Michelangelo appears to have depicted a woman with breast cancer in his fresco The Flood on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which may have been a message on the inevitability of death.
Researchers have previously identified signs of breast cancer 鈥� including swelling and skin retraction 鈥� in his sculpture Night, dated around 1526 to 1533.
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Now, at the University of Paris-Saclay in France and her colleagues have spotted similar presentations in The Flood, which Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City between 1508 and 1512. One of nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, The Flood portrays Noah鈥檚 Ark, a story about God flooding Earth as punishment for humanity鈥檚 immorality.
Bianucci and her team noticed one woman whose right breast has a retracted nipple and areola, surrounded by indentations and lumps. They also noted a slight bulge near her armpit, which could represent enlarged lymph nodes, another indication of cancer.
Primarily an artist, Michelangelo had participated in human dissections before painting The Flood. He therefore probably had some knowledge of cancerous tumours, which have been recorded since antiquity, says Bianucci.
Michelangelo may have painted breast cancer to represent illness as a punishment for lust, because this 鈥渟in鈥� was associated with female breasts, says Bianucci. A theme of Genesis is that God made humanity aware of mortality as a punishment for sin.
鈥淚t鈥檚 reasonable to presume that the message is to do with the inevitability of death,鈥� says , a medical historian at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. 鈥淐ancer was known to be incurable, levying an acute emotional toll, and it鈥檚 likely that a woman who found a lump in her breast would know the potential outcome.鈥�
However, Michelangelo may not have deliberately depicted cancer, because there are no ulcerations on the woman鈥檚 skin, says Arnold-Forster. 鈥淭his would have been a more obvious visual sign of the disease if Michelangelo had intended to depict it. It could of course be cancer 鈥� we just can鈥檛 know with certainty.鈥�
The Breast
