Which central scene depicts the creation of Eve?

The central scene depicting the creation of Eve is “The Creation of Eve.”

Michelangelo painted this fresco as the fifth of the ceiling’s nine central Genesis scenes. It shows God raising Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam, who lies beneath a tree. Eve turns toward God with her hands lifted, creating a compact but highly expressive image of divine creation.

The scene belongs to the middle group of panels about Adam and Eve: The Creation of Adam, The Creation of Eve, and The Fall and Expulsion. Its composition was influenced by reliefs by Jacopo della Quercia around the doorway of San Petronio in Bologna, which Michelangelo had studied earlier.

A common mix-up is The Creation of Adam, the famous panel with the nearly touching hands of God and Adam. That scene comes immediately before Eve’s creation in the Genesis sequence, but it shows the first man receiving life. The Eve panel instead emphasizes the first woman emerging from Adam while God stands beside him.