The paper below reveals how Michelangelo turned the Sistine Chapel into a reflection of his own mind. His art,
like so much great art, is a pictorial essay on the theme that only self-knowledge is true knowledge and that
reality and the Godhead is inside our minds, not out. That is why he dissected human bodies. Convinced that
each of us is made in the image of God, as the Bible says and the Renaissance believed, he searched inside to
understand the divine. 

There is no more complex or more fascinating challenge in art history than the visual mystery of the Sistine
Chapel. And for those who enjoy visual illusions the Chapel is full of them. Examine, for instance, the recently-
discovered self-portrait of Michelangelo fused into the torso of St. Peter. It is the only known self-portrait of
Michelangelo  as Michelangelo ever found.

Michelangelo's Art Through Michelangelo's Eyes (Sistine Chapel)
Part 1 of 3:   Download
Part 2 of 3:   Download
Part 3 of 3:   Download

New Note: Christian Kleinbub recently interpreted Raphael's Transfiguration in ways very similar to how Michelangelo's art is interpreted above.
Both artists are seen to obscure their meaning by fusing a historical rendering with an allegorical one. The latter, he argues, demonstates "the
process by which the mind might be turned to [an] internal vision of God" and how "visuality in Renaissance painting is the subject of the work."

Supplements linked to insights revealed in The Art Newspaper can be accessed below.

An unseen self-portrait of Michelangelo (as it appeared in The Art Newspaper, June 2007)

Michelangelo's self-portrait in St. Peter's torso , explained in more detail 

Last Judgment: Compositional Sketches 

Signorelli and his metamorphic portrait of Dante   

Durer's Hidden Faces  

Diagram of Dante's profile in The Last Judgment           Michelangelo planned to use his own head in an early sketch