Regarding Sistine Chapel ceiling, how does the Pictorial scheme's Nine scenes from the Book of Genesis incorporate the Adam and Eve?
Adam and Eve For the central section of the ceiling, Michelangelo took four episodes from the story of Adam and Eve as told in the first, second and third chapters of Genesis. In this sequence of three, two of the panels are large and one small.
In the first of the pictures, one of the most widely recognized images in the history of painting, Michelangelo shows God reaching out to touch Adam. Vasari describes Adam as "a figure whose beauty, pose, and contours are of such a quality that he seems newly created by his Supreme and First Creator rather than by the brush and design of a mere mortal." From beneath the sheltering arm of God, Eve looks out somewhat apprehensively. Correspondingly, Adam reaches out to the creator, who Walter Pater states "comes with the forms of things to be, woman and her progeny, in the fold of his garment". Pater wrote of the depiction of Adam in the Creation:
Fair as the young men of the Elgin marbles, the Adam of the Sistine Chapel is unlike them in a total absence of that balance and completeness which express so well the sentiment of a self-contained, independent life. In that languid figure there is something rude and satyr-like, something akin to the rugged hillside on which it lies. His whole form is gathered into an expression of mere expectation and reception; he has hardly strength enough to lift his finger to touch the finger of the creator; yet a touch of the finger-tips will suffice.
The central scene, of God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam has been taken in its composition directly from another creation sequence, the relief panels that surround the door of the Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna, by Jacopo della Quercia, whose work Michelangelo had studied in his youth.
In the final panel of this sequence, Michelangelo combines two contrasting scenes into one panel, that of Adam and Eve taking fruit from the forbidden tree (a fig and not an apple tree as commonly depicted in Western Christian art), Eve trustingly taking it from the hand of the Serpent (depicted as Lilith) and Adam eagerly picking it for himself, as well as their banishment from the Garden of Eden, where they have lived in the company of God, to the world outside where they have to fend for themselves and experience death.
Serpent Elgin marbles Basilica of San Petronio forbidden tree San Petronio, Bologna Lilith Sistine Chapel Bologna commonly depicted in Western Christian art Eve fig Adam angel Jacopo della Quercia God creating Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam art Garden of Eden God apple tree Adam and Eve satyr Walter Pater Michelangelo