Mankind has made the most incredible art inspired by religion. Along the same lines, Bach's Chorales and in fact quite a bit of his other work.
Try this, if you feel like some really nice classical music:
Try this, if you feel like some really nice classical music:
Yes, religion was the primary patron of visual, sculptural, and musical arts for much of the period from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. But it wasn't the only.
And you'll find beautiful works among the secularist of the Classical and Romantic periods, say, the Pre-Raphaelites. Of whom neither the artists, models, nor subject are generally highly religious in nature.
What on Earth does that mean?
Clearly we both know you can look up "counterpoint" if you want to, so I read into your post you were a tiny bit interested but not so interested as to bother looking it up.
I'd hoped the shorthand would give you enough additional idea that you could decide whether doing so was worth it for you, the link between interesting patterns and computer science being hopefully obvious.
During his own time Bach was not even hailed as a great composer, his genius and contributions only gained appreciation long after he died.
ftfy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soli_Deo_gloria
For Michelangelo I'm not so sure, but for Bach there is absolutely no doubt.
Again: the Church was very different during the period than it is today, representing political power, a center and repository of education and knowledge, tremendous financial power, and a very active role in political goings-on. Again: it's really not particularly surprising that the Church was so involved in sponsorship for the arts.
Today those roles are largely filled by commercial interests, an insight which first came to me in the late 1980s as an early computer animation festival was touring through my college town, and I realized that many of the best shorts, almost all advertisements, were for tobacco and alcohol companies. Today that niche is filled more by the FIRE sector.
This brings a famous bit by George Carlin (I think) to my mind - ...It start's when we are kids, we are told to be creative and to colour within the lines... (paraphrased)
Monet struggled with the Académie des Beaux-Arts fot painting the way they thought people should paint.
There is a long history of Ballet dancers in the USSR who struggled because they good communists.
Today character assassination is the norm for for so many people (especially in the arts) who don't strictly adhere to progressive politics.
I attended an art school for time where I was frequently shunned for dressing well, (apparently you can't be an "artist" if you wear slacks and dress shirts,) and adhering to Christian principles.
Look at the movie Moms' night out. Highly panned by critics because because the characters are not "feminist" enough. Yet highly rated by the audience.
Michelangelo was at continuous odds with his employers during his lifetime, he dissected corpses illegally at first, later with tacit approval of some of the church bigwigs in order to improve his skills as an artist. It was a continuous give-and-take to see who got the most out of the arrangement.
In the end I think we, the future dwellers able to see his work no matter what caused them to come into being are the real winners.
Not bad for a man who declared himself unfit to execute the work because he was a sculptor, not a painter...
There is a very good book about him that I forgot the title of (I read it ages ago).
Wasn't it more like "declared painting as unfit for him"? Michelangelo had a strong disdain for paintings and painters especially Leonardo Da Vinci and his friends.
My only source is [this biography](1). Not sure how accurate that is.
[1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Agony-Ecstasy-Biographical-Michela...
The "standard" sagittal section as in this image (i.imgur.com/ZTvy55n.jpg), or this image (i.imgur.com/73YdDXa.jpg) is chosen precisely because it shows in one image several important features of the brain, and is also recapitulated nicely by MRI images, as you mention.
However, there is no reason why Michelangelo would know anything about the different regions of the brain and therefore choose a representation that showed them.
A "fresh" human brain (which is what Michelangelo would have seen) looks like this (i.imgur.com/KXBLtrx.jpg), or this (i.imgur.com/Bm5l8n6.jpg), and without further dissection do not look much like his paintings.
Such brains can be further sectioned in any number of ways, none of which are necessarily obvious. The question then is would Michelangelo have dissected brains in the same way as is now done?
The inside of the skull is not shaping the skull in a way that it will come out 'wrong' if you don't know about what's in the skull.
When looking at the chapel I see a large number of religious figures and imagery, so it seems odd to say that art depicting religious subjects, in a religious setting, sponsored by a religious patron was not inspired by Christianity.
"Inspired" implies that the artist woke up with an idea and painted it.
I'm pretty sure the reigning pope approved of the design, both from an execution perspective as from the content itself.
But if he had done the job according to the normal way of decorating ceilings in that day we likely would not be having this discussion. It really is a masterpiece.