Design of the U.S. IGY stamp - Michelangelo and the sun

I've already posted about the release of the U.S. IGY stamp. Today I want to talk a little more about its design, in particular the imagery.

Again, here is the stamp:

U.S. IGY stamp, Scott #1107, 1958, 1.5" x 1"

There are two main elements in the graphical subject, the outreached hands, and the solar surface.

The nearly touching hands are excerpted from The Creation of Adam, a fresco painted ca. 1510 by Michelangelo as part of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in The Vatican. It illustrates the Biblical creation narrative from the Book of Genesis in which God gives life to Adam.

The postcard from my collection shown below contains an image of The Creation of Adam. The IGY stamp on the card has the cancellation date and place for the FDOI of the stamp, but does not bear the First Day of Issue slogan. The back of the card is stamped with "First Day Cancellation."

Postcard FDOI front, with Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, 5 3/4" x 4 1/8"

Postcard FDOI back, 5 3/4" x 4 1/8"

Just a tad has been written about The Creation of Adam fresco. Paul Barolsky comments that

God gave form to Adam out of the earth; next we read that he breathed into Adam the breath of life. The temporal implication of this textual sequence is clearly that first God shaped Adam's body and then filled it with spirit. [The genius of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam and the blindness of art history; Notes in the History of Art, 33(1), Fall 2013, pp. 21-24.]

As for the image of the solar surface in the stamp, recall that in my Nov. 21 post, of the fourteen scientific goals for the IGY, #6 was the study of solar activity. The Postal Bulletin dated April 24, 1958, volume 79, issue 20080, states that

The design of the stamp is based on a photograph of the sun and depicts an area of intense solar activity such as occurs periodically and is among the phenomena being studied during the 18-month long period of the International Geophysical Year.

Ervine Metzl [more on him another time], the designer of the stamp, explained that 'In the small confines of a postage stamp we have endeavored to picture a man's wonder at the unknown together with his determination to understand it and his need for spiritual inspiration to further his knowledge [gender usage as in the original].'

The small poster below comes from an album produced by the Postal Commemorative Society, The Complete Collection of U.S. Stamps Honoring America's Space Achievements, by Drew Windler. The image reminds us of the significance of solar surface activity to the IGY by using the IGY stamp to commemorate the launching of the first solar probe, Pioneer V, on March 11, 1960. This was just two years after the IGY, during which the first artificial satellites were launched. Pioneer V was the first space probe to study the sun from solar orbit. The album containing this and other space philately posters came out years later, with the 29¢ flag stamp canceled on March 11, 1992, thirty-two years after the launch of Pioneer V. First class postage had gone up almost ten-fold since 1958.

Solar probe poster, 13" x 10"

In my last blog, I showed a couple of stamps displaying the Auroras Borealis and Australis. Today's NY Times minipuzzle included "aurora" as an answer. Maybe editor Joel Fagliano read my blog?

NY Times minipuzzle for Dec. 12, 2020, with "aurora" as an answer