miguelangeloandmiguelcortereal

Miguel Angelo and Miguel Corte Real,
what do they have in common?
By Manuel Luciano da Silva, Medical Doctor
March 8, 2004

Michael Angelo (1475-1564) is considered the greatest of humanity's artistic genius! He is the only person in history who reached the highest degree of excellence, at the same time, in architecture, painting and sculpture. He was also a talented poet who wrote more than 300 poems.

As an exceptional architect he planned and directed the construction of the Medici's Chapel in Florence and the St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, today the largest church in Christendom. However, Michelangelo considered himself primarily a sculptor. As a sculptor, he is the greatest of all times. Among so many first class works of art, we would single out the statue of Moses (Pope Julius II Tomb), the statue of David (Academy of Florence) and the Pieta (Saint Peter's Basilica, in Rome).

Michelangelo's supreme paintings are 45 feet by 133 feet in the Sistine Chapel (Pope Sixtus IV). On the ceiling Michelangelo painted nine majestic themes from the Old Testament: the creation of the world, creation of Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark and the Prophets. For Michelangelo the human body was always the principal motif in his immortal works of painting and sculpture. For him the human figure was the most perfect work of God! When the old cardinals criticized him for painting all human figures naked on the Sistine Chapel, he angrily answered: "I paint them, as God made them!"

The painting depicting God about to touch the naked Adam with His index finger is powerful and majestic. It represents God, with His divine touch, giving man the electricity of life. It is the center and zenith among the 33 paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Michael Angelo's detail on the Sistine Chapel Ceiling -
"The Creation of Adam", - which he finished on the
summer of 1511, the same year that Miguel Corte Real
made his inscriptions on the face of Dighton Rock,
marking the colonization of this region which
was the beginning of a great country called the U. S. A.

Note that the area where God is drawn is equal
to the frontal lobes of the human brain!

Inscriptions engraved on the face of Dighton Rock by Miguel Corte Real, in 1511, the same year Michael Angelo finished his painting of "The Creation of Adam".
Compare the flags -1-2-3- with the symbols on the rock.

Miguel Corte Real, who was the Chief of the protocol in the Royal House of King Manuel I, in Lisbon, Portugal, left Lisbon, on May 10, 1502, with 3 caravels, to come to North America, looking for his brother Gaspar Corte Real, who had come on the previous year, for his second trip, but had not returned home.

Miguel Corte Real and his crew of fifty men, lived in the New England area from 1502 to at least 1511. Therefore they live in New England for nine years. They left their marks on tens of Portuguese names used by the Wampanoag Indians, in the New England area, and also left their genetic markings because some of the Wampanoag Indians were white as Roger Williams wrote in his book "The Language of the Wampanoag" when he came to live in Rhode Island.

But Gaspar Corte Real, in 1501, upon his return to Lisbon took with him 50 American Indians, as evidence to King Manuel I, that he had been in different lands. We know this information by the letters written from Lisbon by the Italian spies Alberto Cantino and Pietro Pasqualigo. So in Portugal and in Europe it became known that the people from North America had a reddish skin, which was different from the black skin typical of the African people.

To see the first description of the American Indians read the spy letter by Alberto Cantino, from Lisbon, Oct. 17th, 1501.

Michael Angelo also got this information about the red and black skin peoples, so when he started (1535) painting the "Final Judgment" in the Sistine Chapel (over the main altar) and when he finished in 1541, he had painted a Portuguese man picking up an American Indian and a Black man to heaven, expressing the idea that the Portuguese had converted them to Christianity.

"The Final Judgment," another sublime painting by the same artist, covers the entire wall above the altar of the Sistine Chapel. It depicts two groups of people: one group ascending to heaven and the other descending to hell. In this same painting, a naked Portuguese is lifting to heaven two gentiles: one is an African Negro and the other an American Indian. This scene symbolizes the Christianization of the lands discovered and colonized by the Portuguese during the 15th and 16th centuries.

When I first came to U. S. A. in 1946, I found out that the Americans to belittle the Portuguese immigrants called us "Portuguee" and "green horns". I was never taken by this derogatory name calling, but some Portuguese Americans felt really offended. Fortunately now, (2004), because the Portuguese communities in New England have advanced in so many ways, the name calling has been shifted to other more recent immigrant groups.

Strange as it may seem it was originated in Italy! I say strange because it was the Italian Americans in U.S.A. that got the most pleasure of calling us Portuguee!

The name Portugui -- written in Italian, because of the influence of Latin language, the plural in Italian words terminate in [ i ] not with a [ s ] , like is common in other languages - the name Portugui is based on an important historical event. In 1507 King Manuel I of Portugal sent a huge Embassy to Pope Julius II "announcing the discovery of Madagascar and various Portuguese conquests in the Far East. This wonderful news prompted Julius to declare three days of feasting in Rome".

But this large Portuguese Royal Embassy as it traveled though Spain and Italy before it got to Rome, had to stop to rest and to eat. At every place that the caravan stopped it offered food and Portuguese wine to the people that greet them at the different locals. It did not take long in Italy for several Italians to join the Portuguese caravan, and make believe that they were Portuguese and fit into the Portuguese Embassy, so this way they could continue to eat, drink and be merry! This adventure became known, and came down to even today, that anyone who takes advantage of a position, for which he does not deserve, is called a "Portugui" in Italy! So I think it is about time we can give back to our fellow Italian American the term Portugui because world history confirms it, that indeed the name belongs to them!...