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    The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican
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    The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican
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    The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican
    Ebook486 pages7 hours

    The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican

    By Benjamin Blech and Roy Doliner

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    About this ebook

    The Shocking Secrets of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Artwork

    The recent cleaning of the Sistine Chapel frescoes removed layer after layer of centuries of accumulated tarnish and darkness. The Sistine Secrets endeavors to remove the centuries of prejudice, censorship, and ignorance that blind us to the truth about one of the world's most famous and beloved art treasures.

    Some images that appeared in the print edition of this book are unavailable in the electronic edition due to rights reasons.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 27, 2009
    ISBN9780061987458

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    Reviews for The Sistine Secrets

    4/5

    11 ratings6 reviews

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    • 1/5
      The text as displayed is UNREADABLE, with NO SPACES between words. So how is one able to review the title?
    • 5/5
      best ever used
    • 5/5
      very interesting - but to read with a little bit of care as there are some significant errors. e.g. the old st peters Basilika had to be demolished beging rotten beyond repair. So much that a piece of the ceiling fell down Into the nave causing much harm. Julius II had no choice ordering its demolition. or king "minos" the lover of Gold really should be "midas". Not just misspelled Once but throughout the book. So be fascinated but Check and recheck the facts.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This is one of those books that I wish I had known about and read before I had the opportunity to visit the Sistine Chapel this past summer. Whether you have been to the Sistine Chapel or are planning a visit there in the future, be sure to track down this book and read it. You will never see the works of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel the same way again. Although this book is illustrated, the book begs to be issued in a deluxe version with more and better illustrations of what the authors are talking about. On one critical not, the authors return to some of the same themes (how much Michelangelo hated to paint) one time to many. All in all, a great experience is to be had by reading this book. I plan on reading it again.
    • 4/5
      For someone who vowed I would never read anything on art appreciation or art history if only God would help me pass my humanities class, I must say I found this book extremely interesting and fun to read (of course, since i long since gave up God, I suppose he'll forgive me for breaking my promise, since I did indeed pass humanities). A hypothesis about the hidden messages Michaelangelo painted into the Sistine Chapel, in essence, some suggest, thumbing his nose at the Catholic hierarchy. This author suggests that the messages can be unraveled by looking into the Jewish Kabbalah, and explains exactly how he woudl interpret the various pictures in the chapel. Darn, now I have to find a book on the Kabbalah, and my list is just so long already! I highly recommend this book, though I do have some reservations about accepting his thesis without more research.
    • 5/5
      An absolutely fascinating, if controversial, analysis of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes. Blech and Doliner argue that Michelangelo held universalistic views not only embracing antiquity and humanistic approach, but also religious views that were in direct conflict with the views of the Catholic church of the time, and were based on Neo-Platonism, hermeneutics and Jewish Kabbalah. Michelangelo was a thoroughly Italian Renaissance figure with his primary love focused on the Antiquity and classical Greek and Roman art and deep religious convictions. But, he was also thoroughly fed up with the immorality, militarism and nepotism of the popes and the church, and everything points to the possiblity that he did not even remain Catholic, but became Protestant by the end of his life. Hence the Sistine ceiling paintings are full of anti-papal messages and devoid of even single New Testament reference or figure, and awash in Old Testament lore instead, very much with a Jewish Bible slant. Being a universalist, Michelangelo wanted to meld the pagan Greek and Roman heritage with the origins of the Christian religion and the New Testament. Some of these elements were well entrenched when he was doing his art, but the Jews were shunned. They were labelled the murderers of Christ for many centuries, denounced by the Church, and it was only in the twentieth century, and by the end of it, that the Church has somewhat let up on that stance. According to Blech, Michelangelo brought it upon himself to rehabilitate the Jews, especially that he saw what was happening in Rome at that time as an aberration of the original religious teachings, and preached Jewish Bible stories and interpretations as warnings. He couldn't do it openly- death would surely follow pretty quickly- so he secretly embedded it in his work. It seems that he got a lot of his knowledge from Neoplatonists of his time, some of whom were his teachers (e.g., Pico della Mirandola) when he was growing up at the Medici court in Florence.The book shows great scholarship of its author and his vast religious knowledge. I learned more about Michelangelo, papacy, Old Testament and Jewish Kabbalah from it than I probably would from separate sources on them.