An absolutely fascinating, if controversial, analysis of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes.
Blech and Doliner argue that Michelangelo held universalistic views not only embracing antiquity and humanistic approach, but also religious views that were in direct conflict with the views of the Catholic church of the time, and were based on Neo-Platonism, hermeneutics and Jewish Kabbalah.
Michelangelo was a thoroughly Italian Renaissance figure with his primary love focused on the Antiquity and classical Greek and Roman art and deep religious convictions. But, he was also thoroughly fed up with the immorality, militarism and nepotism of the popes and the church, and everything points to the possiblity that he did not even remain Catholic, but became Protestant by the end of his life. Hence the Sistine ceiling paintings are full of anti-papal messages and devoid of even single New Testament reference or figure, and awash in Old Testament lore instead, very much with a Jewish Bible slant.
Being a universalist, Michelangelo wanted to meld the pagan Greek and Roman heritage with the origins of the Christian religion and the New Testament. Some of these elements were well entrenched when he was doing his art, but the Jews were shunned. They were labelled the murderers of Christ for many centuries, denounced by the Church, and it was only in the twentieth century, and by the end of it, that the Church has somewhat let up on that stance. According to Blech, Michelangelo brought it upon himself to rehabilitate the Jews, especially that he saw what was happening in Rome at that time as an aberration of the original religious teachings, and preached Jewish Bible stories and interpretations as warnings. He couldn't do it openly- death would surely follow pretty quickly- so he secretly embedded it in his work. It seems that he got a lot of his knowledge from Neoplatonists of his time, some of whom were his teachers (e.g., Pico della Mirandola) when he was growing up at the Medici court in Florence.
The book shows great scholarship of its author and his vast religious knowledge. I learned more about Michelangelo, papacy, Old Testament and Jewish Kabbalah from it than I probably would from separate sources on them. ( )

The liberties that the author take in interpreting the walls of the Sistine Chapel are sometimes to much, but there are a few things that you see that there has to be something more to it. This book gives a plausible back story to the images of the Chapel. After a few more people write things similar to this, then Dan Brown could write a block buster about it, and get all the glory.