Michelangelo
Michelangelo (1475-1564), arguably one of the
most inspired creators in the
history of art and, with Leonardo da Vinci, the
most potent force in the Italian
High Renaissance. As a sculptor,
architect, painter, and poet, he exerted a
tremendous influence on his
contemporaries and on subsequent Western art in
general. A Florentine -
although born March 6, 1475, in the small village of
Caprese near Arezzo
- Michelangelo continued to have a deep attachment to his
city, its art, and
its culture throughout his long life. He spent the greater
part of his
adulthood in Rome, employed by the popes; characteristically,
however, he
left instructions that he be buried in Florence, and his body was
placed
there in a fine monument in the church of Santa Croce. Early Life
in
Florence Michelangelo's father, a Florentine official named Ludovico
Buonarroti
with connections to the ruling Medici family, placed his
13-year-old son in the
workshop of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. After
about two years,
Michelangelo studied at the sculpture school in the
Medici gardens and shortly
thereafter was invited into the household of
Lorenzo de' Medici, the
Magnificent. There he had an opportunity to
converse with the younger Medicis,
two of whom later became popes (Leo X and
Clement VII). He also became
acquainted with such humanists as Marsilio
Ficino and the poet Angelo Poliziano,
who were frequent visitors.
Michelangelo produced at least two relief sculptures
by the time he was 16
years old, the Battle of the Centaurs and the Madonna of
the Stairs (both
1489-92, Casa Buonarroti, Florence), which show that he had
achieved a
personal style at a very early age. His patron Lorenzo died in 1492;
two
years later Michelangelo fled Florence, when the Medici were
temporarily
Expelled. He settled for a time in Bologna, where in 1494 and
1495 he executed
several marble statuettes for the Arca (Shrine) di San
Domenico in the Church of
San Domenico. First Roman Sojourn Michelangelo
then went to Rome, where he was
able to examine many newly unearthed
classical statues and Ruins. He soon
produced his first large-scale
sculpture, the over-life-size Bacchus (1496-98,
Bargello, Florence). One
of the few works of pagan rather than Christian subject
matter made by the
master, it rivaled ancient Statuary, the highest mark of
admiration in
Renaissance Rome. At about the same time, Michelangelo also did
the marble
Pietà (1498-1500), still in its original place in Saint Peter's
Basilica.
One of the most famous works of art, the Pietà was probably finished
before
Michelangelo was 25 years old and it is the only work he ever signed.
The
youthful Mary is shown seated majestically, holding the dead Christ
across her
lap, a theme borrowed from northern European art. Instead of
revealing extreme
grief, Mary is restrained, and her expression is one of
resignation. In this
work, Michelangelo summarizes the sculptural innovations
of his 15th-century
predecessors such as Donatello, while ushering in the new
monumentality of the
High Renaissance style of the 16th century. First
Return to Florence The high
point of Michelangelo's early style is the
gigantic (4.34 m/14.24 ft) marble
David (Accademia, Florence), which he
produced between 1501 and 1504, after
returning to Florence. The Old
Testament hero is depicted by Michelangelo as a
lithe nude youth, muscular
and alert, looking off into the distance as if sizing
up the enemy Goliath,
whom he has not yet encountered. The fiery intensity of
David's facial
expression is termed terribilità, a feature characteristic of
many of
Michelangelo's figures and of his own personality. David, Michelangelo's
most
famous sculpture, became the symbol of Florence and originally was placed
in
the Piazza della Signoria in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, the
Florentine
town hall. With this statue Michelangelo proved to his
contemporaries that he
not only surpassed all modern artists, but also the
Greeks and Romans, by
infusing formal beauty with powerful expressiveness and
meaning. While still
occupied with the David, Michelangelo was given an
opportunity to demonstrate
his ability as a painter with the commission of a
mural, the Battle of Cascina,
destined for the Sala dei Cinquecento of the
Palazzo Vecchio, opposite
Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari. Neither artist
carried his assignment beyond the
stage of a cartoon, a full-scale
preparatory drawing. Michelangelo created a
series of nude and clothed
figures in a wide variety of poses and positions that
are a prelude to his
next major project, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in
the Vatican. The
Sistine Chapel Ceiling Michelangelo was recalled to Rome by
Pope Julius
II in 1505 for two commissions. The most important one was for the
frescoes
of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Working high above the chapel floor,
lying on
his back on scaffolding, Michelangelo painted, between 1508 and 1512,
some of
the finest pictorial images of all time. On the vault of the papal
chapel, he
devised an intricate system of decoration that included nine scenes
from the
Book of Genesis, beginning with God Separating Light from Darkness
and
including the Creation of Adam, the Creation of Eve, the Temptation and
Fall of
Adam and Eve, and the Flood. These centrally located narratives
are surrounded
by alternating images of prophets and sibyls on marble
thrones, by other Old
Testament subjects, and by the ancestors of Christ.
In order to prepare for this
enormous work, Michelangelo drew numerous figure
studies and cartoons, devising
scores of figure types and poses. These
awesome, mighty images, demonstrating
Michelangelo's masterly
understanding of human anatomy and movement, changed the
course of painting
in the West. The Tomb of Julius II Before the assignment of
the Sistine
ceiling in 1505, Michelangelo had been commissioned by Julius II to
produce
his tomb, which was planned to be the most magnificent of Christian
times. It
was to be located in the new Basilica of St. Peter's, then
under
construction. Michelangelo enthusiastically went ahead with this
challenging
project, which was to include more than 40 figures, spending
months in the
quarries to obtain the necessary Carrara marble. Due to a
mounting shortage of
money, however, the pope ordered him to put aside the
tomb project in favor of
painting the Sistine ceiling. When Michelangelo went
back to work on the tomb,
he redesigned it on a much more modest scale.
Nevertheless, Michelangelo made
some of his finest sculpture for the Julius
Tomb, including the Moses (circa
1515), the central figure in the much
reduced monument now located in Rome's
church of San Pietro in Vincoli. The
muscular patriarch sits alertly in a
shallow niche, holding the tablets of
the Ten Commandments, his long beard
entwined in his powerful hands. He looks
off into the distance as if
communicating with God. Two other superb statues,
the Bound Slave and the Dying
Slave (both c. 1510-13), Louvre, Paris,
demonstrate Michelangelo's approach to
carving. He conceived of the figure as
being imprisoned in the block. By
removing the excess stone, the form was
released. Here, as is frequently the
case with his sculpture, Michelangelo
left the statues unfinished (non-finito),
either because he was satisfied
with them as is, or because he no longer planned
to use them. The Laurentian
Library The project for the Julius Tomb required
architectural planning, but
Michelangelo's activity as an architect only began
in earnest in 1519, with
the plan for the façade (never executed) of the Church
of San Lorenzo in
Florence, where he had once again taken up residence. In the
1520s he
also designed the Laurentian Library and its elegant entrance hall
adjoining
San Lorenzo, although these structures were finished only decades
later.
Michelangelo took as a starting point the wall articulation of
his
Florentine predecessors, but he infused it with the same surging
energy that
characterizes his sculpture and painting. Instead of being
obedient to classical
Greek and Roman practices, Michelangelo used motifs
- columns, pediments, and
brackets - for a personal and expressive purpose.
Michelangelo, a partisan of
the republican faction, participated in the
1527-29 war against the Medici and
supervised Florentine fortifications. The
Medici Tombs While residing in
Florence for this extended period,
Michelangelo also undertook - between 1519
and 1534 - the commission of the
Medici Tombs for the New Sacristy of San
Lorenzo. His design called for
two large wall tombs facing each other across the
high, domed room. One was
intended for Lorenzo de' Medici, duke of Urbino; the
other for Giuliano de'
Medici, duke of Nemours. The two complex tombs were
conceived as representing
opposite types: the Lorenzo, the contemplative,
introspective personality;
the Giuliano, the active, extroverted one. He placed
magnificent nude
personifications of Dawn and Dusk beneath the seated Lorenzo,
Day and
Night beneath Giuliano; reclining river gods (never executed) were
planned
for the bottom. Work on the Medici Tombs continued long
after
Michelangelo went back to Rome in 1534, although he never returned
to his
beloved native city. The Last Judgment In Rome, in 1536, Michelangelo
was at
work on the Last Judgment for the alter wall of the Sistine Chapel,
which he
finished in 1541. The largest fresco of the Renaissance, it depicts
Judgment
Day. Christ, with a clap of thunder, puts into motion the
inevitable separation,
with the saved ascending on the left side of the
painting and the damned
descending on the right into a Dantesque hell. As was
his custom, Michelangelo
portrayed all the figures nude, but prudish
draperies were added by another
artist (who was dubbed the 'breeches-maker')
a decade later, as the cultural
climate became more conservative.
Michelangelo painted his own image in the
flayed skin of St. Bartholomew.
Although he was also given another painting
commission, the decoration of the
Pauline Chapel in the 1540s, his main energies
were directed toward
architecture during this phase of his life. The Campidoglio
In 1538-39
plans were under way for the remodeling of the buildings surrounding
the
Campidoglio (Capitol) on the Capitoline Hill, the civic and political
heart
of the city of Rome. Although Michelangelo's program was not carried
out until
the late 1550s and not finished until the 17th century, he designed
the
Campidoglio around an oval shape, with the famous antique bronze
equestrian
statue of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in the center. For the
Palazzo dei
Conservatori he brought a new unity to the public building
facade, at the same
time that he preserved traditional Roman monumentality.
Dome of St. Peter's
Basilica Michelangelo's crowning achievement as an
architect was his work at St.
Peter's Basilica, where he was made chief
architect in 1546. The building was
being constructed according to Donato
Bramante's plan, but Michelangelo
ultimately became responsible for the altar
end of the building on the exterior
and for the final form of its dome.
Michelangelo's Achievements During his long
lifetime, Michelangelo was an
intimate of princes and popes, from Lorenzo de'
Medici to Leo X, Clement
VIII, and Pius III, as well as cardinals, painters, and
poets. Neither easy
to get along with nor easy to understand, he expressed his
view of himself
and the world even more directly in his poetry than in the other
arts. Much
of his verse deals with art and the hardships he underwent, or
with
Neoplatonic philosophy and personal relationships. The great
Renaissance poet
Ludovico Ariosto wrote succinctly of this famous artist:
'Michael more than
mortal, divine angel'. Indeed, Michelangelo was widely
awarded the epithet'divine' because of his extraordinary accomplishments. Two
generations of
Italian painters and sculptors were impressed by his
treatment of the human
figure: Raphael, Annibale Carracci, Pontormo, Rosso
Fiorentino, Sebastiano del
Piombo, and Titian. His dome for St. Peter's
became the symbol of authority, as
well as the model, for domes all over the
Western world; the majority of state
capitol buildings in the U.S., as well
as the Capitol in Washington, D.C., are
derived from it.