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Michelangelo's Genesis: A structuralist

interpretation of the central panels of the
Sistine Chapel ceiling
EDMUND LEACH

The article which follows owes its origin to an illustrated lecture given at the
Slade School of Art in University College, London on 9 February 1977. The
text of that lecture was published in The Times Literary Supplement in the
issue of March 18th of that year. Because of a printers' strike the Times
version lacked illustrations and was almost incomprehensible. Derivative, but
much revised, versions of the lecture have subsequently been given to a variety
of anthropological! history of art audiences in widely dispersed localities
including Vancouver, Cambridge, London, and Sydney. The present version is
based on a lecture given to an Indiana University audience in Bloomington in
October 1984, when I had the honor to be the guest of the Patten Foundation.
In the lecture presentation, two projectors are used showing images side
by side. Conversion to a form that depends mainly on textual description
rather than visual images has presented a number of semiotic problems! I am
greatly indebted to Professor Sebeok for his generous allocation of plates.
A few details, cut from the Bloomington presentation to save time, have
been reincorporated in the present version.

The standard bibliography of writings relating to Michelangelo contains

about 4000 items more"than half of which were published between 1926
and 1970. Productivity on this particular academic assembly line has
recently accelerated. I cannot pretend to be familiar with all this material.
Any art historians in my audience will be much better informed than I am.
Most of what I shall be saying has certainly been said before; though not
perhaps all in one place. My justification for saying it again is that I am a
social anthropologist. That limits my vision in some respects but perhaps
enhances it in others. My topic is the patterning of the iconography in the principal pictures
on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel' Some of these pictures are almost
certainly familiar, even down to quite fine detail, to every reader of this
article. Some of you will know them all.
Semiotica 56--1/2 (1985), 1-30.

0037-1998/85/0056-0001 $2.00
Mouton-Publishers, Amsterdam

2 Edmund Leach
Art historians usually take the pictures one at a time; discussing, in
particular, the pictorial sources of Michelangelo's inspiration, the relation
of each picture to other works by Michelangelo himself, and the influence
of the work on Michelangelo's successors and contemporaries. These
studies are factual and open to clear cut visual demonstration.
Art historians also discuss the iconography and the 'meaning' of the
pictures, both individually and as sets. Here the diversity of speculation
seems to expand without limit. As my own paper is a further contribution
to this genre I will not attempt to review what others have said. I believe I
have read nearly everything that has been written on this topic. I must
however confess, that, with one exception, I have been unfavorably
impressed. This one exception is a paper by the art historian SindingLarsen which reaches conclusions that dovetail in very well with those of
my own account which relies on quite a different technique of analysis. I
did not encounter Sinding-Larsen's paper until a good while after I had
produced the first version of this one, so I find our coincidence of view
reassuring.
Before we start on the pictures let me say something about the
structuralist theory underlying the analysis. I assume that any human
creative act starts out as a mental operation hich is then projected onto
the external world. Such projections can take 11 sorts of manifest forms.
They include: speech utterances, written texts, musical compositions,
functionally useful material constructions, such as houses and bridges,
performative constructions such as plays, ceremonials, rituals, and purely
symbolic material objects such as carvings, paintings and so on.
All such creations are designed by their. creator; they have a structured
order which, at least in part, is built into the product intentionally. In
some respects the structure of such human creations is determined (or at
least delimited) by the nature of the medium and /the materials and the
final product. For example, in the case we are to consider, the Sistine
Chapel and its awkwardly shaped vaulted roof already existed before
Michelangelo started to work on it and the stylistic differences in different
parts of the ceiling in part reflect the fact that, he had little previous
...
experience of the art of fresco.
..
Moreover, in view of the importance of this building it seems certain
that, at least in some rather broad sense, Michelangelo must have received
a briefing as to what his iconography should represent, though just how
effectively his instructions determined what he actually 1produced we
cannot tell. But this after all is a very general situation. Even when an
architect designs a quite simple house there has to be a feedback between
the architect's mental operations, the requirements of his client, and the
limitations set by what is technically possible.

Michelangelo's Genesis: A structuralist interpretation 3

But also, and this is where the theory of structuralism comes in, the
mental operations of any human designer are circumscribed not only by
the qualities of the materials and by the objectives but by the design of the
human brain itself. We can only think the thoughts that human brains are
capable of thinking.
Clearly that is a solipsism. It is obviously true but since I cannot
provide you with an example of an unthinkable thought, it may not seem
very profitable. But I am not so sure. Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus,
which he produced as a young man, ends on the depressing note that
while Philosophy is concerned with understanding what is said, all the
really important matters are unsayable. He then devoted the rest of his life
trying to discover ways of saying things about the unsayable. In a
comparable way the structuralists optimistically imagine that they show
us how to think about the unthinkable.
Roughly speaking structuralist method (as I practice it) consists of
making a meticulous and comparative examination of sets of human
artifacts the projected products of human thought with a view to
discovering their shared design content, their common structure. It is
assumed that part of that 'structure is there because of the intentional
operations of the .designer who has to tackle, at a conscious level, the
various technical and client oriented problems I have mentioned already.
But other parts of the structure appear to be there by accident in the sense
that they serve no immediate practical function. They are there because
they have given the designer some kind of aesthetic pleasure without his
knowing why. It is especially, though not exclusively, patterns of this
latter kind which interest the theorists of structuralism.
Michelangelo was commissioned by the Pope to paint the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel in 1508. The precise circumstances are obscure and have
been made even more Obscure by a vast accumulation of legend, parts of
which were inspired by Michelangelo himself. Tradition declares that he
accepted the commission with reluctance because he thought of himself as
a sculptor rather than as a painter offrescoes; but in fact he gave up a
very attractive assignment in Florence to take on the job in Rome and
once he got started he was totally absorbed by the enterprise for the next
four years.
All sorts of factors mayhave influenced the way Michelangelo carried
out his task but we can only guess at what they were. Although it seems
obvious that there must have been -a program emanating from Vatican
theologians we do not know what it was. Indeed, whatever the probabilities, we do not actually know that Michelangelo received any instructions
at all. There is not a single document of any kind which suggests the
existence of such a program. On the other hand we do have 'a letter

4 Edmund Leach
.0
written by Michelangelo to his banker in 1523 (long after the event) in
which he claimed that, after some argument, the Pope allowed him to do
just what he liked with the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
On the other hand, among the various possibilities, one factor which
quite certainly influenced the final outcome was Michelangelo's own
sixteenth century, Florentine, apprehension of the Christian significance
of the early chapters of Genesis, through which he interpreted whatever
instructions were given to him by his theological advisers.
Here Michelangelo was working within a long established artistic
convention which is manifested in a whole series of quite explicit crossreferences from the Old Testament to the New through the ordering of the
designs. However, when he molded that convention to fit in with the
particular requirements of the total logic of his complicated overall
design, it seems very likely that he did not fully understand, at a conscious
level, just what he was doing. He did what he did partly because that was
how the jigsaw puzzle worked out, but also because that was somehow
how it had to be. My purpose is to show you, at least in part, just why it
,
r
had to be like that.
I assume that Michelangelo and his advisers in cooperation made a
\
number of key decisions at a quite consciolevel.
For example, as we
shall see presently, the nine main panels do%the axis of the ceiling are
palpably arranged in three groups of three, which immediately suggests
some connection with the doctrine of the Trinity. Or again it must be ,.
relevant that the Chapel is dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin
Mary, the sinless earthly Mary as Queen of Heaven. That being so, and
granting the Christian doctrine, that the sinless Virgin is the second Eve
whose virtues effaced the original sin of her predecessor, and that EveMary is also the Church Militant of which the Pope is the earthly ruler as
God's delegate, and that this was the Pope's personal ceremonial chapel,
and that; in some general sense, the overall Genesis theme had been
agreed, then it made good sense to place the Creation of Eve at the exact
center point of the entire ceiling.
But once that decision had been made, then all sorts of structural
arrangements *necessarily followed, though.some of these things may not
have been fully worked out at the point when Michelangelo first
embarked on his four year Labor of Hercules.
It is this kind of part-conscious, part-unconscious, subliminal logic that
the structuralist is looking for because he believes that the structure of
such a logic will help us to understand something of significance about the
nature of aesthetics and of the operation of human minds in general.
Freud and his successors have made us all familiar with the- idea of
`unconscious thought'. Consequently this notion no longer seems wholly

Michelangelo's Genesis: A structuralist interpretation

bizarre as it did to most members of my parents' generation. But perhaps

we now take it too much for granted and thus fail to reflect upon just how
thought could really be unconscious. Until recently most psychoanalysts
have talked as if 'unconscious thought' were the same sort of thing as
`conscious thought' except that it had somehow been battened down and
repressed. The therapeutic value of psychoanalysis was supposed to
consist of the release of this repression; the object of the exercise was to
make the unconscious conscious. Structuralists think of the 'unconscious'
in a much more mathematical way.
The initial proposition is that conscious thought consists of establishing
relations between concepts in the mind either by metonymy that is by
contiguous association, one thing after another like the words of a sentence
or by metaphor that is by asserting a symbolic similarity: 'my love is
like a rose' -- or (more commonly) by various combinations of these two
polar types of relationship, as in the way orchestral music combines
melody, which is metonymic, with harmony, which is metaphoric.
But the further combination and recombination of such 'concepts in
the mind' through the process we describe as imagination is not a fully
conscious operation. It is. the outcome of some deeper level mental
process, a kind of meta-thinking which does not,, of itself, generate
conscious thoughts but makes creative originality possible in that it
consists of the establishment of relations between relations.
The crux of the 'matter is simply this. For structuralists, the unconscious is a kind of nonrational logic; what Levi-Strauss has called 'mythologic'. The operations of this mytho-logic are apparent in the way that the
products of human thinking are projected onto the material world and if
we look hard enough in the right way, we can recognize what they are.
So what about the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?
First a few words about the chapel itself as it was in 1508. (See plate 1
for how it looks today.)
The proportions are those of Solomon's Temple in the Book of Kings.
The length is twice the height and three times the width. The orientation is
WestEast with the altar at the West end. In 1508 as the visitor entered at
the East end he saw to his right (on the North side) a row of large
rectangular pictures relating to the life of Christ while on the opposite
(South) wall there was a row of similar pictures relating to the life of
Moses. The scenes served to emphasize the legal authority of the Pope as
successor to both Moses and Christ in the capacities of law giver, priest,
teacher, and ruler. Most of the pictures are still as they were then but
Michelangelo's fresco of the Last Judgment, which.now fills the West wall
behind the altar, was not painted until 1535-1541. In 1508 the West wall
contained a fresco of the Assumption (by Perugino) immediately above

Michelangelo's Genesis: A structuralist interpretation 7

6 Edmund Leach

Plate 2.
Plate 1. General view of interior of the Sistine Chapel as it is today looking towards the altar
with Michelangelo's 'Last Judgment' at the far end.

the altar and, at a higher level, two large pictures belonging to the Moses
and New Testament series on the right, the Nativity of Christ, on the
left, the Finding of Moses in the Bulrushes.
The portraits of early popes that fill the spaces between the windows all
round the chapel were already there in 1508 but there were two further
windows in the West wall and at this level there were figures of St. Linus
and St. Cleteus and, in the center, figures of St. Peter, Christ and St. Paul.

Christ and the Virgin in the 'Last Judgment'.

When Michelangelo had finished his ceiling this arrangement was still
there but by then the powerful figtire of Jonah filled the spandrel above
the Christ (Plate 3). The eye of the-observer moving upwards from the
Priest officiating at the altar would then have passed in progression first to
the Virgin, then to Christ, then to Jonah (Plate 3) 'who saw God face to
face', and finally, at the apex of the roof, the figure of Michelangelo's
`God dividing light from darkness' (Plate 5).

abi/OYel6.....2LAMa.,

Edmund Leach

Plate 3.

'Jonah' [immediately above the 'Last Judgment].

As we see it today the Christ of the Last Judgment with the Virgin by
his side (Plate 2) is in the same position as the Christ of 1508. The
iconographic message has thus been retained.
At first glance the ceiling as a whole appears to be a fantastic jumble
(Plate 4). As when we listen to a symphony the ordering only becomes
apparent if we look at the pieces of the jigsaw and their interrelations over
and over again. Because of limitation's of time and space I must go against

Michelangelo's Genesis: A structuralist interpretation 9

my structuralist principles and consider only a small subset of the total set
of pictures. I shall ignore the large nude male figures, the Sybils, most of
the Prophets, the characters from the Tree of Jesse, and the medallions.
That leaves only the nine main panels down the central axis of the ceiling
and the four corner panels.
I must emphasise these limitations. The aesthetic role of the ignudi in
uniting the whole composition is extremely important and deserves close
attention. The individual Sybils and Prophets seem to be related to the floor
space down below though the patterning is not clear. One interesting
feature is that while the Sybils and Prophets at the door end are content to
sit sedately in their allotted space, e.g. Zechariah, immediately over the
door (Plate 4, extreme right), they become increasingly restless and mobile
as we move towards the altar until Jonah (Plate 4, extreme left; also Plate 3)
seems to burst out of his throne altogether.
Notice at once that the nine center panels are arranged in alternation
smalllargesmalllarge (Plate 4 and Figure 1). This was dictated in part
by the physical form of the roof. But, besides having to adjust his overall
composition to the peculiarities of the shape of the vaulting Michelangelo
also took account of the various uses of the floor space below.
As it is today the screen which separates the ante-chapel from the chapel
proper comes under Panel 7 (Plate 11) 'Noah's Sacrifice' but the screen was
originally closer to the altar and stood directly beneath the border between
Panel 5 (Plate 9) 'The Creation of Eve' and Panel 6 (Plate 10) 'The Fall'.
This detail is important because it meant that the distinction between
the Chapel proper (at the Altar end), which was reserved for the Pope and
the Cardinals, and the Ante-Chapel, which was sometimes open to
aristocratic laity, is marked in the ceiling as the distinction between
Sacred and Profane.
All the main panelsito the West of the screen (as it then was) show God
in his role as Creator; all the main panels to the East of the screen towards
the door, show sinful man without God. Directly over and to the East of
the screen is the crisis of the Fall;' the boundary between this World of
Suffering and the Other World of Paradise. It is relevant, as we shall see in
a moment; that in medieval churches the screen separating the nave from
the choir was commonly fronted by a* crucifix and known as the 'roodscreen' on that account.
Figure 1 (cf. Plate 4) summarizes the general structure of the iconography. Panels 1, 2, and 3 show God in the Cosmos without Man. Panels 4, 5,
and 6 show the Garden of Eden Story in which God and Man are together
in Paradise. Panels 7, 8, and 9 relate to the story of Noah where sinful Man
is in this World separated from God. Thus the middle triad mediates the
two extremes. This mediation pattern is repeated in various symmetries.

2.6.7..../, .1-

tidVd7 p lInUipj

Plate 4. General view of whole ceiling. This is a camera-lense view so that left and right are reversed as compared with Figure 1. The bottom side of this
photograph is the North side of the chapel.

screen
E
c4

4$'

ECHARIAH0

POPE'S THRONE

GOD

I
CHAOS

cPces
-7,--N
..-
O
--I-

ORDER

PARADISE
GOD

GOD

GOD

A+e
sinners

EVE

serpent
A+e

ADAM sinless
MAN. ADAM
AMBIGUITY

THIS WORLD

MAN
aPF

Tr>

O
\

CHAOS

.)

GOD Q4
MAN
DISORDER

rp

Deathof Sinneror Martyrdomof Saint

COSMOS

4E

Figure 1. Schema to show structural arrangement of the nine main panels and the four corner panels in the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The viewpoint is that
of an observer at the door end looking towards the altar, not that of a camera pointing upwards. Screen position as at 1508.

Michelangelo's Genesis: Astructuralistinterpr etation

JONAH

12

Michelangelo'' Genesis. A structuralist interpretation

Edmund Leach

Plate 6.

Plate 5. `God dividing light from darkness' [Figure I: Panel 1].

'God creating the Sun, Moon, Stars and Plants' [Figure 1: Panel 2].

Plate

7. 'The Spirit of God moving on the Waters' [Figure 1: Panel 3].

13

14 Edmund Leach

Michelangelo's Genesis: A structuralist interpretation

15

Plate 10. 'The Fall and Expulsion from Eden' [Figure 1: Panel 6].
Plate 8.

'The Creation of Adam' [Figure 1: Panel 4

Panel 8 'The Flood' (Plate 12) (which was the first to be painted) represents
the destruction of the World and is symmetrically opposite to Panel 2 'The
Creation of the World' (Plate 6). Midway between we have Panel 5 (Plate 9)
where 'The Creation of Eve' symbolizing The Church mediates directly
between God and a seemingly dead Adam, whose deadness is emphasized by
the manifestly dead tree against which he 'sleeps'. And let me remind you
again that this figure of Eve stands at the exact center of the entire ceiling. As
we shall see, there are several other such triads.
Although the sequence of panels, starting from the altar end, clearly
relates to the first nine chapters of Genesis the sequence of panels deviates
from the sequence of the text. Thus the first three panels seem to relate to
the following verses of Genesis, Chapter 1:
Verse
erse 41.. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
17er s e 2. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the
Verse
face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters
Verse
A
thneddaGrk
od
nessaw
sas the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from

Plate 9. 'The Creation of Eve' [Figure 1: Panel 5].

11. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, the
fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth:
fruit tree yielding
so.
andi

16 Edmund Leach

Michelangelo's Genesis: A structuralist interpretation

17

.0

Plate 12.
Plate 11.

'Noah's Sacrifice' [Figure 1: Panel 7].

Verse 16. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the
lesser light to rule the night: he macdd the stars also.

Michelangelo puts a combination of verses 1, 11 and 16 in Panel 2

(Plate 6); verse 4 in Panel 1 ( (Plate 5); and the second half of verse 2 in
Panel 3 (Plate 7).
Panel 3 clearly depicts 'the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the
waters'; in Panel 2 God is explicitly creating the sun and the moon as in
verse 16 but Michelangelo has also packed in the creation of plants
(bottom left) which comes from verse 11 so that overall we have a
depiction of verse 1 'the Creation of Heaven and Earth'.
Panel 1: 'The division of light from darkness'' is also made to serve as
the emergence of God himself from the void; order out of chaos. As
already indicated the position of this panel at the apex immediately above
the altar is crucial.
At one level, the sequence of images is:
Panel 1 the emergence of order out of chaos
Panel 2 the creation of the world
Panel 3 God by himself surveying his creation
But at another level these three panels form a triad representing the
three Persons of the Trinity. At the center (Panel 2) is God the Creator of
all things. At the altar end (Panel 1) is God the Son, the light of the world,
the Logos of St John's Gospel Chapter 1. Panel 3 'the Spirit of God
moving upon the waters' is then The Holy Ghost.

'The Flood' [Figure 1: Panel 8].

In the symmetrical group of three panels at the other end of the ceiling,
the pictures again at first appear to be out of order. In the text (Genesis
8:20) Noah makes a thank offering sacrifice after he has survived the
Flood. But Panel 7 (Plate 11), depicting this scene, seems to come before
the Flood (Panel 8). This has worried many commentators. At one level
Panel 7, shown here, certainly portrays Noah's sacrifice. The three naked
males in the foreground are Noah's sons; the three lightly draped figures
are their wives; the aging Noah and his wife stand behind the altar. On the
other hand, if Michelangelo had followed the order of the text, a scene of
sacrifice immediately following the expulsion from the Garden of Eden
(which comes in Panel 6) would refer to the sacrifices of Cain and Abel
(Genesis 4:3-4).
There is a rather 'similar ambiguity about Panel 9 (Plate 13). This
certainly depicts the story of the drunken Noah and the sin of Ham
(Genesis 9:20-23). The text reads:
And Noah began to be an husbandman and he planted a vineyard. And he drank
the wine and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the
father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his brethren without.
And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and
went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were
backward and they saw not their father's nakedness.
But the delving figure on the left hardly seems to be that of someone
planting a vineyard and in fact Michelangelo used, as his model for this
figure, a representation of delving Adam by Jacopo della Quercia. So it
looks as if the Noah story and the Adam story are here purposely elided.

Michelangelo's Genesis: A structuralist interpretation

18 Edmund Leach

19

1)

Plate 13.

The Sin of Ham' [Figure 1: Panel 9].

And, after all, why not? Adam and Noah were both 'First Men'. But there
is a difference: Adam suffered disaster bec use of his sins: Noah survived
disaster because of his virtues.
Likewise in Panel 8 'The Flood' (Plate 12) there is ambiguity about the
discrimination between the Saved and the Damned. If we follow the Bible
story then it must be presumed that all the figures in view are about to
meet their end since Noah and his family are already safely housed in the
strange windowless Ark in the background (from which the white dove of
the Holy Spirit emerges from the roof). But matters are not so simple. The
symbolism here was well established. The Ark is the Church; the Flood is
a prefiguration of the sacrament of Baptism which washes away our sins.
In that case the figures in the foreground are, as they appear to be, 'saved'
rather than 'damned'.
And at that same level the Sacrifice scene of Panel 7 is a prefiguration of
the Eucharist.
The center panels (4, 5,6) elaborate the triad schema still further for not
only do they clearly form a subset on their own, but Panels 5 and 6 (Plates
9 and 10) are both triads in themselves: with Eve uniting God and Adam
in Panel 5 and the Serpent/Angel separating the sinners from the sinless in
Panel 6. We will leave the pictures at that point and come back to the four
corner panels later on.
The chronology of the paintings has been examined by the experts in
great detail but there is no general agreement. I will give you only the
outline.

Michelangelo started his preliminary work in May 1508. By the end of

July he had erected the scaffolding and prepared the surfaces. He began
painting in January 1509 working in general from East to West, that is from
the door end towards the altar, though Panel 8 was probp bly painted before
Panel 9. On the 14th of August 1511, the day before the Feast of the
Assumption, there was some kind of dedication ceremony by the Pope. We
know that the chapel had been cleared of scaffolding at that date. We also
know that the completed chapel was reopened on 31 October 1512. But
other details are disputed. For my present purposes they do not matter a
great deal.
I am now going back to my structuralist theorizing. It is already
apparent that I am preoccupied with triads, particularly those in which a
category 'X' is opposed to another category 'Y' and mediated by a middle
category 'Z'. This concern with triads arises from a very general argument
about continuity versus discontinuity which can be illustrated in the
following way:
Suppose I were to draw a straight line on a blackboard and were to give
you the instruction: 'imagine that the line is divided into two equal parts',
you would have no difficulty in accomplishing this feat, but in order to
conceptualize either of the two equal parts you would have to take the other
into consideration. Moreover, in order to judge the equality you would
have to concentrate your attention on the imaginary boundary between the
two parts; a boundary which belongs, in itself, to neither (or else to both).
Figure 2 illustrates this very crucial general point. In any binary pair of
the type 'A'Priot-A',,the boundary layer which is neither the one nor the

Ambiguous boundary
zone, 'sacred' area,
subject to taboo
Figure 2. Euler diagram to illustrate the logical.point that where two categories 'A' and A'
abut, the b6undary between them is ambiguous 'both "A" and " A"' (cf. Leach 1976: 34 ff ).

Michelangelo's Genesis: A structuralist interpretation 21

20

Edmund Leach

,)

other but both at once, 'both A and not-A', is especially 'interesting'

because it is 'repressed'. This is where the theory of structuralism ties in
not only with psychoanalysis but also with anthropological theories about
magic and primitive religion. The boundary, the interface layer which
separates categories of time and space, is the zone of the sacred, the
forbidden, that which is taboo; God when seen from one side of the fence,
Sin when seen from the other.
In this World Man is impotent, mortal, sinful; in the other World God is
omnipotent, immortal, sinless. In between there is a kind of neutral zone,
the zone in which ritual activity takes place. The purpose of ritual is to
provide a bridge by way of which the potency of God can be brought to
the aid of impotent Man. On that account the key figures in religious faith
and ritual are always the mediators, the boundary characters who have, as
it were, a foot in both camps.
In myth the important objects of cult are incarnate deities or deified
human beings --- such as Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary rather than
the remote original First Cause.
In religious performance, the characteristic of any priesthood is that its
members are credited with the knowledge of how to bridge the gap and
.4 with a sanctified intermediestablish direct contact either with the deit\ j or
ary. On this view the whole of 'religion' b ongs to the category of that
which is intermediate, the betwixt and between.
Perhaps my schema strikes you as too abstract. But compare the
diagram in figure 1 with Michelangelo's Panel 1 God dividing light
from darkness, order from chaos' (Plate 5). Notice how the light and the
dark half of the picture are separated by the half-formed emergent figure
of God himself. God is the boundary, the entity that is both itself and not
itself. Incidentally the light is on the side towards the high altar. With all
that in mind let us go back to my diagram of the general layout (Figure 1).
It is only quite recently that the critics have noticed that for the
ordinary lay observer the sequence is back to front, Creation in reverse.
Entering by the door at the East end we start with Man alone in his
corruption .and are led back step by step to assimilation with God. The
unstated text for the whole composition is the passage from St. Paul: 'As
in Adam all die; so also in Christ shall all men be made alive'.
This Old Testament/New Testament inversion is reiterated all the way
through. The key points for our understanding of this fact have already
been mentioned. First, Eve, whose creation has pride' of place at the
Center, is also the Virgin Mary, the second Eve, the 'Church of my
Salvation', just as Adam is also the second Adam, Christ the Redeemer.
But furthermore, where one might expect a Crucifix above and in front of
the rood screen, we in fact encounter a cruciform Tree of Life around

which is coiled the Serpent of the Garden of Eden. Of that more in a

moment.
The way in which my system of triads fits in with my theoretical
argument about the sacredness of what is 'betwixt and between' should by
now be obvious, but let us look in greater detail at the triads within the
triads, the ambiguities provided by the three central panels relating to the
Paradise world of the Garden of Eden where God and Man come face to
face.
In Panel 4 (Plate 8) in which Adam is separated from God but an
uncreated Eve and a pre-incarnate Christ nestle in the womb of time, that
is provided by the left arm of God the Father. The future Sin and the
future Redemption of Mankind are both already preordained.
In Panel 5 (Plate 9), as we have seen, Eve (the Virgin, the Church)
mediates between the living God and the 'dead' Adam. But in Panel 6,
(Plate 10) the middle position of mediation/ambiguity is taken up by the
unambiguously female Serpent who has a face very like that of Eve in the
previous panel but facing in the opposite direction while on the left the as
yet sinless but about to be corrupted Eve, nestling in Adam's groin, has
become outstandingly seductive though she still retains the face of the
perky untreated Eve of Panel 4 (Plate 8). The forbidden fruit take the
form of figs (not apples) while the idle hand of the as yet sinless Eve points
to her womb (see Steinberg 1980: 441-443).1
Adam on the Qther hand has become coarsened and brute-like; he is
further removed from God. It should be remembered that Michelangelo
created the pictures in the reverse order: 6,5,4 not 4,5,6.
On the right of thtrpicture the sinners cower from the wrath of God as
they are driven from Paradise. They have both lost their pristine beauty
and are aged and haggard. But notice how, even in This arid world of
despair, hope is renew ed; a sprig of greenery which really belongs to the
border of the adjacent panel has been allowed to overflow into the desert
sky.
But the key ambiguity comes, as it should, at the center in the form of
the Serpent/Tempter coiled around the Tree of Life and in that of the Tree
itself. There are really two serpents; one faces the still innocent Eve and
grasps her by the hand; the other is the arm of God, the Biblical
Cherumbim who drives out the sinners from the Paradise Garden armed
`with a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree
of life'.
But the two serpents combined to provide yet another key symbol.
There was a medieval tradition that the crucifix on which Christ died to
redeem our sins was cut from the Tree of Life that grew in the Garden of
Eden. Here, in the picture, the Serpent, the Cherumbim and the Tree are

22 Edmund Leach
combined in a cruciform image which stands, let us remember, above and
just in front of the rood screen. This device of the double headed serpent
forming a cross is repeated in the corner panel to the right of the altar. I
shall come back to that.
That being so let us consider again the sequence from door end and
think of Panel 6 as a 'Crucifix'. In that case Panel 7, the Sacrifice scene,
which seemed out of position in terms of the text is in the right place if it is
to remind us of the Eucharist.
I suggested earlier that the Sacrifice of Noah is here merged with the
Sacrifice of Cain and Abel. Let me remind you of the details of the latter
story: Abel is a pastoralist, a man of the desert; Cain is an agriculturalist a
man of culture. The two brothers both make sacrifices to God. God
accepts the offering of Abel and rejects the offering of Cain. In jealous
vengeance Cain kills Abel. At this level the story records the first murder
and the origin of death. But Cain's murder of Abel is itself a sacrifice. By
killing Abel, Cain replaces him. He first becomes a wanderer in the desert
specially protected by God. Later, as builder of the first city, he becomes
the prototype culture hero/founding ancestor. Thus, in a peculiar way, the
slaying of Abel by Cain 'prefigures' th crucifixtion of Christ. It is the
ultimate sin but also the ultimate sacrific
Certain aspects of the Christian doct 'ne of original sin are also
relevant., The original sin of Adam and Eve Was concupiscence. According
to the majority of Christian Fathers, Adam and Eve did not engage in
sexual intercourse while they were in the Garden of Eden or, if they did
so, it was in some non-human way. without lust. Intercourse of the
ordinary sort which will lead to conception requires that the man be
aroused in sexual passion by the woman. This tendency to concupiscence
is something to which all men are born but, according to Christian
doctrine, it originated in the immediate sexual understanding which
Adam and Eve acquired when they ate the forbidden fruit. It has been
transmitted from generation to generation as a consequence of coitus.
There are two important doctrinal implications. First, Christian doctrine holds that death and birth both originated in the same original sin
which consisted in Adam and Eve listening to the seductions of the
Serpent and thereby experiencing lust through their recognition that there
is a shame-inducing difference between the male and female genitals.
Second, in Christianity, the male genitals, which, as in other religions, are
a central focus of taboo (and hence a symbol of deity), took on a
peculiarly negative aspect. Sexuality, in the guise of the serpentphallus-dragon, became the paradigm of all evil, the fundamental locus of sin. In
Ancient Egyptian religion (from which both Judaism and Christianity
borrowed a variety of symbols) the Cross is a derivation from the phallus

Michelangelo's Genesis: A structuralist interpretation 23

which stood for life; but in Christianity the Cross became a symbol of
`redemption through death'.
Even so, the Christian attitude to sexuality remains fundamentally
ambiguous and this ambiguity is reflected in Michelangelo's iconography,
which is intensified by his own homosexuality and by his fondness for
representations of nude males rather than nude females.
My present analysis does not take account of the twenty large nude
male figures which were given such a prominent role in the original
composition, but the sacredness of sexuality gives point to several further
details in which Michelangelo deviates from the biblical text.
In Panel 9 (Plate 13) Ham does not, as in the text, look at the nakedness
of his father he points at Noah's head. The gesture of pointing with
outstretched finger denotes both power and separation, good as well as
evil. The same gesture is used in the portrayal of God's creation of the
Sun and the Moon and also of the creation of Adam (Plate 6; Plate 8). We
shall meet it again in one of the corner panels (Plate 14). I must again
emphasize the element of ambiguity. Common sense seems to suggest that
in Plate 8 God, having created Adam, is floating away from him, but
many years ago the psychoanalyst Georg Groddeck, in what in general
seems to me a very contrived analysis of this picture (Groddeck 1934:
184-186), rather surprisingly assumes that God's 'purpose ... is to awaken
the man towards whom He is flying' (my italics).
In the picture of the Fall (Plate 10) we have the counterpart imagery.
The Serpent does not point at Eve, she grasps her hand. The face of sinful
Eve on the right resembles that of the Serpent rather than sinless Eve on
the left. Note how the sinners on the right do not, as they should, wear fig
leaves to cover their nakedness; on the contrary the genitals are bare to
emphasize their discovery of sexual difference. Perhaps too, it is relevant
that God creates Adam by pointing with his right hand while the Serpent
corrupts Eve by grasping with her left hand. Yet the Serpent's sexuality is
itself an aspect of God's Will; the Serpent is doubled by the vengeful
Cherumbin guarding the Tree of Life.
As I have already mentioned the theme of the double serpent turned
crucifix recurs in the corner panel to the right of the altar (Plate 15). The
text for this picture comes from Exodus. The Israelites wandering in the
Wilderness complain to God who punishes them for their lack of faith by
sending a plague of serpents. Moses appeals to God. God instructs Moses
to set up a brazen serpent with the promise that those who gaze upon this
seemingly idolatrous figure will be cured. Michelangelo depicts this scene
using a long established convention. Moses does not appear. The saved
and damned are separated, the saved being on the altar side, to the left of
the picture as shown in Plate 15. As before, the serpent is two headed

Michelangelo'' Genesis: A structuralist interpretation 25

24

Edmund Leach

.!)

Plate 14. 'The Execution of Haman' [Figure 1: Southwest corner panel: To the left of the
altar as viewed from the door end: top left in Plate

Plate 15. 'The Brazen Serpent' [Figure 1: Northwest corner panel: To the right of the altar as

viewed from the door end: bottom left in Plate 4].

though here it is an explicit symbol of salvation instead of an explicit

symbol of damnation. In this case the crucifix-serpent is lit by the glory of
God shining from the divine light of Panel 1 (Plate 5) immediately above.
The association between the story of The Brazen Serpent and the
Crucifixion has direct biblical sanction. It comes in St. John's Gospel:
`And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the Son
of Man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish
but have eternal life'. That much the orthodox critics have noticed, but
they have not paid any attention to the consequential feedback for our
understanding of the corresponding imagery in Panel 6 which, as we have
seen, puts the Crucifix in the Garden of Eden (Plate 10). The implication
is surely plain. As we proceed from the altar towards the door the Serpent
on the Tree of Life stands for damnation through Adam; as we reverse
our steps and move from the door to the altar the same image is symbolic
of Christ on the Cross of Death and stands for salvation through Christ.
In case we should miss the point this same inversion is repeated all over
again in the corner panel to the left of the altar which depicts The
Execution of Haman from the Book of Esther (Plate 14). In our English
text Haman is hanged on the gallows. Michelangelo, relying perhaps on a
passage from Dante, has him nailed to a cross. In the biblical text Haman
is a wicked man justly punished for his crimes but here, through the
conversion of the gallows into a cross, the execution of Haman becomes
another symbol of the redemption of sinful mankind through the death of
Christ.
In this picture the figure on the bed pointing a denunciatory finger at
the crucified Haman is King Ahasuerus. He is on the altar side of the
picture and uses the same gesture of power and separation which
separated God from Adam and Ham from Noah. But if the crucified
Haman is a transforff of Christ, who is the alter of this King sitting in
judgment and decreeing the death of the sacred victim? Surely God
himself. The rest of the picture confirms this interpretation. On the left we
see Queen Esther banqueting with King Ahasuerus while the guilty
Haman rises and withdraws from the table. From the observer's point of
view the Queen sits on the King's right. The symbolism is closely packed
but plain. At one level the King is here Christ presiding over the Last
Supper; Haman withdrawing is Judas Iscariot. But Queen Esther is the
Virgin in her role as Queen of Heaven, the Bride of God, the Mary of the
Assumption. So the King is God- the Father and God the Son
consubstantial, coeternal. One wonders whether, Michelangelo could have
known that the name Esther is Ishtar, that of the Mesopotamian mother
goddess.
The two corner panels at the door end (Plate 16; Plate 17) ,show the

Michelangelo's Genesis: A structuralist interpretation 27

26 Edmund Leach

Plate 16. 'David decapitates Goliath' [Figure I: outheast corner panel. Above left for an
observer at the door end looking towards the altar: op right in Plate 4].

Decapitation of Goliath by David and the Decapitation of Holofernes by

Judith. So, just as the two corner panels at the altar end both contain a
common element, crucifixion, these two panels contain a common element, decapitation. Moreover, as you can see, the. Judith panel is
constructed geometrically according to the same plan as the Haman panel
so some cross-reference must be intended.
This cross-reference seems fairly obvious. Just as the two Old Testament scenes at the altar end 'prefigure' the Crucifixion of Christ so also
the two scenes at the door end 'prefigure' the death of John the Baptist.
Notice how Holofernes head is 'carried away on a charger' as in the New
Testament story.
The switching from Old Testament to New Testament entails a
dramatic reversal of roles. The villainous Haman turns into Christ; the
villainous Holofernes into John the Baptist. But in the latter scene the
saintly Judith becomes the villainous Herodias.
This point would have seemed even more dramatic for sixteenth
century Christians because in medieval Christianity Judith was considered
to be a militant prefiguration of the Virgin in her triumph over the Devil.
Turning Judith into Herodias was the direct converse of this tradition.
At the door end, the terminal position, which corresponds to that of
Jonah at the altar end, is taken up by the prophet Zechariah (Plate 4, far
right). He sits with a manuscript in his hand seemingly about to open it at
the third or fourth' folio. There does not seem to be any very obvious
reason why Zechariah should have been given this prominent position.
But Chapter 3 of his, book, which recounts a vision in which a certain
Joshua (i.e. Jesus) is installed as High Priest, can readily be interpreted as
a prophecy of the imminent apotheosis of Jesus as Messiah. The passage
reads:
Ilt.

Now Joshua was clothed in filthy

Is not this a brand plucked out of the firer?
garments and stood before the angel (who said) ...Take away the filthy garments
from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from
thee, and will clothe thee with change of raiment

Plate 17. 'Judith carries away the head of Holofernes' [Figure 1: Northeast corner panel.
Above right for an observer at the door end looking towards the altar: bottom right in plate 4].

If you accept my thesis that, at a grand scale level, the Old Testament
message concerning the Creation and the Fall, that appears in the panels
when read in sequenCe from altar to door, should be inverted and read as
a New Testament message of Redemption through the Crucifixion and
the Eucharist when the same panels are read from door to altar, then the
passage from Zechariah is very appropriate.
Of course we can never be sure about such matters. In a manifest sense
the pictures all refer to identifiable scenes from Old Testament texts. What
right have I to assert that they simultaneously refer to New Testament

28 Edmund Leach

Michelangelo's' Genesis: A structuralist interpretation 29

.1)

theology particularly when I am saying that the New Testament 'meaning' is ordinarily the direct converse of the manifest Old Testament
meaning? I have no such right; I can only show you that the pattern fits
together and makes sense. But to that extent I would claim that my
argument rests on what I call `mytho-logic' rather than pure hunch.
Modern orthodox scholarship tends to be scornful of ambiguity. An
interpretation has to be either right or wrong. But this is a matter of
fashion. I maintain that Michelangelo's references to Noah are also
references to Adam; in particular that Panel 7 (Plate 11), which
represents the thank offering of Noah, encompasses the story of Cain
and Abel. This is not a new idea. In 1550 Vasari referred to this Panel
as 'The Sacrifice of Noah'; in 1568 he called it 'The Sacrifice of Cain
and Abel'. For a modern art historian such as De Tolnay the latter
attribution is simply wrong. Strict historical method apparently rules
out the possibility that Michelangelo might actually have intended to
show both scenes at once.
Yet many practicing artists would themselves maintain that all artistic
statement is ambiguous. For example, as I remarked earlier, if we stick to
the text then the mother and child undeli the tree in Panel 8 (Plate 12) are
about to drown; if we follow our sensibili ies we say they are saved; if we
follow the logic of Old Testament/New T stament transformations then
this is a figure of the Virgin. Raphael seems to have thought so too or at
any rate some critics have assumed that he did, though the fact that his
famous Madonna with a cloak over her head is known as 'The Sistine
Madonna' has no connection with 'The Sistine Chapel'.
All of which will no doubt strike many readers as either false, or trivial,
or too clever by half. As a matter of fact, by my own standards I have
exercized great restraint. A more thoroughgoing polysemic, structuralist
interpretation would take it for granted that all the identifiable 'female
figures in the total composition should be seen as aspects or transformations of the same mythical persona. And indeed, if we adopt that view,
then even within the limited subset of pictures which we have considered
the Virgin. Queen of Heaven appears in all her traditional roles:
Starting from the door end she is: (i) .the victor over Satan (Judith); (ii)
the suffering mother (The Flood); (iii) the wife of the Lord (Sacrifice
Panel); (iv) the sister (The Fall); (v) the daughter of God (Creation of
Eve); (vi) the mediating Queen of Heaven (Haman and the Last Judgment).
We cannot know whether Michelangelo actually intended all these
equivalences but it is entirely consistent with the pivotal position accorded
to the Creation of Eve that he might have done so.
I am going to stop there. The principal novelty of my analysis lies in

what I have had to say about the four corner panels the scenes of
David and Goliath, Judith and Holofernes, the Execution of Haman and
The Brazen Serpent. If there are sceptics among you I suggest that you
compare what I have said with the well known account of the ceiling by
Herbert Von Einem which was last issued in English translation in 1973.
Despite his apparent effort to see the ceiling as a whole, Von Einem in fact
ends up by treating each picture as an isolate. Thus although he notices
that the three pictures from the story of Noah seems to form a tryptych
rather than a sequence, he does not notice the matching tryptych at the
other end, nor does he comment on the strikingly obvious 3 x 3 arrangement of the nine central panels as a group. When he comes to the corner
spandrels he describes them simply as 'scenes from the salvation of Israel'.
Otherwise he relates them together only in the most hesitant way and does
not really relate them to the theme of the central panels at all.
I feel that I have done better than that.
Note
1. Steinberg makes the point that a straight line from the head of the Eve of Panel 4
through the body of the Eve of Panel 5 will terminate at the right hand of the (about to
be corrupted) Eve of Panel 6. Because of the vaulting of the ceiling such 'lines' are at best
inexact but it seems to me more plausible that Michelangelo intended that the faces of
these three Eves should be lined up so as to suggest the equivalences I have proposed.

References
Einem, H. von (1973). Michelangelo [English translation of German original first published
in 1959]. London: Methuen.
Ettlinger, L. D. (1965). The Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo: Religious Imagery and Papal
Primacy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Groddeck, Georg (1934). The World of Man: As reflected in Art, in Words and in Disease.
London: The C. W. Daniel Co.
Hibbard, Howard (1979). Michelangelo: Painter, Sculptor, Architect. London: Octopus
Books.
Kuhn, Rudolf (1975). Michelangelo: Die Sixtinische Decke, (= Beitrage zur Kunstgeschichte Bd. 10) [contains basic bibliography: German]. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Leach, Edmund (1976). Culture and Communication: The logic by which symbols are
connected. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mariani, Valerio (n.d. [post-1964]). Michelangelo the Painter [comprehensive inventory of
the pictures]. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc.
Seymour, Charles Jr. (1972). Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Ceiling [contains basic
bibliography: English]. New York: W. W. Norton.
Sinding-Larsen, S. (1969). 'A re-reading of the Sistine Ceiling'. In Acta ad Archaeologiam et
Artum Historiam Pertinentia Vol. IV, 143-157. Rome: Institutum RomanuM Novegiae.

30

Edmund Leach

Steinberg, Leo (1980). 'The Line of Fate in Michelangelo's Painting'. Critical Inquiry 6(3).
Tolnay, C. de (1945). The Sistine Chapel. New Brunswick, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Edmund Leach (b. 1910) is Professor emeritus of Social Anthropology at Cambridge
University. His principal research interests are social anthropology of South and Southeast
Asia, and the application of structuralist theory to social anthropological data. His major
publications of semiotic relevance include Genesis as Myth and Other Essays (1971), Culture
& Communication: The Logic by which Symbols are Connected (1976), L'Unite de l'homme et
autres essais (1980), and Structuralist Interpretations of Biblical Myth [with D. Alan Aycock]
(1983).