Attempted Bloggery: Michelangelo Buonarroti

Showing posts with label Michelangelo Buonarroti. Show all posts

Saturday, October 25, 2025

Bluesky Labels My Sexually Suggestive Adult Content

Bluesky's website describes itself as "Social media as it should be." I'm all in favor of that. In fact, I use Bluesky to publicize every single new post on this very blog.

Imagine my surprise then when I found one of my posts on the platform had been dinged Wednesday by Bluesky's moderator, possibly a bot, as "Adult Content." I had been promoting my recent post on illustrator Edward Sorel's depiction of God creating autumn and its source material from the Italian Renaissance. What then was my offense?

The label applied to my supposedly adult content by @moderation.bsky.app was "Sexually Suggestive." They added, not very helpfully, "Does not include nudity." I take that to mean nudity alone is not deemed to be sexually provocative.

Here then is my "sexually suggestive" "adult content," revealed:

I immediately submitted an appeal, of course, but the label hasn't been removed as of this posting. The censored image, for the sake of Bluesky employees and others who may have never seen it before, is Michelangelo's Creation of Adam (c. 1512) from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It's right there in the Vatican at the end of the museum tour. You can't miss it unless you don't look up. I borrowed the image from Wikipedia.

Note: You can follow me, docnad, on Bluesky here. Who knows?— I might even post more sexually suggestive adult content.

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Thursday, October 9, 2025

God Creating Autumn: Edward Sorel Preliminary New Yorker Cover Art

God Creating Autumn may have been Edward Sorel's original title for what would become The New Yorker's cover of October 13, 1997. This name is being used by London's Chris Beetles Gallery in its listing of the preliminary art, Sorel's satirical take on Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam relocated to the leaf-changing season in New England. The angels have been transformed into tourists with their cameras loaded, no doubt, with color film. Beetles has been offering this one for ten years. It is priced at 1,750 pounds sterling.

Edward Sorel

Chris Beetles listing accessed October 8, 2025

https://www.chrisbeetles.com/artwork/2607/god-creating-autumn

The changes that were made for the final cover are meant, I think, to serve the narrative flow. Sorel flipped the composition around, moving away from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel masterpiece while somehow keeping the familiar Creation imagery. The New Yorker gave the cover the understated title Fall Colors but the art is anything but understated. As we tend to read pictures from left to right and from top to bottom, we can now methodically make our way, following God's finger and Sorel's pen, down to the divine blaze of autumn glory.

Edward Sorel
Fall Colors
The New Yorker, October 13, 1997

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1997-10-13/flipbook/CV1/

In sum, here is the full chronology:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_of_Adam#/media/File:Michelangelo_-_Creation_of_Adam_(cropped).jpg

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Thursday, April 16, 2020

Florence 2019: Galleria dell'Accademia

The Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence was built primarily to house Michelangelo's David. It also serves as the home to his Slaves, unfinished sculptures that reveal much of what we know about his working process. We were unable to gain entry to the Museum on July 11, so we purchased tickets instead for July 12, 2019.

The Rape of the Sabines
Plaster model
Giambologna

Daphnis and Chloe
Ulisse Cambi

Musical instruments:

Two Strads

Harpsichord

In English it's called a serpent but the Italian word for this instrument has the edge:

Serpentone

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Friday, January 3, 2020

Lee Lorenz: In the Beginning

In the Beginning is apparently the second color lithographic edition created for the Circle Fine Art Corporation by New Yorker art editor Lee Lorenz. It was struck in January 1990 at the American Atelier in New York and released in November of that year. It bears the edition code LLG 101, whereas Weight Watcher was LLG 100. The lithograph is accompanied by documentation which describes how the edition was created. The lithograph itself is of course a play on Michelangelo's Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Lee Lorenz
In the Beginning
No. 264/300, 1990

Lee Lorenz
eBay Listing Accessed January 1, 2019

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LEE-LORENZ-LITHOGRAPH-IN-THE-BEGINNING-1990-/273064120106

Lee Lorenz
eBay Item Description Accessed January 1, 2019

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LEE-LORENZ-LITHOGRAPH-IN-THE-BEGINNING-1990-/273064120106

Note: Evidently this is redrawn from a New Yorker cartoon, but when did it appear in the magazine? My search skills have come up short today.

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Sunday, August 18, 2019

Rome 2019: The Church of Saint Peter in Chains

The Basilica di San Pietro in Vincoli is a not far from the Colosseum in Rome, but it's easy to miss if you don't deliberately seek it out. When I first visited in 1985 there was a coin-operated lighting system that would illuminate Michelangelo's Tomb of Pope Julius II with the famous sculpture of Moses to facilitate photography. Today camera's handle natural lighting well and this modern innovation is no longer in place, thankfully.