Joseph Smith and Michelangelo's Creation of Adam

Two days ago, I discovered the YouTube channel UltraMormonChan (actually I discovered it on Rumble, but it's on YouTube, too) and have since watched several of their videos. Almost every video ends the same way: There's a rapid-fire montage of images, accompanied by a drumbeat, beginning with Michelangelo's Creation of Adam painting from the Sistine Chapel, moving through scenes from the Bible and Book of Mormon, the martyrdom of the Apostles, and then a condensed history of Mormonism, from the First Vision through Nauvoo and polygamy to our modern dystopia, with Pride protests at BYU, church leaders hobnobbing with the ADL and the NAACP, and a masked prophet getting his jab on camera. This ends with a closeup of the Angel Moroni's hornless hand (it was dislodged in an earthquake in 2020, a sign the church studiously ignored), as if a fist raised to heaven. It fades to black, and the words "Behold, you have been entrusted with these things" appear on the screen. Then it's the Sistine Chapel again, just a closeup of the two fingers, while bagpipes play the music every Mormon will associate with the words "Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah." Cut to black, and the words "Hail to the Prophet." It's quite powerful, and I enjoy watching it again at the end of every video.

Since this last part of the video is clearly about Joseph Smith, it's a bit odd that the image the video returns to at that point isn't the First Vision or anything else distinctively Mormon but rather this famous piece of Roman Catholic art in Vatican City.

Last night I read Laeth's latest "diminished discords" post. Instead of ending with some jazz music as usual, it ended with a video of someone reading Joseph Smith's King Follett Discourse. The video element was a series of still images, most of which depicted Joseph Smith and some of which were also included in the UltraMormonChan montage. But right after Smith says, "If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend their own character," it shows Michelangelo's Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Again, this is very iconic Roman Catholic art and is not normally used by Mormons, who have their own iconographic vocabulary. When they do borrow art from other denominations, there is for some reason a strong preference for Danish Lutherans (most notably Carl Bloch and Bertel Thorvaldsen), never for the Catholic art of the Italian Renaissance. So running into Michelangelo's piece in two videos about Joseph Smith in the space of two days is quite a coincidence.

One ancillary coincidence is that the UltraMormonChan video actually shows a mirror image of Michelangelo's two fingers, and the title of the video Laeth linked is "King Follett Discourse (MIRROR)."

This painting of Michelangelo's was previously in the sync stream back in October 2023. See "Syncfest: Drowned boy, aliens, ceiling lights, finger of God, Michelangelo, Brother of Jared, Moria, and more" and "The 'Sixteen' Chapel." The former post also includes "mirror" themes -- Mirrormere in Tolkien, and a reflection in a window being mistaken for the Sun.