Michelangelo 'carved female sex organs

(ANSA) - Milan, April - Michelangelo carved pagan symbols of the female sex organs in the Medici Chapels in Florence just as he painted them in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, a team from Brazil's Porto Alegre University say in a new study.
    Skulls, shells and spheres evoke the shapes of the uterus and Fallopian tubes, the team led by Deivis de Campos said - the same group that a few months ago found similar allegedly anatomical symbols in the Sistine Chapel, as tokens of female power in a Church that held them back.
    The new study focuses on three symbols carved beside the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo dei Medici: skulls of cattle and rams, spheres connected by cords, and a shell.
    According to the Brazilian experts, their shape is a coded reference to that of the uterus and the Fallopian tubes, organs of female reproduction.
    The Renaissance genius inserted them into his work with the intention of "representing the capacity for rebirth and regeneration between life and death," said the team.
    "The hypothesis, suggestive but perhaps a little forced, could confirm yet again Michelangelo's great interest in human anatomy," the Brazilians said.
    Plastic surgeon Davide Lazzeri, who has been working on medicine in art for many years, recalled that the artist, as a youth, "started to examine corpses surreptitiously, in the basilica of Santo Spirito, in order to represent the human body in the most realistic way possible in his work".
    In September de Campos and his team reported that Michelangelo hid coded messages about pagan notions of female sexuality within the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.