Michelangelo Glass Candle Holder - Creation of Adam (1511-1512)

About Michelangelo Glass Candle Holder - Sistine Chapel Ceiling - Creation of Adam (1511-1512)

This Michelangelo Glass Candle Holder features one of the Italian High-Renaissance Cinquecento artist's most notorious work the Creation of Adam Panel, found on the Sistine Chapel Ceiling Fresco (1511-1512). One of the two central panels of the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco, The Creation of Adam, represents the moment when God and Adam confront each other in a primordial unformed landscape of which Adam is still a material part, heavy as earth. The Lord transcends the earth, wrapped in a billowing cloud of drapery and borne up by His powers. Representing the Old Testament biblical passage in Genesis 1:26 (NIV, Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”),  Michelangelo depicts the moment where life leaps to Adam like a spark from the extended and mighty hand of God.

The stylistic similitudes of between the rendering of the christian God and classical mythology demonstrate the high Renaissance's thought of combining classical and Christian traditions, without obscuring the essential Christian message. As God reaches out to Adam, the viewer's eye travels from right to left, but Adam's extended left arm leads the eye back to the right, along with the Lord's arm, shoulders and left arm to his left forefinger, which points to the Christ Child's face. Through this compositional arrangement, Michelangelo vividly exemplifies the Christian doctrinal parallel between Adam, the first man and cause of the fall of humanity, and the subsequent redemption from sin through the sacrifice of Christ, referred in Scripture as "The New Adam."