Art in the Bible An abstract look at a renaissance perception of the Bible Table of Contents Part 1 The Painting Part

2 A compalation of abstract ideas Part 3 Components of the picture Part 4 A few thesis statements Part 5 The essay Art in the Bible Many percieve this world as completly dichotomus. For many people they will go through their whole life thinking that there is nothing in between black and white. This may present a formidable situation for many, however, for Michelangelo this was not clear enough. He took the Christian religion that was important to him and the society that he lived in and percieved it a way more accoustomed to the modern world. He created a sense of greyness in a world that was previously percieved as only black and white. In his depiction of Adam and Eve being expelled from the garden of Eden he sets up a dichotomus world but through subtile and not so subtile hints he shows the observer that he doesn't percieve the world in this way. He creates this grey world to show the observer that the world is not all really black and white. The painting is really divided into two separate pictures. One depictng the good scene inside the Garden of Eden. The other side depicting the bad scence, outside the garden of Eden. Michelangelo splits the picture like this so that he can create the dichotomus world on which his painting will be based. Although the whole theme is the non-dichotomusness of the world he must do this so that people will have something to relate to. Once this has been achieved he can continue to paint in the greyness whick joins the good and the evil. The dichotomus world, however, serves a very important purpose in this picture. It

sets the defination of right and wrong. Michelangelo is trying to say that there is not eivil and that there is no good. He knows that this cant be true. However Michelangelo defines a black and a white, as two very separate and istinct things. He does this by pining the picture in two parts and thus enabiling us to see the difference. Once we have seen this very obvious difference we are prepared to look at they grey. Through the use of placement of objects in the picture Michelangelo is able to define both the good and the evil as well as the surrounding grey. The good side poses an arry of items which are asscociated with the good of the garden. The evil side poses a new set of objects that ore asscociated the the evil and darkness of the world that we are living in. For example in the good side the tree of knowledge of good and evil is very bushy and green. The leaves are depicted as having a life like splendor andlook as if they are real. These leaves cover a large proportion of that side of the painting , allmost 1/3. These are importain because they denote the life like quality of the garden or Eden. On the other hand behind Eve sits a dear barren tree. This tree is much smaller but still exists in this apparent world of perfect goodness. The tree has no leaves on, and looks quite barren. The tree also has an unintresting charecteristicabout it. Having no branches it looks quite dark. Tthe shading of the trunk of the tree also depicts this. The brown is o a much deeper shade than of the the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This darkenss thank then be taken to represent the evil or greyness that occurs in the dichotomus world. The tree represents the hardships of people because they sinned. It is part of the dust to dust ashes to ashes parable that God told Adam and Eve. There is also evidence of this in the other side of the painting too.