Two Very Different Pictures of God

An Essay written by Raymond Fontaine - December 2003

       Last week, I surfed the Internet looking for a story. Before long I landed in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. One particular painting caught my attention. It was Michelangelo's fresco of God creating the first human.

   After sometime, my computer mouse clicked me into a gallery of paintings by Morgan Weistling. Among many, one caught my eye. It portrayed a woman kissing her baby. The title read: "kissing the face of God".

   That evening, I reflected upon those two paintings for hours. Later I typed my musings and launched them into cyberspace.

   The first part centered on Michelangelo's "The Creation of Humankind".

       One morning in 1511, Michelangelo entered the Sistine Chapel and climbed up a fifty-foot scaffolding to a platform just beneath the ceiling. Lying on his back, the artist began painting the greatest event in human history - the creation of humankind. No one could provide him with the circumstances of that momentous happening. For that, Michelangelo was completely on his own.

   First he wanted to paint God. But how could he best represent the Creator who is spiritual and eternal, intelligent and omnipotent? Soon he chose to portray God as a venerable old man with gray hair and beard. He clothed him in a short white tunic and painted him floating through the air backed by a huge gray-lilac mantle. God looked awesome.

   To portray the first human, Michelangelo faced a similar problem.  No one could tell him where or when man was created nor how he looked. After a tentative start, the artist boldly painted a mature muscular man. He is reclining on bare ground without any landscape. He does not wear clothing or ornaments that are peculiar to any culture or race - he is stark naked.

   The third and greatest problem facing Michelangelo was how to portray the causal connection between the Creator and the creature. In thought and word, that was simple: "God created man". With pigments, however, it was more than difficult; it was impossible. So, Michelangelo left a gap between the outstretched forefinger of God and that of man. The reclining figure of man and his limp hand, in contrast to the sturdy arm of God floating on air, clearly showed who gave and who received life.

   Michelangelo's fresco of the creation of humankind presents no problem to most everyone regardless of their religious beliefs. Protestants and Catholics, Muslims and Jews admire the painting without misgivings. They know that Michelangelo is simply portraying this one fact that the first human and his progeny owe their existence to an intelligent Being. They view the painting with awe. The more reflective and thoughtful persons feel grateful to God for his Creation and to Michelangelo for his painting.

    My second series of reflections focused on the lovely painting below entitled "Kissing the Face of God".

        While Michelangelo represented God as an elderly man, the modern painter, Morgan Weistling,  portrays him as a baby boy. This child is not shown naked like Michelangelo's first man; the infant is wrapped in a white blanket. Weistling's divine child is not lying on the bare ground like Michelangelo's man but cuddled in the arms of his mother. On the Sistine ceiling, God is not even touching his creature, but in Weistling's painting, the mother is kissing her child.

   For Weistling's beautiful painting, the title could have been "a mother's love". This title would have been based on nature. The close bond between mother and offspring is a natural phenomenon. That is one of nature's many wonders all made possible by God's earlier fashioning of the world.

   With this title of "a mother's love", the painting would have universal appeal. Any mother would enjoy receiving this picture on a Mother's Day card. No child would hesitate to send it to his mother.

   But with the title "Kissing the Face of God", that's another story. This title says: this baby is God become man. His real name is Jesus and Mary is the mother of God. But most people on earth do not believe in the dogma of Incarnation. They might not enjoy receiving Morgan Weistling's picture with its present title.  

   PS. From the National Geographic, I recently received a sample Christmas card with Morgan Weistling's painting on the cover. Since I no longer believe in the Incarnation, I cut off the title "Kissing the Face of God". The painting now represents, at least for me, all loving mothers. So I placed it on my desk next to a 1917 photo that I treasure - that of my mother rocking me to sleep. For the index of my essays, click here