Michelangelo Buonarroti's Code in the Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel – An Allusion to Gematria of the Hebrew/Greek Alphabet and the Golden Ratio

According to Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), the great genius of anatomy, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), in painting the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508–1512), demonstrated to the world a new dimension/perspective of painting, especially in the sublime manner with which the artist represented the anatomical details of the characters that made up his frescoes. Since then, the Sistine Chapel has received millions of tourists annually, who marvel at the anatomical beauty of the characters depicted on its ceiling. It has also received many scholars of art and even anatomists, who have often tried to infer theses and explanations regarding Michelangelo's real intentions in elaborating this great work. However, even after five centuries, the Vatican's own official explanations of the true intentions of the artist remain quite uncertain. In an attempt to elucidate Michelangelo's possible intentions in the design of this memorable work, this article presents unpublished evidence that all the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were organized by the artist according to a code based on the number of characters in each fresco, the gematria of the Hebrew/Greek alphabet, and the Golden Ratio. This decoding process could reveal a key factor influencing the artist's intentions in ordering the elements in this work. Clin. Anat. 31:948–955, 2018. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.