Typological Interpretation and the Meaning of the Walls of the Sistine Chapel

Assumption by Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere (1471-1484). It was not however, the work

of Michaelangelo that was unveiled. Up until recently, the original decorations of the

Sistine Chapel were dismissed in preference of the later additions of the ceiling frescoes

and that of the Last Judgement on the altar wall. But modern scholarship has brought to

light a wealth of interpretations of the original wall frescoes which imbue them with

meanings previously overlooked.

The walls of the Sistine Chapel (Fig. 1) are all divided into three horizontal tiers.

The bottom tier consists of fictive wall tapestries, while the top tier contains the portraits

of the early popes. The second tier, by far the most important of the original decorations,

can be divided into two distinct narrative fresco cycles depicting the life of Christ and

that of Moses. Each of these cycles, in turn, can be broken down into what was originally

eight separate panels: one each on the short west wall (now lost due to the replacement by

Michaelangelo's Last Judgement in 1534), six each on the long north and south walls, and

one each on the short east wall (also destroyed, but repainted in the sixteenth century).

These panels were painted by some of the most important artists of the time - Sandro

Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlanaio, Luca Signorelli, and Cosimo Roselli; all under the

direction of Pietro Perugino.

However, before one looks at the ends that scholars have recently perceived in

these sixteen panels, one must first understand the means that the artists and their patrons

used to reach them. As Carol Lewine has pointed out, "because the architecture and

painted decoration of the Sistine Chapel were planned and executed more or less

concurrently, the organization of each long wall into six matching bays suggests that the

six history frescoes lining each long wall were envisioned from the start as two uniform

sets." And the superscriptions (called tituli) discovered after a recent cleaning over each

set of panels "matching Christological and Mosaic inscriptions on opposite sides of the

papal chapel," when juxtaposed to the zig zagging chronological pattern of the early

popes above, leave little doubt that a typological reading of the cycles is in order.

Typology, as K. J. Woollcombe puts it, "is akin to the study of fulfillment of

prophecy." It was a devise used to find allegorical evidence of the New Testament in

the Old. Woollcombe goes on to compare typology to the weaving of a carpet on a loom

in which:

All the parts of the pattern were closely related to each other and converge on the

central motif; and the pattern between the beginning and the central axis mirrored

the pattern from the central axis to the end. Consequently the main object of this

exegesis was to show how the parts of the pattern were related, and how they

converged on the center - to bring to light the evidence of God's consistent

purpose in history.

No doubt, this is a technical theological devise that would have been known only to a

select number of well educated priests and scholars, how then does it play such a

prominent role in the cycles on the Sistine Chapel walls?

As has been pointed out by Ettlinger, "it can hardly be assumed that the choice of

these scenes was left up to the artists who painted them or even the master who directed

the decoration of the chapel." Instead, the patrons, not insignificantly Pope Sixtus IV

himself, would have been responsible for the specific iconography depicted. This would

be consistent with the Pope's renown as a theological scholar and there is evidence that he

was well familiar with the history of typological theology. In his famous treatise entitled

De Sanguine Christi, for example, produced long before his ascention to the papal throne,

Francesco dell Rovere had referred to Origen, an early employer of typological

interpretation of scripture. There is much documentation concerning the renewed study

of early church Fathers such as Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, St. Augustine and the

Alexandrian Jewish theologian, Philo (all of whom favored typological exegesis), during

the mid to late fifteenth century, often just prior or even concurrent to the construction

and decoration of the chapel. De Vita Moysis (De Vita Perfecta) by Gregory of Nyssa

was translated into Latin in 1446, a "Latin translation of Philo's De Vita Moysis was

presented to Sixtus IV by the Umbrian humanist, Lilio Tifernate" in 1480, and

Christoforo da Persona, who eventually became the Vatican Librarian, translated for

Sixtus "a large body of Chrysostom's homilies, a commentary on the Pauline Epistles

attributed to Arthanasius and, most important, Origen's Contra Celsum." As becomes

apparent from this exhaustive list of ancient sources, "the comparison between Moses

and Christ is a theological commonplace and Sixtus was merely repeating an equation

which can be traced back to the Greek Fathers, if not to the Gospel."

What is intriguing about the cycles of the Sistine Chapel is the use of typological

exegesis in visual representation. "During the Middle Ages, typological representations

are to be found on church furnishings, stained glass, and in illuminated manuscripts

rather than on walls (Fig. 2)." Furthermore, examples of this style are found in the

northern countries, like in the Allegory of the Church windows of Suger's St. Denis,

rather than in Italy. As Ettlinger points out, one little known example of typological

representation does exist in approximate contemporality. Giotto's frescoes in the Arena

Chapel in Florence juxtaposes Old and New Testament scenes in something resembling

typological exegesis. "Giotto has hidden his small Old Testament pictures among the

ornaments of the vertical pilasters separating the large New Testament Scenes." But

while some of the scenes refer to excepted typological comparisons, some such as the

link between the Resurrection and a lion reviving its young are taken from outside

Biblical sources. "If the groupings of the Arena Chapel seem almost haphazard, this only

goes to prove that no fixed typological tradition existed in Italy at the time." However,

similar structural motifs from the chapel like the typological cycles (though never so

monumental), the three horizontal zones, the tessellated marble floor, and the Cancellata

(the screen dividing the room in two), echo those of earlier Christian churches such as

Old St. Peter's, S. Paolo furori le Mura, and S. Urbano alla Caffarella. "It is possible that

all these archaizing details were introduced consciously in order to mark a return to early

Christian usage and such a course can not be ruled out in the case of a building dating

from a period which witnessed such a renewed interest in the theology of the Fathers."

Recent scholarship such as that by Ettlinger, Goffin, and Lewine, has uncovered a

multitude of possible reasons for this return to early Christian imagery and ideas, which

as Lewine suggests need not act in contradictory fashion, but could possibly have

coexisted to inflate both the meaning and the purpose of the two narrative cycles.

Ettlinger - whose The Sistine Chapel Before Michaelangelo, was, and possibly still is,

"the most important and sustained study" on that subject - tackled the consequential

theme of papal primacy in the Sistine cycles. Rona Goffen, more than two decades later,

added the facet of Sixtus' Franciscan bent and the effects that the Order of St. Francis had

on the iconography. Carol Lewine demonstrated another aspect when she compared the

cycle with the Lenten liturgy.

Ettlinger began his encompassing study with the statement: "the question whether

these frescoes add up to a typological sequence must be linked to the concrete ends and

purposes for which the Sistine Chapel was built." Papal primacy, a theme now

demonstrated as far more reaching than just in the Sistine Chapel, was the ends Ettlinger

was searching for. Beginning with Marsilo of Padua, St. Peter's role as the Bishop of

Rome was called into question. No doubt such sentiments could be damaging to the

power and prestige of the papal throne and so, Ettlinger suggests, a project such as the

Sistine walls worked to visually disprove, and at the same time caution any further,

attacks on the papacy. As Stinger states, "they found in Hebraic antiquity, particularly in

the religious career of Moses, prefigurements to the priestly, legislative, and governing

roles of the Roman pontiffs." Ettlinger notes the interesting lack of miracles in the life

of Christ depicted on the Sistine walls, and attributes to it this comparison between the

papacy and the religious roles of Moses and Christ. "They stressed," he insists, "the

institutional character of the Old Covenant. The Synagogue prefigures the Church."

This idea is furthered by the fact that above the cycles in the top tier of the walls, the

early papal popes are portrayed in oscillating portraits. However, "they do not

commemorate the achievement, martyrdom, or saintliness of the first popes, but are

witnesses of the Apostolic Succession."

Goffen, highly influenced by Ettlinger's monumental study, proposed in her

article, "Friar Sixtus IV and the Sistine Chapel," what she proclaims as "a level of

meaning concurrent and consonant with the imagery of papal primacy." She suggests

that owing to Sixtus' continued commitment to the Franciscan Order, of which he was the

Minister General for some years, and the internal ruptures in the Order itself, the Sistine

Walls are replete with Franciscan typology, most specifically the writings of St.

Bonaventure, whom Sixtus had worked to canonize against much opposition. She

explains that "beleaguered by strife within his Franciscan Order, Sixtus was deeply

concerned both with the 'parochial' problems of the friars and the larger issues

confronting the papacy." Indeed, since "St. Peter is the patron saint of the Franciscan

Order," promoting his authority simultaneously served two purposes. The typology seen

implicitly in the Rule of St. Francis becomes "explicit in the writings of St.

Bonaventure." In Legenda S. Fancisci, Bonaventure continually compares St. Francis

with both Moses and Christ, whether it be Francis' writing the Rule at Reiti with Moses'

being given the tablets at Sinai" or in "describing how Francis himself - implicitly

recalling Christ, in the familiar Franciscan typology - had resisted Satan's wiles."

Lewine further deepened the interpretation of the meaning of the walls when she

noted the "repeated typological juxtapositions of Christ and Moses in liturgical texts of

Lent." She pointed out the influence the captivity in Avignon had on papal liturgical

practice which, when in Rome had incorporated eight church stations during the Lenten

season, was forced to abandon the 'stationary' custom in favor of a stationary one, each

successive set of panels representing one of the eight stations as well as one of the eight

weeks of Lent. Typology she suggests is the perfect tool for a chapel dedicated during

the centennial anniversary of the return to Rome. From Petrarch onward," she argues,

"parallels were drawn between the ancient Jewish exile in Babylon and the papal

'captivity' in Avignon."

Certainly, each of these three interpretations need not be seen as contradictory. It

is a tribute to Sixtus and his fellow theologists that they were able to, using specific

iconography (Fig. 3-Fig. 16), incorporate not only the socio-political atmosphere of the

time, be it challenges to the papal authority or ruptures among his own friars, but a long

standing religious practice with pertinent significance to a papacy recently returned from

exile. Furthermore, "the sudden emergence of Moses as the hero of a series of

monumental frescoes is surely remarkable and unparalleled in the Middle Ages and

Renaissance." The ingenuity of the artists, and specifically their patrons, in utilizing a

typological technique previously unknown on this scale, demonstrate their power to call

upon an ancient tradition of exegesis and represent it visually, in order to demonstrate not

only their own specific ends, but to represent the "God-ordained course of history from

the Creation to the salvation of man." Also, the power of the association between the

Papacy, the Franciscan Order and the image of Moses as "lawgiver, ruler, and priest"

can be seen in the how both Julius II (in his unfinished tomb) and Sixtus V (in his Moses

Fountain) utilize the power of Moses to assert their own authority.

Bibliography

Allen, Dan. Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and

Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance. John Hopkins Press, Baltimore. 1970.

Ettlinger, Leopold. The Sistine Chapel Before Michaelangelo: Religious Imagery

and Papal Primacy. Claredon Press, Oxford. 1965.

Goffen, Rona. "Friar Sixtus IV and the Sistine Chapel." Renaissance Quarterly,

Vol. 39, Num. 2. 1986. 218-262.

Hanson, Richard. Allegory and Event: A study of the Sources and Significance of

Origen's Interpretation of Scripture. John Knox Press, Richmond. 1959.

Lewine, Carol. The Sistine Chapel Walls and the Roman Liturgy. Penn State

University Press, University Park. 1993.

Monfasani, John. "A Description of the Sistine Chapel Under Pope Sixtus IV."

Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 7. 1983. 9-18.

Stinger, Charles. The Renaissance in Rome. Indiana University Press,

Indianapolis. 1985.

Woollcombe, K.J. "The Biblical Origins and Patristic Development of

Typology." Essays on Typology. Alec Allenson, Inc., Naperville. 1957.