions of the elements, posture of the characters and their gestures, juxtapositions in the scenes, and even the very scenario or landscape. All of these elements are thought to have hidden meanings. In this context, this manuscript presents a new hypothesis suggesting that Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) may have concealed symbols associated with female anatomy in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (painted 1508–1512) in Rome. Thus, this paper is useful to better understand the history of anatomy and corroborates recent descriptions that have suggested the possible existence of anatomic figures concealed in many of Michelangelo’s works.