Menu
After Dan Brown’s famous “Da Vinci Code” here is another fiction you might like. It’s about a thesis developed by Benjamin Blech and Roy Doliner in their book “The Sistine Secrets”.
The authors believe that Michelangelo left a hidden code in the vaults of the Sistine Chapel with an important message to be revealed in later centuries. The secret is supposedly contained in the fresco “Man created by the Mind”, showing the separation of Light and Darkness.
The painting contains the precise drawing of a human brain, hinting to the Kabbalah’s belief that the human essence is the fruit of knowledge placed in the right hemisphere of the brain, exactly where the Master depicts God.
So, how might Michelangelo have planned the revelation of the Secret and what significance might have his Code for our life today? To find the solution, we have to bear in mind that the Master was primarily a sculptor rather than a painter. It seems therefore logical that the revelation should come in the form of sculpture.
Discover the secret
The artist Anna Chromy tries to answer these questions with her Cloak of Conscience, a work of art absolutely unique in the history of sculpture: the image of an empty Cloak, hewn from a single block of 250 tons of pristine white marble, from the famous Cave Michelangelo in Carrara, where 500 years ago the genius used to select his blocks and transform them into eternal masterworks.
Designed as a place to rediscover one’s inner self, Anna created an interior space for meditation, which allows people to consult their conscience, the lost faculty to perceive the hidden, eternal truth.
It helps to open the spiritual faculty of regeneration as described in the Kabbalah and other books of mystique, and to reestablish the vital union between God and Man. A regeneration involving sublimation of vice into virtue, and the penetration of body and soul with the heat of divine love and the light of divine intelligence.
The Cloak of conscience
There are several circumstances, which allowed Anna Chromy to reveal Michelangelo’s Code to contemporary society with the “Cloak of Conscience”:
During her early childhood in the mystical city of Prague, there were two places, which she frequented assiduously: her petrified stone friends on Charles Bridge, to whom she addressed never-ending monologues, and the Jewish Cemetery, where she rehearsed the story of Gustav Meyrink’s Golem.
Charles Bridges, Prague
She would never have imagined in these days that she would one day be able to create beings out of clay, just like the Golem or in the image of God’s first creation of Man.
Anna’s favorite place in the Cemetery was the tomb of Moses Beck, buried there five months before Mozart conducted the Premier of his Don Giovanni in the National Theatre. Did she ever feel at this time that her first creations out of clay would be the characters of exactly this opera?
Would she have dared to imagine that her first Cloak in bronze, representing the Commendatore in Mozart’s opera, would be installed in front of this Theatre, to commemorate the fact that Mozart’s Don Giovanni started its phenomenal success story from here?
Cloak, Prague
This brings us back to the Sistine Chapel. It is said, that Mozart was inspired for his Requiem by the frescos on the vault of the Sistine Chapel. Knowing Mozart’s love for the Kabbalah, we find many allusions in the “Magic Flute”, and in Don Giovanni and others of his operas. Is this perhaps one of the reasons why Anna chose the Don Giovanni characters for her first sculpture series?
Perhaps it is. But, there is another surprising connection between the Cloak of Conscience and the Sistine Chapel, which was built by a Franciscan Pope and decorated under his nephew a Franciscan as well. Franciscans are the guardians of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and of the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem. They are the “Custodians of the Holy Land”.
On a wall of the Holy Convent of Saint Francis in Assisi, there is an inscription by Dante Alighieri, the great Italian poet, who describes Assisi as the Orient, the place where the sun rises. It should come as no surprise therefore, that the idea of the Cloak as a chapel in marble has matured right here in the Convent of Assisi in a discussion between Anna Chromy and the Abbot of this Holy Site.
Anna had already contributed several of her works to the Convent and the Basilica. One was a Saint Martin for the Martins Chapel in the Lower Basilica, placed next to the tomb of St. Francis. Another was her group St. Francis and Dame Poverty, based on Dante’s Divina Comedia, right next to the poet’s inscription in the Monastery. This time Anna had brought a small model of the Cloak in bronze as a gift for the Abbot, to be placed in the Papal Apartments of the Convent.
When he saw the sculpture, the Abbot turned to Anna with these words: “Anna, you know the rule of Saint Francis: In the absence of a consecrated place of worship, we should use our own body as a cloak for prayer and meditation. Would it be possible to transform your Cloak into a secluded space, where people can find their inner self, undisturbed by anybody?”
He went on: “Former places of worship, like the Sistine Chapel, have become pure tourist attractions today. They have lost their magic and meaning. The world needs a strong symbol for the new era which is coming upon us”.
Four and a half years after this discussion – the same time it took Michelangelo to create the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel – Anna Chromy had completed her “Cloak of Conscience” as a space of contemplation five meters high, a feat for which she received as first woman the coveted Michelangelo Prize.
Many indices concord to the belief that humanity has reached a major turning point in its history: Most people can sense, that the model of development since the tremendous scientific advances of the Renaissance is no longer sustainable. The Western world is living as if it had several globes to exploit for our benefit and not just one, and emerging countries are fast catching up.
The Yin and Yang balances slowly in favor of the first. The development of the female energies of love, compassion and harmony, suppressed for centuries, shall allow us to navigate this dangerous schism in human history.
The philosopher Teilhard de Chardin had these premonitory words for the current change: “Un jour après avoir maitrisé les vents, les vagues, les marées et la pesanteur, nous devrions exploiter les énergies de l’amour; et pour la seconde fois dans l’histoire du monde, l’homme découvrira le feu” («One day, after having dominated the Winds, the Waves, the Tides and Gravity, we shall harness the Energies of Love, and for the second time in history Man will discover Fire”).
So what is the Hidden Message of Michelangelo’s Code?
“God is Love. There will come a day in human history where man will rediscover his inner conscience. This will lead to a revolution as vital as the discovery of fire. It will be fueled by the energies of love and compassion. To mark this epochal change, an artist will be chosen to create an iconic work testifying to and symbolizing this change.
This artist will use for his work the same marble from the Apuan Mountains, which I used for my Piétà, my David, and my Moses. The shape of the work will remind everyone of a universally venerated human being who exemplifies those essential qualities.”
Only the loving heart, the harmonious soul, and the creative mind of a female artist could reveal the meaning of Michelangelo’s Code. In the Kabbalah the 10th and final gate opens our heart, brings serenity, maximizes brain potential and creates a total communication with the Infinite. The Sephirol love contracts God to make His energy in the world over and show its glory to the nations.
This is the soul of the Thora which Anna Chromy depicted first in her sculpture “Golden Olive Tree” or Tree of Life, and now in her Cloak of Conscience. Onlookers seem to recognize in the empty Cloak the image of a familiar person, proof that Anna Chromy does not only have the artistic skills of Michelangelo, expressed in the folds of her Cloak, but also his capacity to deliver a message in a veiled, ambiguous form open to many different interpretations.
In 2017, a year where the numbers add up to ten, the latest gate in the Kabballah, the secret Code of Michelangelo, with its Love and Peace message contained in the Cloak of Conscience, will finally be revealed to the world.
Cloaks will be installed in highly symbolic places, like Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, the National Museum of China in Beijing, in Kazakhstan, the center of the modern Silk Road uniting China with Europe a.o. Moreover, Anna Chromy’s mystical journey to discover the Secret of the Michelangelo’s Code, which initiated in the “Golden City” of Prague, will reach its final stage with the Cloak as Commendatore in a new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Aix-en-Provence Opera Festival.
To experience the message of the Secret Code of Michelangelo hidden in the Cloak you have different choices:
– You can visit the large Cloak in the Michelangelo Studio in Carrara where it was created, and/or you can help to find the definite location for it
– You can visit smaller Cloaks in bronze and marble at locations indicated at Public Sculptures/Google Maps at annachromy.com
– You can buy a Cloak for your home or your neighborhood
– Or, you can soon visit a large Cloak in bronze in the city which half of the worlds citizens consider the center of the world – Jerusalem. The Cloak will be installed at Hadassah Medical Center, a facility where for over a century patients of all races, religions, or gender have received aid for their ailments. With their belief that medicine serves as a bridge to peace Hadassah is the ideal place for the Cloak to radiate its message.
Copyright Conscience Institute 2017
