'The Creation of Adam' - revealing the secret encoded by Michelangelo

"The Creation of Adam" by Italian artist Michelangelo is probably the most famous fresco in the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo, one of the three most outstanding artists of the High Renaissance, painted it around 1511.

The fresco was one of the most complex and difficult paintings to create. Michelangelo spent sixteen days completing it, starting with the figure of God and the Angels and later painting the figure of Adam.

It illustrates the Biblical creation narrative from the Book of Genesis in which God gives life to Adam, the first man. The fresco is part of a complex iconographic scheme and is chronologically the fourth in the series of panels depicting episodes from Genesis.

The painting illustrates a Genesis phrase, "God created man in his own image," by drawing two similar bodies, both strong and robust.

In this painting, Michelangelo uses two precise golden ratios. The golden ratio (also known as the golden section) is to provide the most aesthetically pleasing proportion of sides of a rectangle.

Using two golden ratios, Michelangelo depicted not only the tension between the material body and transcendent soul, but by drawing a line between the physical eye and neuroanatomy of the third eye, he secretly encoded the timeless message that the divine is within us all.