The legend is that one of the titans of the Renaissance depicted the dad of Sikst II with an extra finger on his hand in order to hint at his name. We checked whether this is really so.

Information about the sixth finger of Siksta is widespread. It, for example, gives a magazine "Around the world" And the famous writer Yuri Nagibin.

She sounded in one of the old issues of the TV show “What? Where? When?". TV presenter Vladimir Voroshilov even included the corresponding question with a comment in his book "Phenomenon of the game":

“Before you lies a reproduction from the picture, of course, known to each of you. Do you know that the artist encrypted the name of this picture? In one minute you must unravel the artist’s cipher.

Answer:

Look carefully! There are six fingers on the hand of the left figure. I do not think that often in painting there are six -fingered figures. This is the figure of the holy Sikst. Six, as you already said during the discussion, in Latin "Sikst". It is in these six fingers and the cipher the name "Sistine Madonna" Raphael. "

They know this legend well in the West. So, back in 1909, the philosopher Paul Carus wrote about it in the book "Philosophy as a science".

Firstly, we note that the name Sixt, despite the similarity of the roots, was not originally related to the number of six. In the oldest documents on the first three dads with this name, its Greek form XYSTUS is used, meaning "polished, impeccable." Nevertheless, it is known that Sixt I was the sixth pontiff after St. Peter, which theoretically could affect the choice. So the subsequent relationship linguists is completely They cannot refute. Unless the difference in the second letter is striking: the name sixtus (lat.) Or sisto (

As for Rafael's canvas, it was created by a master for the altar of the Church of the Monastery of St. Sikst II in Pian. The Greek by origin depicted in the left side of the Sixt II canvas, went down in history as a martyr. A difficult fate was waiting for the picture dedicated to him. In the 20th century, she miraculously survived during the bombing of Dresden (she managed to evacuate it out of town and hide in a quarry), after the war for ten years she hit the USSR and only then returned to the capital of Saxony. Thanks to this happy coincidence, as well as non -standard (265 by 196 cm) size of the canvas, today we can evaluate Rafael's masterpiece in detail. In particular, look at the very hand of Sikst II:

As you can see, there is no sixth finger in the picture. This is just a part of the palm, the shape of which may seem slightly unnatural and lead to visual deception. There is no historical evidence of the polydactylia (congenital pathology of the brush characterized by the presence of additional fingers) of the pontiff. The sixth finger of Sikst on the Raphael canvas is just a beautiful legend that has nothing to do with reality.