A Kabbalistic Reading of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling

Abstract

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling reflects Renaissance Christian immersion in Kabbalah by replicating, in its nine central Genesis “histories” and its lunettes and pendentives beneath, the Kabbalistic matrix of nine supernal Sefirot and one terrestrial Sefira. The Renaissance Christian Kabbalist and papal advisor Egidio da Viterbo is posited here as the designer of this Ceiling program. Egidio’s known belief that Christian propagation of Kabbalah would hasten the arrival of the messianic kingdom provides the motivation for his conception of this Ceiling program and is evidenced specifically in the imagery itself, which focuses upon an association of Christ with the supernal Sefira Binah as the nexus of such expectations. Beyond merely replicating the Kabbalistic cosmology, the Ceiling demonstrates contemporary Kabbalistic engagement with notions of the imagination’s role in mystical practice. Such practice is addressed – via encoded references to Kabbalistic doctrine – with respect to its relationship to magic, prayer and to the prophetic phenomenon. The Ceiling program suggests a theurgical relationship, on the part of the devotee, to the Sefirot, as well as an interconnectedness between this theurgical posture and conceptions of Christian prayer and the role of the Catholic liturgy. Individual attainment is entwined, in the Ceiling, with notions of ascent through the sefiortic hierarchy and is associated as wll, true to the Kabbalistic tradition, with collective redemption. Such redemption was expected by Egidio to mark the moment when Kabbalah – and hence the Ceiling’s themes – would be widely understood.