Is That a Secret Michelangelo Selfie at the Sistine Chapel?
A new theory suggests that the Renaissance master modelled his iconic image of God after himself
4 min
Michelangelo may have secretly painted himself onto the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, portraying himself as God with arm outstretched to spark life in a lounging Adam.
The theory, if true, underscores Michelangelo’s outsize ego, or at least his cheeky sense of humour. The hunch, which is gaining traction among Italian Renaissance scholars, also places the artist’s self-portrait squarely at the center of one of the most famous images in Western art.
“Michelangelo saw himself as the Messiah of art, so it makes sense,” said Adriano Marinazzo, a curator of special projects at Virginia’s Muscarelle Museum of Art at The College of William & Mary who published the theory last December in the peer-reviewed Italian art journal Critica d’Arte.
Although the artist painted more than 300 biblical characters across 5,000 square feet of ceiling, the central action in Michelangelo’s masterpiece is “The Creation of Adam.” The section shows an elderly, bearded God twisting beneath a floating cloak so that the fingertips on his right hand nearly reach a lackadaisical Adam, who represents mankind.
Mr. Marinazzo, who has a record of Michelangelo-related discoveries, said he made the connection after studying a sheet of paper containing a sonnet Michelangelo wrote to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia between 1509 and 1511. In the sonnet, Michelangelo complains about the physical toll the job has taken on his health.
“My brush, above me all the time, dribbles the paint so my face makes a fine floor for droppings,” the artist wrote.
In the sonnet’s margins, the artist also drew a man, presumably himself, standing with legs slightly crossed while painting a ghoulish face on the ceiling with his right arm outstretched.
Scholars have long focused on how the poem now held in Florence’s Buonarroti Archive proves Michelangelo’s ornery attitude about the papal commission. Mr. Marinazzo said he instead fixated on the sketch, wondering why the artist would portray himself standing with one leg slightly crossing the other—a shaky stance for anyone standing on scaffolding.
Mr. Marinazzo rotated a digital image of the letter last year and had an epiphany: The posture and pose of the sketched man looked eerily similar to that of God on the ceiling, a move the historian is now convinced was intentional.
“He’s hidden himself in the ceiling,” he said. “The face is idealised because Michelangelo was self-conscious about his smashed nose, but this is the closest he’s ever come to presenting himself as divine.”
Not everyone is convinced. Paul Barolsky, a Renaissance art historian at the University of Virginia, said he needs corroborating proof that the sketch inspired the final product. Michelangelo left behind hundreds of letters, including several where he wrote self-deprecatingly about his looks after a rival painter punched and broke his nose. He also created preparatory drawings of the figures’ hands in that pivotal scene on the ceiling. Never once did the artist claim to have modelled the figure of God after himself. “Everybody’s got theories, but you’ve got to do better than that,” Mr. Barolsky said.
Yet other scholars who have read Mr. Marinazzo’s hypothesis see merit in the claim.
William Wallace, a historian at Washington University in St. Louis who has written eight books on Michelangelo, said Mr. Marinazzo has made a “clever connection” about an artist whose crackling sense of humor is often overlooked. Mr. Wallace said he could “totally entertain” a theory wherein the artist painted himself as God. “He liked to laugh at himself, so this could be a hint.”
Gary Radke, an Italian Renaissance expert at New York’s Syracuse University, said he is now equally curious about the artist’s stance in the sketch. “Who stands like that on scaffolding?” Mr. Radke said. “It raises questions about interpretation, and Adriano has seen something new.”
Mr. Radke thinks the artist, who prized his own skills, may have subconsciously related to the God figure he was painting at the time.
Certainly the task before him was gargantuan. At the time Michelangelo took the commission, he was in his 30s—far younger than the God he painted—and already deemed one of Florence’s greatest sculptors, having carved “David” in Florence and the “Pietà” of St. Peter’s a few years before. He famously preferred sculpting over painting and accused his peers of recommending him for the ceiling job so they could watch him fail, scholars say.
Pope Julius II only asked him to paint the 12 apostles in the triangular shapes lining the outer edges of the barrel-vaulted ceiling, leaving the centre painted like a night sky with gilt stars. Instead, Michelangelo took over the entire span, ultimately re-creating a vast, biblical story about man’s search for God and redemption.
The result was widely hailed the moment it was unveiled in 1512, with Michelangelo’s biographer Giorgio Vasari describing the artist as “something divine rather than mortal.”
Mr. Radke said it often takes time for scholars to accept new ideas involving Michelangelo’s masterpiece. Another theory gaining traction alleges that the artist modelled the billowing cloak surrounding God after the shape of a human brain, he said. Ditto the notion that the woman and toddler tucked under God’s left arm represent Christ and his mother, Mary.
When it comes to Michelangelo selfies, there’s also precedent: Two decades after the artist finished the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michelangelo returned to the same room to paint a wall-spanning view of Christ’s Second Coming. In 1925, a scholar first suggested that Michelangelo likely painted himself in the flayed skin held by St. Bartholomew in that work, “The Last Judgment,” and the idea has since caught on.
“Michelangelo had an ego beyond belief,” Mr. Radke said, “so all his art was autobiography to him. He was a modern artist in that way.”
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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