Michelangelo is said to have painted a woman with breast cancer in “The Last Judgment,” a masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel. This is a hypothesis that researchers formulate in the specialist journal “The Breast” and which has now been picked up by the Italian media.
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The female figure, covered only by a blue veil, has a disfigured breast on the right side, showing symptoms of the disease. The woman can be seen in “The Deluge,” a story of “Genesis,” which the artist painted between 1508 and 1512 in the vault of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
Enlarged lymph nodes
Raffaella Bianucci, a biological anthropologist at the University of Paris-Saclay, focused primarily on the woman’s right breast with clear traces of the disease. In addition, swelling can be seen under the armpit, which is accompanied by enlarged lymph nodes. These are signs that could indicate breast cancer, said Bianucci.
According to the expert, breast cancer could have been recognized as a disease as early as the 16th century. Among other things, Michelangelo had closely studied human anatomy and even engaged in the dissection of corpses before working on the stories of Genesis. The expert assumes that Michelangelo wanted to use the woman to represent the concept of the inevitability of death.
