Newsademic British English edition 260

18th February 2016 
N ew sadem ic.com
™
 - British English edition 
page 
17
o f people visit the gallery in Flor­
ence every year to see the statue.
M ichelangelo’s 
Pieta
is another 
statue. He completed it within two 
years. Pieta means ‘pity’ in Italian. 
A Pieta (pronounced pee-ey-tah) 
is a sculpture o f the Virgin Mary 
holding the body o f the dead Jesus 
Christ. Christians believe that Jesus 
is the Son o f God and that Mary was 
his mother. Today, this statue is in 
the Vatican, the headquarters o f the 
Roman Catholic Church.
Michelangelo painted the ceiling 
o f the Sistine Chapel. This chapel is 
in the Vatican. The pope, or leader 
o f the Roman Catholic faith, lives 
in the Vatican. The Sistine Chapel is 
part o f his private residence. It took 
Michelangelo just over four years to 
paint the ceiling. Several assistants 
helped him. The ceiling’s central 
panels are pictures o f nine scenes 
from Genesis. This is the first book 
o f the Bible. One scene, called 
The
Creation o f Adam,
is very famous. 
In the painting the fingers o f ‘God’ 
and ‘m an’ can be seen. They are 
only a few centimetres apart.
The medical researcher believes 
that Michelangelo had osteoarthri­
tis. This disease affects bone carti­
lage. Cartilage is a substance found 
in the joints. It helps the bones to 
move against each other. Osteoar­
thritis often affects the joints in the 
hands. The cartilage breaks down. A 
person’s joints swell and using the 
hands becomes painful.
Michelangelo spent much o f his 
life using a hammer and chisel. The 
researcher thinks that this may have 
been the reason for the disorder. In 
later life, M ichelangelo’s osteoar­
thritis would have been very pain­
ful. However, the researcher says 
that if the artist had not kept using 
his hands, they may have become 
useless long before he died. □
H