Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Forbidden Fruit

Forbidden Fruit

 * Reason:Spectacular image, good scan.
 * Proposed caption:This detail of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo portrays Adam and Eve taking the "forbidden fruit" from the Tree of Knowledge and their subsequent expulsion from Eden. This image shows the results of the restoration of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling paintings from 1979 to 1994.
 * Articles this image appears in:Sistine Chapel ceiling and Sistine Chapel - restoration of frescoes. (Surprisingly few others: I would think that Genesis and Adam and Eve would be good candidates.
 * Creator:Michelangelo, uploaded to commons by TTaylor


 * Support as nominator Spikebrennan 22:29, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Seems a little awkwardly cropped at the top.... Adam Cuerden talk 23:27, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Cropping at the top and the righthand side is way too tight. It looks awkward and important parts of the figures are cut off. --jjron 23:49, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * weak support I like it, but can't wholeheartedly support because of the cropping. The snake figure is particularly interesting. Debivort 03:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment - You guys are going to have to take the tight cropping up with Michelangelo. You can see here and here that it really is framed that way.  This nom just takes a tiny bit off the top.  --TotoBaggins 14:15, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * This is a good point, but there is a 'however' to that. If you look carefully, especially at your first link showing the full ceiling, you'll be able to discern that the ceiling has a vault to it. There are always issues when flattening a curved surface like this onto a 2D picture, similar to the issues with creating maps of large areas of the world, where you are trying to show a curved Earth on a flat piece of paper. The next, and probably bigger issue, is to do with the architecture. A problem with the Sistine Chapel ceiling is distinguishing the real architecture from the illusionary architecture. In other words, some of the plasterwork/beams/whatever-they-are that separates the panels are real, some are just painted on to look like they're there. Therefore, depending on where you are, your view of the ceiling will be partially obscured by the real three-dimensional parts of the architecture. For example, if you look at this view you will see that Eve's left foot is cut off, although it is clearly visible in other views, including the current candidate. I suspect that if you went there and looked closely you would see that Michelangelo in fact painted a full Eve, as you would expect, and also did not 'crop' off any other parts of the picture. It is the interpretation that we've been given that leads to the cropping. Oh, incidentally, this has lead me to another issue here - the Vatican's Sistine Chapel official site says that this is called "Original Sin and Banishment from the Garden of Eden", or more simply "Banishment from the Garden of Eden"; why is this image identified under different names than this everywhere it appears in Wikipedia? --jjron 07:52, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

MER-C 09:32, 6 August 2007 (UTC)