HISTORY81 - Michelangelo

My last three blog articles have been about Leonardo da Vinci, the supremely gifted Italian, who was active during the Renaissance as a painter, scientist, and inventor - considered one of the greatest painters in the history of art.  This article is about the younger contemporary of Da Vinci, Michelangelo - an equally talented and renowned artist of the Renaissance.

 

Collage of some of Michelangelo’s best work.  The Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco is at lower right.  The statue of David is at the center, and the Pieta statue is at the upper center.

I will start with a short introduction, then talk about Michelangelo’s birth and childhood, his training and apprenticeship, followed by a discussion of Michelangelo’s artistic life and accomplishments.  I will end with some conclusions, including some thoughts on Michelangelo’s legacy.

My principal sources include “Michelangelo,”  Wikipedia.com; “Michelangelo - Italian Painter, Sculptor, Poet, and Architect,” theartstory.org; “Michelangelo - Italian Artist,” britannica.com; “Michelangelo,” biography.com; “Michelangelo’s 10 most popular works - ranked,” news.artnet.com; “10 Most Famous Works by Michelangelo,” leonardo-newton.com/michelangelo-famous-works; “The Da Vinci feud: Great artistic rivalry with Michelangelo remembered ahead of new exhibition,” sundaypost.com; plus, numerous other online sources.

Introduction

Michelangelo, in full Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475 - 1564), was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.  It is universally accepted that Michelangelo was one of the greatest artists in the history of art.

Portrait of Michelangelo.

 

He conjured figures, both carved and painted, that were infused with such psychological intensity and emotional realism they set a new standard of excellence.  Michelangelo's most seminal pieces: the massive painting of the biblical narratives on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the 17-foot-tall and anatomically flawless statue of David, and the heartbreakingly genuine Pietà statue, are considered some of the greatest achievements in human history.

In his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called "the divine one."  His contemporaries admired his ability to instill a sense of awe in viewers of his art.

Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as the ultimate Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. 

Birth and Childhood:  1475 - 1488

Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475 in Caprese, known today as Caprese Michelangelo, a small town situated in Valtiberina, near Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy.  He was born to Leonardo di Buonarrota and Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena, a middle-class family of Florence bankers.  At the time of Michelangelo’s birth his father had taken a temporary job as administrator of the small town of Caprese.  A few months later, however, the family returned to its permanent residence in Florence.

Michelangelo’s mother's unfortunate and prolonged illness, which led to her death while Michelangelo was just six years old, forced his father to place his son in the primary care of his nanny.  The nanny was married to a stonecutter, and legend tells it that this domestic situation would form the foundation for the artist's lifelong love affair with marble.

Michelangelo was less interested in schooling than watching the painters at nearby churches, and then drawing what he saw. 

Training and Apprenticeship: 1488 - 1492

In the late 15^th century, the city of Florence was Italy's greatest center of the arts and learning.  During Michelangelo's childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel.  Among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco painting, perspective, figure drawing, and portraiture who had the largest workshop in Florence. 

Michelangelo's father realized early on that his son had no interest in the family financial business, so in 1488 he agreed to apprentice him, at the age of 13, to Ghirlandaio. There, Michelangelo was exposed to the technique of fresco (where pigment is placed directly on fresh, or wet, lime plaster), and received a thorough grounding in draftsmanship.

After only a year in the studio, Ghirlandaio recommended Michelangelo to Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of Florence, and renowned patron of the arts.  From 1489 to 1492, Michelangelo studied classical sculpture in the Medici palace gardens. 

This was a fertile time for Michelangelo; his years with the Medici family permitted him access to the social elite of Florence - allowing him to study under the respected sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni, and exposing him to prominent poets, scholars, and learned humanists.

He also obtained special permission from the Catholic Church to study cadavers for insight into anatomy.  He dissected bodies and drew from models, till the human figure did not hold any secrets for him.  However, unlike Leonardo da Vinci, for whom human anatomy was just one of the many "riddles of nature,” Michelangelo strove with an incredible singleness of purpose to master this one problem, but to master it fully.

Michelangelo's uncanny ability to render the muscular tone of the body was evidenced in his two surviving relief sculptures from the period: Madonna of the Stairs (1491), and Battle of the Centaurs (1492) - testaments to his phenomenal talent at the tender age of 16.

Michelangelo's earliest known work in marble, Madonna on the Stairs (1491).

 

Early Years: 1492 - 1505

In 1494, as the Republic of Florence was under the threat of siege from the French, Michelangelo, fearing for his safety, moved from Florence to the relative safety of Bologna.  He was befriended by the wealthy Bolognese senator, Giovan Francesco Aldrovandi, who was able to secure the 19-year-old Michelangelo the commission to complete the remaining statuettes for the marble sarcophagus lid for the Shrine of St. Dominic.  Michelangelo sculpted the few remaining figures, including Saint Proculus, Saint Petronio, and the Angel with Candelabra, in 1494 - 1496. 

Michelangelo returned briefly to Florence after the threat of the French invasion abated.  He worked on two statues, one of St. John the Baptist, the other, a small cupid that was sold to Cardinal Riario of San Giorgio.  Cardinal Riario was impressed by Michelangelo's skill and invited him to Rome to work on a new project.   Michelangelo arrived in Rome in June 1496 at the age of 21.

Michelangelo’s first surviving large statue, the Bacchus (1497), the Roman god of wine, was produced in Rome.  The Bacchus relies on ancient Roman nude figures as a point of departure, but it was much more mobile and more complex in outline.  The conscious instability (tipsy?) of the party-loving god of wine was unprecedented realism at the time.  Sitting behind Bacchus was a faun, who eats the bunch of grapes slipping out of Bacchus’s left hand.  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.

Michelangelo’s first surviving large sculpture, Bacchus (1497).

 

The Bacchus led at once to the commission for the Pietà (1499) now in St. Peter’s Basilica.  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 complex problem for the designer was to extract two figures from one marble block.  Michelangelo treated the group as one dense and compact mass 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.  It was soon to be regarded as one of the world's great masterpieces of sculpture.

Michelangelo’s Pieta (1499), one of the world’s great masterpieces of sculpture.

 

Michelangelo’s prominence, established by this work, was reinforced at once by the commission of the David (1504), a 17-foot-tall nude statue, for the Cathedral of Florence.  Michelangelo reused a marble block left unfinished about 40 years before.  The statue of David has continued to serve as the prime statement of the Renaissance ideal of perfect humanity and is his most famous work.   It was drawn from the well-known Biblical story of a young boy fighting the giant Goliath.  But while others chose to emphasize his smallness, Michelangelo’s David is a giant himself: A muscular, confident man prepared for battle.  The masterwork definitively established Michelangelo’s preeminence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination.

 

The statue of David (1504) is Michelangelo’s most famous work.

The magnificence of the finished work convinced Michelangelo’s contemporaries to install it in a 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.  It was later replaced by a copy, and the original was moved to the Galleria dell" Accademia. 

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.

One of the Madonna sculptures, the Madonna of Bruges (1504), depicted a somewhat detached Mary, who looks away as if she knows her son’s future, while the infant Jesus is mostly unsupported and appears to be stepping away from her mother and into the world.  This sculpture is often included in Michelangelo’s ten greatest works.

The Madonna of Bruges (1504) is often included in the top 10 works by Michelangelo.

 

Also, during this period, Michelangelo was commissioned by wealthy merchant by Angelo Doni to paint a "Holy Family" as a present for his wife, Maddalena Strozzi.  Michelangelo used the form of a tondo, or round frame, for the painting.  Doni Tondo (1504) features the Christian Holy family (the child Jesus, Mary, and Saint Joseph) along with John the Baptist in the foreground, and contains five ambiguous nude male figures in the background.  It is the only finished panel painting by the mature Michelangelo to survive.

Doni Tondo (1504) is the only of Michelangelo’s finished panel paintings to survive.

 

Middle Years: 1505 - 1541

In 1505, still in Florence, Michelangelo began work on a Medici project for 12 marble Apostles for the Florence Cathedral, of which only one, the St. Matthew, was even begun.

That was because Pope Julius II’s call to Michelangelo to come to Rome spelled an end to that Florentine project.  The pope wanted a tomb for which Michelangelo was to carve 40 large statues.  Pope Julius had an ambitious imagination, parallel to Michelangelo’s, but because of the Pope’s other projects, such as the new building of St. Peter’s and his military campaigns, he evidently became disturbed soon by the cost.

So, instead, Michelangelo was put to work on the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-12).  The Sistine Chapel had great symbolic meaning for the papacy as the principal consecrated space in the Vatican, used for great ceremonies such as electing and inaugurating new popes. 

Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the Twelve Apostles on the triangular supports of the ceiling, and to cover the central part of the ceiling with ornament.  But Michelangelo persuaded Pope Julius II to give him a free hand and proposed a different and more complex scheme, representing the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Promise of Salvation through the prophets, and the genealogy of Christ.

Michelangelo worked on the Sistine Chapel ceiling for nearly four years.  It was a job of extraordinary endurance in which (according to popular mythology) the artist painted the ceiling lying on his back atop a wooden scaffold structure (a task made even more difficult given that the tempestuous artist had dismissed all of his assistants, save one who helped him mix paint).  What resulted, however, was a monumental work of stunning virtuosity. The finished work would become a towering masterpiece of human creation.

The composition stretched over 5,300 square feet of ceiling and contained over 300 figures.  At its center were nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's creation of the earth; God's creation of humankind and their fall from God's grace; and lastly, the state of humanity as represented by Noah and his family.  On the triangular structures supporting the ceiling were painted 12 men and women who prophesied the coming of Jesus, seven prophets of Israel, and five Sibyls, prophetic women of the Classical World.  

Fresco paintings on the Sistine Chapel ceiling and altar wall are highlighted in this photograph.

 

Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling was The Creation of Adam.  The image of the near-touching hands of God and Adam has become iconic of humanity, and has been imitated and parodied innumerable times.

The center panels of Michelangelo’s painting of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.  The Creation of Adam scene is at upper center.

 

With his decoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling complete, Michelangelo resumed work on Julius II’s tomb.  Between 1512 and 1513, he completed three sculptures for the project, including Moses.  The Moses sculpture exhibited richer surface detail and modeling than in his earlier sculptures, with bulging projections sharply formed, the artist by now having found how to enrich detail without sacrificing massiveness. 

The center panels of Michelangelo’s painting of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.  The Creation of Adam scene is at upper center.

 

Julius II died in February 1513.  A new contract was drawn up with Julius’s heirs which specified completion of the project as a wall tomb.

Note: Through the 1520s, 1530s, and 1540s, Michelangelo continued to work on the tomb as time and funding permitted.  Finally, in 1545, 40 years after starting, the tomb, more properly called a funerary monument because Julius II was not interred there, was completed on a much-reduced scale, and installed in the Church of San Pietro in Rome.

Meanwhile, Pope Leo X, Julius II’s successor, a son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, had known Michelangelo since their boyhoods.  He chiefly employed Michelangelo in Florence on projects linked to the glory of the Medici family rather than of the papacy.  The city was under the rule of Leo’s cousin, Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, who was to be Pope Clement VII from 1523 to 1534, and Michelangelo worked closely with both popes.

Michelangelo worked on a design for the Medici Chapel, to be an annex to the Florence Cathedral.  Up to 1527, his chief attention was to the marble interior of this chapel, both the very original wall design and the carved figures on the tombs.  He started on several sculptures, but the only ones actually completed were the statues of the Dukes Lorenzo and Giuliano, the allegories of Dawn and Dusk, Night and Day, and the group of Madonna and Child.  These figures are among Michelangelo’s most famous and accomplished creations. 

During the same years, Michelangelo designed another annex to the Florence Cathedral, the Laurentian Library.  The entrance lobby and staircase walls contain Michelangelo’s most famous and original wall designs. 

Note: Construction of the library began in 1524.  But there were various interruptions and the library didn’t open until 1571, seven years after Michelangelo’s death.  At the time, it was a resounding architectural triumph and considered a masterpiece.)

The sack of Rome in 1527 saw Pope Clement ignominiously in flight, and Florence revolted against the Medici, restoring the traditional republic.  It was soon besieged and defeated, and Medici rule permanently reinstalled, in 1530.  During the siege Michelangelo was the designer of fortifications.  He showed understanding of modern defensive structures built quickly of simple materials in complex profiles that offered minimum vulnerability to attackers and maximum resistance to cannon and other artillery. 

Shortly before his death in 1534, Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint a fresco of The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.

So, in 1534, Michelangelo left Florence for the last time, though he always hoped to return to finish the projects he had left incomplete.  He passed the rest of his life in Rome.

Michelangelo labored on The Last Judgement from 1534 to 1541.  The fresco depicts the Second Coming of Christ and his Judgement of the souls.  Michelangelo ignored the usual artistic conventions in portraying Jesus, showing him as a massive, muscular figure, youthful, beardless and naked.  The dead rise from their graves, to be consigned either to Heaven or to Hell.

The painting style was noticeably different from that of the Sistine Chapel ceiling 25 years earlier.  The color scheme was simpler than that of the ceiling: flesh tones against a stark blue sky.  The figures had less energy and their forms were less articulate, the torsos tending to be single fleshy masses without waistlines. 

Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement (1541) mural, painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.

 

Michelangelo’s poetry is also preserved in quantity from this time.  He apparently began writing short poems in a way common among nonprofessionals in the period, as an elegant kind of letter, but developed in a more original and expressive way.  Among some 300 preserved poems, not including fragments of a line or two, there are about 75 finished sonnets and about 95 finished madrigals, poems of about the same length as sonnets, but of a looser formal structure.  They give expression to the theme that love helps human beings in their difficult effort to ascend to the divine.

Later Years:  1541 - 1564

In his later years, Michelangelo was less involved with sculpture and, along with painting and poetry, more with architecture, an area in which he did not have to do physical labor.  He was sought after to design imposing monuments for the new and modern Rome that were to enunciate architecturally the city’s position as a world center.  Two of these monuments, the Capitoline Square and the dome of St. Peter’s, are still among the city’s most notable visual images.  He did not finish either, but after his death, both were continued in ways that probably did not depart much from his plans.

Capitoline Hill had been the civic center in ancient Roman times and was in the 16^th century the center of the lay municipal government, a minor factor in a city ruled by popes, yet one to which they wished to show respect.  Michelangelo's first designs for the public square and surrounding buildings date from 1536.  Michelangelo remodeled the old city hall on one side of the square and designed twin buildings for the two sides adjacent to it.  He gave them rich and powerful fronts.  He also produced a special floor design for the square between these two new buildings.

 

Michelangelo’s design of the Capitoline Square in Rome.

Note:  Executing the design was slow.  Little was actually completed in Michelangelo's lifetime, but work continued faithfully to his designs and the Capitoline Square was finally completed in the 17^th century.

In 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.  Although the design by Donato Bramante had been selected in 1505, and foundations laid the following year, little progress had been made since.  By the time Michelangelo reluctantly took over the project in 1546, he was in his seventies, stating, "I undertake this only for the love of God and in honor of the Apostle."  Michelangelo worked continuously throughout the rest of his life as Head Architect on the Basilica. His most important personal contribution to the project was his work on the design of the dome at the eastern point of the Basilica.  

Note:  St. Peter’s Basilica was not completed until 1626, 62 years after Michelangelo’s death.

Although the dome was not finished until after his death, the base on which the dome was to be placed was completed, which meant the final version of the dome remained true in essence to Michelangelo's majestic vision.  Still the largest church in the world, the dome is both a Roman landmark (rather than just a functional covering for the building's interior) and a testament to Michelangelo's eternal connection to the city.

Michelangelo’s design for the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

 

While remaining head architect of St. Peter’s until his death, Michelangelo worked on many smaller building projects in Rome.  He completed the main unit of the Palazzo Farnese, the residence of Pope Paul III’s family.  The top story wall of its courtyard is a rare example of an architectural unit fully finished under his eye. 

The poetry of Michelangelo’s last years also took on new qualities.  The poems, chiefly sonnets, were very direct religious statements, suggesting prayers. 

Michelangelo's last paintings, produced between 1542-50, were a series of frescos for the private Pauline Chapel in the Vatican.  He continued to sculpt but did so privately for personal pleasure.  He completed a number of Pietàs including the Deposition (1547 - 1555), as well as his last, the Rondanini Pietà, on which he worked until the last weeks before his death.

Michelangelo’s final sculpture, the Rondanini Pieta (unfinished).

 

Michelangelo died in 1564, just before his 89^th birthday, at home in Rome, following a short illness. Per his wishes, his body was returned to his beloved Florence and interred at the Basilica di Santa Croce.

Michelangelo’s tomb in the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence.

 

Conclusions

Legacy.  Michelangelo was the undisputed master of sculpting the human form, which he did with such technical aplomb that his marble seemed to almost transform into living flesh and bone.  His dexterity with handling human emotions and psychological insights only enhanced his standing, and brought him world-wide fame during his own lifetime. 

Michelangelo's dexterity to carve an entire sculpture from a single block of marble remains unmatched. 

He complemented his Pietas, David, and Moses with what is the most famous ceiling fresco in the world, and has made the Vatican City's Sistine Chapel a site of pilgrimage for those with and without faith.  It has been said that his dome for Saint Peters, as it rises above the city of Rome, serves as a fitting monument to the spirit of this singular artist who his contemporaries called “divine.”

Appreciation of Michelangelo's artistic mastery has endured for centuries, and his name has become synonymous with the finest humanist tradition of the Renaissance.

Contemporary Documentation.  Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive.  In fact, three biographies were published during his lifetime.  One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that Michelangelo's work transcended that of any artist living or dead, and was "supreme in not one art alone but in all three.”

Michelangelo’s fame also led to the preservation of countless mementos, including hundreds of letters, sketches, and poems, more than of any contemporary.

Depression.  Though Michelangelo's brilliant mind and copious talents earned him the regard and patronage of the wealthy, it created a pervasive dissatisfaction for the reluctant painter, who constantly strived for perfection but was unable to compromise.

He sometimes fell into spells of melancholy, which were recorded in many of his literary works: "I am here in great distress and with great physical strain, and have no friends of any kind, nor do I want them; and I do not have enough time to eat as much as I need; my joy and my sorrow/my repose are these discomforts," he once wrote. 

Da Vinci - Michelangelo Rivalry.  Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were the two giants of the Florentine High Renaissance.  Although their names are often cited together, Michelangelo was younger than Leonardo by 23 years.  Because of his reclusive nature, Michelangelo had little to do with Da Vinci, and outlived him by 45 years.

The following was adapted from the “Da Vinci feud …,” by Patricia-Ann Young:

We often think of the men as peers but their relationship was complicated by professional jealousy and differing approaches to art and life.

Da Vinci’s paintings were rooted in his love for science and nature, while Michelangelo was more interested in the perfect beauty of the human body.

To Da Vinci, the artist’s job was to use that knowledge of nature to make pictures.  For Michelangelo though, art was about the soul, and the way you expressed the soul was through the human body.  Not through landscape, or drapery, or light and shade.  He looked for ideal figures and perfect beauty all of the time.

The great artists’ personalities were as different from one another as were their styles.  Da Vinci was courtly, amiable, well-dressed and popular.  When he died, he left behind hundreds of notebooks and papers, but hardly anything at all about his inner or private life.

Michelangelo was scruffy, rude, and temperamental, and often fought and argued with his patrons.  Yet he left behind numerous poems, letters and sonnets, full of passion and love for the people he was close to.

Personal Comments and Opinions

1.       Michelangelo had a unique breadth of successful artistic execution, including sculpture, painting, architecture, and poetry.  There has never been anyone like him.

2.       Michelangelo’s principal patrons were high-level people with money, such as popes, influential cardinals, city leaders, and families of aristocracy.  These patrons tended to task Michelangelo with huge projects, taking years to complete.  Often these projects were cancelled or drastically reduced in scope because of changes in church, political, or family leadership, patron long-term funding issues, or wars.  I think that Michelangelo was tainted unfairly with a reputation for not finishing his projects.  He was not a procrastinator like Leonardo da Vinci.

3.       It is difficult to assess the comparative brilliance of the artistic works of Michelangelo and Da Vinci.  Michelangelo completed many more works than Da Vinci.  Taken discipline by discipline, I think that Michelangelo was the much better and prolific sculptor, equal painter, and the more complete and influential architect.

4.       On a 2017 trip to Italy, I stood in awe before (or under) Michelangelo’s Pieta, David, the ceiling and altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, and the dome of Saint Peters.  I have never had the pleasure of seeing Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or the Last Supper.