Creation of Adam

Borne up in a billowing red cloak crowded with angels, God surges toward the languid, reclining Adam and reaches out; their fingers nearly touch, and into that charged gap of empty space Michelangelo pours the whole act of creation, the spark of life suspended just before contact (Genesis 1-2). Adam's beautiful body lies inert, waiting to be quickened. The restraint is the genius - not the touch but its imminence. From the same Sistine ceiling as the Fall of Man elsewhere in this collection, it has become perhaps the most recognized image in Western art, quoted and parodied without end.