Time of history and time out of history: The Sistine Chapel as 'theoretical object'

Abstract

Drawing on Mieke Bal's construction of a critical history of art, which facilitates the extension of Walter Benjamin's philosophy to the visual arts, this essay reconsiders Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel in Rome, attentive to the conditions that allows the work of art from the past to appear in the present. Two forms of anachronism are proposed: the first may be understood as constituting the temporal structure of the Sistine Chapel up to its completion in 1542; the second, by contrast, is concerned with our 'present' and is a more audacious form of anachronism defined by the relationship between Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and the Chapel, particularly the 'Ancestors of Christ'. In elucidating these connections, Careri proposes 'constellation' rather than influence to signify deep and problematic relations. © Association of Art Historians 2007.