In the vast majority of religious paintings, God created man from dust, then breathed into him, and man gained a soul.
Yet Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, from his Genesis fresco cycle, used touch instead. This was an adaptation of the Bible's content. If the Church had insisted, when inspecting the work, that Michelangelo paint strictly according to the Bible, there would have been no such painting as The Creation of Adam.
Genesis could roughly be divided into three parts. The first was the creation of the world; the second concerned how the first humans lived in Eden and were cast out; the third told of humanity's later fate, including Noah's Ark and Noah's drunkenness.
Michelangelo began painting with the third part. At the time, the master sculptor was not yet skilled in painting, and he also encountered problems with dampness and mildew on the frescoes. Since this section happened to contain many figures, the progress of the work was deeply worrying.
Seeing the situation, the Pope feared he would die before he could see it, and kept urging Michelangelo to hurry.
The beginning was often the hardest part. Once it was overcome, things became easier. Yet although the Pope saw the Sistine Chapel ceiling half a year before his death, Michelangelo was not necessarily pleased.
In the paintings of the third section, humanity wore no clothes. Adam and Eve were likewise unclothed when they left Eden in the second section, which also contradicted the Bible.
Humanity learned to wear clothes after eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was because God discovered this that He knew Adam and Eve had broken the taboo. By the first section, when God created the world, He was clothed. Anyone with eyes could see the difference: