Professor Butler will investigate the problem of figurative language in relation to the Sistine Ceiling. The sequence of abstract metaphors in newly discovered source texts connected to the Chapel founder, Sixtus IV, yields new understanding of the Ceiling’s theological program. At the same time, these textual sources presented Michelangelo with a unique challenge—and opportunity—to “do what he liked in the Chapel”—that is to devise inventive pictorial solutions that would ‘translate’ those abstract theological concepts effectively, and poetically, to Renaissance viewers.
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