‘Self-conscious’ Michelangelo may have painted himself as God on the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, an expert has claimed.

From 1508 to 1512, the Italian artist painted the ceiling frescoes of the Vatican Museums with swirling and thunderous scenes from the Book of Genesis.

Among them is The Creation of Adam, in which a muscular God reaches out his hand to give life to an equally muscular Adam, the first man.

But art historian Adriano Marinazz has suggested one of the Renaissance master’s most enduring works is actually a more than 500-year-old selfie.

‘Michelangelo saw himself as the Messiah of art, so it makes sense,’ Marinazzo, a curator at Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary, told The Wall Street Journal.

Marinazzo, himself an artist who published the theory last year, says the idea dawned on him when he was reading a 1509 poem penned by Michelangelo.

The sonnet, sent to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia of the Florentine Academy, described how he was a nervous wreck about painting the Sistine Chapel.

‘My thoughts are crazy, perfidious tripe,’ he wrote, adding: ‘My painting is dead.’

Dangling up 65 feet in the air and craning his neck up all day wasn’t doing much for his body either, Michelangelo wrote.

Michelangelo wrote: ‘My stomach’s squashed under my chin, my beard’s pointing at heaven, my brain’s crushed in a casket, my breast twists like a harpy’s.

‘My haunches are grinding into my guts, my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight, every gesture I make is blind and aimless,’ he added.

Michelangelo was already a ‘self-conscious’ guy after an envious rival broke his nose as a teenager, Marinazzo said.

In the end, Michelangelo thankfully sacrificed his ‘poor ass’ to push through the pain and paint the Sistine Chapel.

Yet for Marinazzo, it was a small doodle in the sonnet’s margin that caught his attention.

The doodle is of a strained figure with a bent back reaching his hand upwards to paint an unnerving figure on the ceiling.

This is all Marinazzo needed to confirm his suspicions.

‘He’s hidden himself in the ceiling,’ he told The Wall Street Journal. ‘The face is idealised because Michelangelo was self-conscious about his smashed nose.

‘But this is the closest he’s ever come to presenting himself as divine.’

Some scholars think he could be onto something, with one saying it is a ‘clever connection’.

Though, another critic sees Marinazzo’s theory as a bit of a reach.

Renaissance art historian Paul Barolsky said: ‘Everybody’s got theories.

‘But you’ve got to do better than that.’

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