The concept of genius as divine inspiration, a superhuman power
granted to a few rare individuals and acting through them, is nowhere
exemplified more fully than in the life and work of
Michelangelo
(1475-1564).
Not only his admirers viewed him in this light.
He himself, steeped in the tradition of Neo-Platonism,
accepted the
idea of his genius as a living reality, although it seemed to him at
times a curse rather than a blessing. The element that brings continuity
to his long and stormy career is the sovereign power of his personality,
his faith in the subjective Tightness of everything he created.
Conventions, standards, and traditions might be observed by lesser
spirits, but he could acknowledge no authority higher than the dictates
of his genius.
Unlike Leonardo, for whom painting was the noblest of the arts
because it embraced every visible aspect of the world, Michelangelo was
a sculptor —more
specifically, a carver of marble statues—to
the core. Art, for him, was not a science but "the making of men,"
analogous (however imperfectly) to divine creation. Hence the
limitations of sculpture that Leonardo decried were essential virtues in
Michelangelo's eyes. Only the "liberation" of real, three-dimensional
bodies from recalcitrant matter could satisfy his urge.
Painting, for him, should imitate the roundness
of sculptured forms, and architecture, too, must partake of the organic
qualities of the human figure.
Michelangelo's faith in the human image as the supreme vehicle of
expression gave him a sense of kinship with Classical sculpture closer
than that of any Renaissance artist. Among recent masters, he admired
Giotto, Masaccio, Donatello, and Della Quercia more than the men he knew
as a youth in Florence. Yet his mind was decisively shaped by the
cultural climate of Florence during the 1480s and 1490s. Both the
Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino and the religious reforms of Savonarola
affected him profoundly. These conflicting influences reinforced the
tensions within Michelangelo's personality, his violent changes of mood,
his sense of being at odds with himself and with the world. As he
conceived his statues to be human bodies released from their marble
prison, so the body was the earthly prison of the soul —noble,
but a prison nevertheless. This dualism of body and spirit endows his
figures with extraordinary pathos. Outwardly calm, they seem stirred by
an overwhelming psychic energy that has no release in physical action.
|
Michelangelo
Michelangelo (di Lodovico Buonarroti), in full Michelangelo di Lodovico
Buonarroti Simoni (born March 6, 1475, Caprese, Republic of Florence
[Italy]—died Feb. 18, 1564, Rome, Papal States), Italian sculptor,
painter, architect, and poet.
He served a brief apprenticeship with
Domenico Ghirlandaio in Florence before beginning the first of several
sculptures for Lorenzo de’Medici. After Lorenzo’s death in 1492, he left
for Bologna and then for Rome. There his Bacchus (1496–97) established
his fame and led to a commission for the Pietà (now in St. Peter’s
Basilica), the masterpiece of his early years, in which he demonstrated
his unique ability to extract two distinct figures from one marble
block. His David (1501–04), commissioned for the cathedral of Florence,
is still considered the prime example of the Renaissance ideal of
perfect humanity. On the side, he produced several Madonnas for private
patrons and his only universally accepted easel painting, The Holy
Family (known as the Doni Tondo). Attracted to ambitious sculptural
projects, which he did not always complete, he reluctantly agreed to
paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508–12). The first scenes,
depicting the story of Noah, are relatively stable and on a small scale,
but his confidence grew as he proceeded, and the later scenes evince
boldness and complexity. His figures for the tombs in Florence’s Medici
Chapel (1519–33), which he designed, are among his most accomplished
creations. He devoted his last 30 years largely to the Last Judgment
fresco in the Sistine Chapel, to writing poetry (he left more than 300
sonnets and madrigals), and to architecture. He was commissioned to
complete St. Peter’s Basilica, begun in 1506 and little advanced since
1514. Though it was not quite finished at Michelangelo’s death, its
exterior owes more to him than to any other architect. He is regarded
today as among the most exalted of artists.
Michelangelo was considered the
greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been
held to be one of the greatest artists of all time. A number of his
works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most
famous in existence. Although the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel (Vatican; see below) are probably the best known of his works
today, the artist thought of himself primarily as a sculptor. His
practice of several arts, however, was not unusual in his time, when all
of them were thought of as based on design, or drawing. Michelangelo
worked in marble sculpture all his life and in the other arts only
during certain periods. The high regard for the Sistine ceiling is
partly a reflection of the greater attention paid to painting in the
20th century and partly, too, because many of the artist’s works in
other media remain unfinished.
A side effect of Michelangelo’s fame in
his lifetime was that his career was more fully documented than that of
any artist of the time or earlier. He was the first Western artist whose
biography was published while he was alive—in fact, there were two rival
biographies. The first was the final chapter in the series of artists’
lives (1550) by the painter and architect Giorgio Vasari. It was the
only chapter on a living artist and explicitly presented Michelangelo’s
works as the culminating perfection of art, surpassing the efforts of
all those before him. Despite such an encomium, Michelangelo was not
entirely pleased and arranged for his assistant Ascanio Condivi to write
a brief separate book (1553); probably based on the artist’s own spoken
comments, this account shows him as he wished to appear. After
Michelangelo’s death, Vasari in a second edition (1568) offered a
rebuttal. While scholars have often preferred the authority of Condivi,
Vasari’s lively writing, the importance of his book as a whole, and its
frequent reprinting in many languages have made it the most usual basis
of popular ideas on Michelangelo and other Renaissance artists.
Michelangelo’s fame also led to the preservation of countless mementos,
including hundreds of letters, sketches, and poems, again more than of
any contemporary. Yet despite the enormous benefit that has accrued from
all this, in controversial matters often only Michelangelo’s side of an
argument is known.
Early life and works
Michelangelo Buonarroti was born to a family that had for several
generations belonged to minor nobility in Florence but had, by the time
the artist was born, lost its patrimony and status. His father had only
occasional government jobs, and at the time of Michelangelo’s birth he
was administrator of the small dependent town of Caprese. A few months
later, however, the family returned to its permanent residence in
Florence. It was something of a downward social step to become an
artist, and Michelangelo became an apprentice relatively late, at 13,
perhaps after overcoming his father’s objections. He was apprenticed to
the city’s most prominent painter, Domenico Ghirlandaio, for a
three-year term, but he left after one year, having (Condivi recounts)
nothing more to learn. Several drawings, copies of figures by
Ghirlandaio and older great painters of Florence, Giotto and Masaccio,
survive from this stage; such copying was standard for apprentices, but
few examples are known to survive. Obviously talented, he was taken
under the wing of the ruler of the city, Lorenzo de’ Medici, known as
the Magnificent. Lorenzo surrounded himself with poets and
intellectuals, and Michelangelo was included. More important, he had
access to the Medici art collection, which was dominated by fragments of
ancient Roman statuary. (Lorenzo was not such a patron of contemporary
art as legend has made him; such modern art as he owned was to ornament
his house or to make political statements.) The bronze sculptor Bertoldo
di Giovanni, a Medici friend who was in charge of the collection, was
the nearest he had to a teacher of sculpture, but Michelangelo did not
follow his medium or in any major way his approach. Still, one of the
two marble works that survive from the artist’s first years is a
variation on the composition of an ancient Roman sarcophagus, and
Bertoldo had produced a similar one in bronze. This composition is the
Battle of the Centaurs (c. 1492). The action and power of the figures
foretell the artist’s later interests much more than does the Madonna of
the Stairs (c. 1491), a delicate low relief that reflects recent
fashions among such Florentine sculptors as Desiderio da Settignano.
Florence was at this time regarded as
the leading centre of art, producing the best painters and sculptors in
Europe, and the competition among artists was stimulating. The city was,
however, less able than earlier to offer large commissions, and leading
Florentine-born artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Leonardo’s
teacher, Andrea del Verrocchio, had moved away for better opportunities
in other cities. The Medici were overthrown in 1494, and even before the
end of the political turmoil Michelangelo had left.
In Bologna he was hired to succeed a
recently deceased sculptor and carve the last small figures required to
complete a grand project, the tomb and shrine of St.
Dominic (1494–95).
The three marble figures are original and expressive. Departing from his
predecessor’s fanciful agility, he imposed seriousness on his images by
a compactness of form that owed much to Classical antiquity and to the
Florentine tradition from Giotto onward. This emphasis on seriousness is
also reflected in his choice of marble as his medium, while the
accompanying simplification of masses is in contrast to the then more
usual tendency to let representations match as completely as possible
the texture and detail of human bodies. To be sure, although these are
constant qualities in Michelangelo’s art, they often are temporarily
abandoned or modified because of other factors, such as the specific
functions of works or the stimulating creations of other artists. This
is the case with Michelangelo’s first surviving large statue, the
Bacchus, produced in Rome (1496–97) following a brief return to
Florence. (A wooden crucifix, recently discovered, attributed by some
scholars to Michelangelo and now housed in the Casa Buonarroti in
Florence, has also been proposed as the antecedent of the Bacchus in
design by those who credit it as the artist’s work.) The Bacchus relies
on ancient Roman nude figures as a point of departure, but it is much
more mobile and more complex in outline. The conscious instability
evokes the god of wine and Dionysian revels with extraordinary
virtuosity. Made for a garden, it is also unique among Michelangelo’s
works in calling for observation from all sides rather than primarily
from the front.
The Bacchus led at once to the
commission (1498) for the Pietà, now in St. Peter’s Basilica. The name
refers not (as is often presumed) to this specific work but to a common
traditional type of devotional image, this work being today the most
famous example. Extracted from narrative scenes of the lamentation after
Christ’s death, the concentrated group of two is designed to evoke the
observer’s repentant prayers for sins that required Christ’s sacrificial
death. The patron was a French cardinal, and the type was earlier more
common in northern Europe than in Italy. The complex problem for the
designer was to extract two figures from one marble block, an unusual
undertaking in all periods. Michelangelo treated the group as one dense
and compact mass as before so that it has an imposing impact, yet he
underlined the many contrasts present—of male and female, vertical and
horizontal, clothed and naked, dead and alive—to clarify the two
components.
The artist’s prominence, established by
this work, was reinforced at once by the commission (1501) of the David
for the cathedral of Florence. For this huge statue, an exceptionally
large commission in that city, Michelangelo reused a block left
unfinished about 40 years before. The modeling is especially close to
the formulas of classical antiquity, with a simplified geometry suitable
to the huge scale yet with a mild assertion of organic life in its
asymmetry. It has continued to serve as the prime statement of the
Renaissance ideal of perfect humanity. Although the sculpture was
originally intended for the buttress of the cathedral, the magnificence
of the finished work convinced Michelangelo’s contemporaries to install
it in a more prominent place, to be determined by a commission formed of
artists and prominent citizens. They decided that the David would be
installed in front of the entrance of the Palazzo dei Priori (now called
Palazzo Vecchio) as a symbol of the Florentine Republic.
On the side Michelangelo produced in
the same years (1501–04) several Madonnas for private houses, the staple
of artists’ work at the time. These include one small statue, two
circular reliefs that are similar to paintings in suggesting varied
levels of spatial depth, and the artist’s only easel painting. While the
statue (Madonna and Child) is blocky and immobile, the painting (Holy
Family) and one of the reliefs (Madonna and Child with the Infant St.
John) are full of motion; they show arms and legs of figures
interweaving in actions that imply movement through time. The forms
carry symbolic references to Christ’s future death, common in images of
the Christ Child at the time; they also betray the artist’s fascination
with the work of Leonardo. Michelangelo regularly denied that anyone
influenced him, and his statements have usually been accepted without
demur. But Leonardo’s return to Florence in 1500 after nearly 20 years
was exciting to younger artists there, and late 20th-century scholars
generally agreed that Michelangelo was among those affected. Leonardo’s
works were probably the most powerful and lasting outside influence to
modify his work, and he was able to blend this artist’s ability to show
momentary processes with his own to show weight and strength, without
losing any of the latter quality. The resulting images, of massive
bodies in forceful action, are those special creations that constitute
the larger part of his most admired major works.
The Holy Family, probably commissioned
for the birth of the first child of Agnolo and Maddalena Doni, was a
particularly innovative painting that would later be influential in the
development of early Florentine Mannerism. Its spiraling composition and
cold, brilliant colour scheme underline the sculptural intensity of the
figures and create a dynamic and expressive effect. The iconographic
interpretation has caused countless scholarly debates, which to the
present day have not been entirely resolved.
Encyclopaedia
Britannica
|

Michelangelo.
Madonna of the Stairs
1490-92
Marble, 56 x 40 cm
Casa Buonarroti, Florence

Michelangelo.
Battle
c. 1492
Marble, 84,5 x 90,5 cm
Casa Buonarroti, Florence

Michelangelo.
Crucifix
1492
Polychrome wood, 142 x 135 cm
Santo Spirito, Florence

Michelangelo.
St Petronius.
1494.
Marble, height: 64 cm with base.
San Domenico, Bologna
Michelangelo.
St Proculus.
1494.
Marble, height: 58,5 cm with base.
San Domenico, Bologna

Michelangelo.
Angel with Candlestick
1494-95
Marble, height: 51,5 cm
San Domenico, Bologna

Michelangelo.
Bacchus
1497
Marble, height: 203 cm
Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

Michelangelo.
Madonna and Child
1501-05
Marble
O.L. Vrouwekerk, Bruges

Michelangelo.
Madonna and Child
1501-05
Marble, height: 128 cm (including base)
O.L. Vrouwekerk, Bruges

Michelangelo.
Madonna and Child (detail)
1501-05
Marble
O.L. Vrouwekerk, Bruges
|

Michelangelo.
Pieta
1499
Marble, height 174 cm, width at the base 195 cm
Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican

Michelangelo.
Pieta (detail)
1499
Marble
Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican

Michelangelo.
Pieta (detail)
1499
Marble
Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican
|
DAVID.
The unique qualities of
Michelangelo's
art are already fully present in his David (fig.
645),
the earliest monumental statue of the High
Renaissance. Commissioned of the artist in 1501,
when he was 26,
the huge figure was designed to be placed high above the
ground, on one of the buttresses of Florence Cathedral. However, a
committee of civic leaders and artists decided instead to put it in
front of the Palazzo Vecchio, as the civic-patriotic symbol of the
Florentine republic (see fig. 483),
where it has since been replaced by a modern
copy.
We can well understand the decision. Because the head of Goliath has
been omitted, Michelangelo's David looks challenging. Here is not
a victorious hero but the champion of a just cause. Vibrant with pent-up
energy, he faces the world like Donatello's St. George (see
fig. 570),
although his nudity links him to the older master's bronze David
as well. But the style of the figure proclaims an ideal very different
from the wiry slenderness of Donatello's youths. Michelangelo had just
spent several years in Rome, where he had been deeply impressed with the
emotion-charged, muscular bodies of Hellenistic sculpture. Although the
Laocoon (see fig. 217),
shortly to become the most famous work in this
style, had not then been discovered, other Hellenistic statues were
accessible to him. Their heroic scale, their superhuman beauty and
power, and the swelling volume of their forms became part of
Michelangelo's own style and, through him, of Renaissance art in
general. Yet the David could never be taken for an ancient
statue. In the Laocoon and similar works (compare fig.
215) the body "acts
out" the spirit's agony, while the David, at once calm and tense,
shows the action-in-repose so characteristic of Michelangelo.

645.
Michelangelo. David.
1501-4. Marble, height
4.08 m.
Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence

645.
Michelangelo. David.
(detail)

645.
Michelangelo. David.
(detail)
|