CLEP Western Civ I

Category - Renaissance and Reformation

What type of artwork is Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, and where is it located?

  1. Fresco in Vatican City
  2. Fresco in Florence
  3. Mural in Vatican City
  4. Mural in Florence
  5. Fresco in Venice
Explanation

Answer: A - Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam is a fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, the center of the Catholic world. The artist painted numerous frescoes for the Sistine Chapel, but this is the most famous. It was painted around 1511 but is rife with complex symbolism that scholars are still trying to decipher. One critical aspect of the work, though, is the depiction of Judaic figures (like Adam, David and Jesus) with Greco-Roman aesthetics rather than Judaic or contemporary Renaissance aesthetics, which demonstrates the degree to which the classical world influenced Renaissance artists. Moreover, since these images were some of the first images (and certainly the most accomplished images, as of the Renaissance period) of biblical figures, they became the most copied and emulated biblical imagery in the Western world, leading to Christian iconography and a popular mindset that envisions the subjects in a manner that is not historically accurate.

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