c.1508~12, 13.7*39cm, Fresco
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the picture of
God the Father - as it has lived in the minds of generation after generation, not only of artists but of humble people, who perhaps have never heard the name of Michelangelo - was shaped and moulded through the direct and indirect influence of these great visions in which Michelangelo illustrated the act of creation. Perhaps the most famous and most striking of them is the creation of Adam on one of the large fields. Artists before Michelangelo had already painted Adam lying on the ground and
being called to life by a mere touch of the hand of God, but none of them had even come near to expressing the
greatness of the mystery of creation with such simplicity
and force. There is nothing in the picture to divert attention from the main subject. Adam is lying on the ground
in all the vigour and beauty that befit the first man; from
the other side God the Father is approaching, carried and supported by His angels, wrapped in a wide and majestic mantle blown out by the wind like a sail, and suggesting the ease and speed with which He floats through the void. As He stretches out His hand, not even touching Adam's finger, we almost see the first man waking, as from
a profound sleep, and gazing into the fatherly face of his
Maker. It is one of the greatest mirac-
les in art how Michelangelo has contrived thus to make the touch of the Divine hand the centre and focus of the picture, and how he
has made us see the idea of omnipotence by the ease and
power of this gesture of creation.
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