Michelangelo and a Blinding Darkness: A Reflection on Finitude and Transcendence in the Vocation of End of Life Care
Nicolle Shirilla, MD, MA, MEd, Assistant Professor in the Division of Bioethics and in the Division of Palliative Medicine, The Ohio State University College of Medicine
On a recent pilgrimage to Rome I was profoundly impacted learning of how Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel lying on his back on elevated scaffolding, in dim light of oil lamps and candles with dyes and solvents dripping on his face. Gazing upon the masterpiece from below, it was difficult to imagine how he managed to paint such a work of art at all, let alone in such conditions. As my tour guide shared of how Michelangelo nearly lost his vision due to the hours spent painting in such conditions, I could only stand in awe and wonder.
Upon my return home I began doing some research, and learned that one year into the work (which he undertook from 1508 to 1512) Michelangelo penned a poem to a friend Giovanni Da Pistoia in which he wrote, “My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket… Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts are crazy, perfidious tripe: anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe. My painting is dead… I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.” How could Michelangelo feel that he is not a painter? Could he not truly see the masterpiece that he was creating? While it is impossible to know exactly what he might have been thinking and feeling as he wrote these words, I cannot help but think of the analogies to working with those who are seriously ill and nearing the end of their lives. How often we cannot see the transcendent truth, beauty and goodness that we strive towards as we contend with the realities of the finitude both of medicine and of human life itself that can be blinding.
Reflecting further, I find encouragement in learning that Michelangelo’s eye disease resolved a few months after he completed the painting. As he emerged from the years spent in the dimly lit vault gazing upward at such close proximity to the ceiling, the day came at last when he was able to descend the scaffolding for a final time, and eventually behold the transcendent masterpiece with restored vision healed by time and distance from the sacrifice required to create it.
Upon my return home I began doing some research, and learned that one year into the work (which he undertook from 1508 to 1512) Michelangelo penned a poem to a friend Giovanni Da Pistoia in which he wrote, “My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket… Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts are crazy, perfidious tripe: anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe. My painting is dead… I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.” How could Michelangelo feel that he is not a painter? Could he not truly see the masterpiece that he was creating? While it is impossible to know exactly what he might have been thinking and feeling as he wrote these words, I cannot help but think of the analogies to working with those who are seriously ill and nearing the end of their lives. How often we cannot see the transcendent truth, beauty and goodness that we strive towards as we contend with the realities of the finitude both of medicine and of human life itself that can be blinding.
Reflecting further, I find encouragement in learning that Michelangelo’s eye disease resolved a few months after he completed the painting. As he emerged from the years spent in the dimly lit vault gazing upward at such close proximity to the ceiling, the day came at last when he was able to descend the scaffolding for a final time, and eventually behold the transcendent masterpiece with restored vision healed by time and distance from the sacrifice required to create it.