FREE ESSAY ON MICHELENGELO

MICHELENGELO

The Italian Michelangelo Buonarotti, almost certainly the most famous artist produced by
Western civilization and arguably the greatest, is universally viewed as the supreme
Renaissance artist (see Renaissance art and architecture). He created monumental works of
painting, sculpture, and architecture and left an additional legacy of numerous letters
and poems. Through this vast and multifaceted body of artistic achievement, Michelangelo
made an indelible imprint on the Western imagination.
A member of an old and distinguished Florentine family, Michelangelo was born near
Arezzo, Italy, on Mar. 6, 1475, and he died on Feb. 18, 1564, in Rome--a record of
longevity that was as unusual as his precocity as an artist. Like his compatriot
Donatello, Michelangelo to the end of his life saw himself primarily as a sculptor, once
avowing that he drank in with his wet-nurse's milk the love of the stonecutter's tools.
Always a Florentine patriot, even after he had expanded his art into a universal
language, he exemplified the character of his native city: a passionate, proud, and
independent man, he saw art as a sacred calling through which the dignity of human beings
should be enhanced and celebrated. His lifelong fascination with the sublime form of the
human body arose from this thoroughly Florentine sensitivity to the inherent worth and
nobility of individuals.
The Early Florentine Years
Michelangelo's Florentine education hinged on three salient attitudes that dramatically
shaped his own outlook. From the age of 13 he received a firm grounding in the
traditional techniques and practices of painting and sculpture under the tutelage of the
painter Domenico Ghirlandaio and the sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni (c.1420-91). While
still in his adolescence, he was given equally extensive exposure to the art and thought
of the ancient world as a privileged protege of Lorenzo de'Medici, in whose palace he
encountered a celebrated collection of classical works of art and conversed with the
leading humanist poets and philosophers of the day, notably Marsilio Ficino and Angelo
Poliziano (see Politian). After absorbing the humanist and classically oriented doctrines
of Neoplatonism espoused by Poliziano and Ficino, Michelangelo found his belief in
rationalistic humanism tempered by the fiery sermons of the Dominican monk Girolamo
Savonarola, whose fundamentalist attacks on pagan culture and corrupt church practices
struck a responsive chord in the deeply religious young artist.
These early experiences gave Michelangelo a clear sense of the development of Tuscan art
from Giotto de Bondone through Masaccio to Donatello, of the relationship of that
tradition to classical art and thought, and of the need to come to grips with the
seemingly paradoxical moral and aesthetic views of classical rationalism and the
Christian faith. His entire artistic output reflects a subtle and complex commingling of
these disparate attitudes. A dichotomy is also reflected in his political views. Despite
his close association with the Medici family, his independence of mind led him to harbor
republican sentiments, which took active form in his defense of the Florentine Republic
in 1530.
The impact of Michelangelo's education and the scope of his artistic potential are
lucidly illuminated in his first relief, the Madonna of the Stairs (1489-92; Casa
Buonarroti, Florence), executed while the artist was still less than 20 years of age. The
subject of the seated Mother nursing the Infant Christ was a traditional one, and the
schiacciato (flattened relief) style directly recalls Donatello's technique, which the
young artist here emulated. Yet the depiction of the Child's muscular right arm extended
behind him, the compression of the space, and the mood of sadness that permeates the
piece convey a compositional and psychological tension that mark much of Michelangelo's
later work. The relief remained unfinished in detail--another hallmark of the artist's
more mature production.
Michelangelo's first response to the majesty of classical Roman art is found in his
larger-than-life statue of Bacchus the god of wine (1496-97; Bargello, Florence). In
this, his first mature masterpiece, Michelangelo amplified the classical ideal of beauty
in a sensual and compositionally complex rendering of the human form that echoes
Donatello's bronze David (c.1440-42; Bargello, Florence).
Michelangelo was above all a carver in marble whose ability to extract animate form from
a block of stone remains unsurpassed. Two of his most famous statues, carved while he was
in his twenties, movingly attest to his capabilities. The Pieta (1498- 1500; Saint
Peter's Basilica, Rome) epitomizes a grace and finish that are unmatched even in his
later work. The suppleness of Christ's naturalistically modeled torso is emphasized by
the Virgin's flowing drapery, by the serene features of the two youthful faces, and by
the large pyramidal composition that rises to a natural apex at the head of the Mother of
God.
The sweet tenderness of the Pieta gave way to power and monumentality in the marble David
(1501-04; Accademia, Florence), a colossal (4.34-m/14.24-ft) evocation of athletic
prowess and dynamic action. This marble giant was carved in Florence as a symbol of the
proud independence of the Florentine republic, whose existence was being threatened by
more powerful states. Depicted just before his historic battle with Goliath, David
reveals a psychologically charged state of mind that is reflected in the contrapposto of
his pose. In this heroic work Michelangelo successfully fused classical inspiration with
Florentine humanism and enhanced this fusion through his own depiction of the male nude.
Julius II and the Sistine Ceiling
The remainder of Michelangelo's career was largely controlled by his relationship with
the papacy, and from 1505 to 1516 the Vatican became the focal point of his artistic
endeavors. Initially called to Rome to sculpt an enormous tomb for Pope Julius II,
Michelangelo completed only a fraction of the proposed sculptural program, including the
magnificent Moses (c.1515; San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome) and the fascinating nude studies
known as the Dying Slave and the Rebellious Slave (both c.1510-13; Louvre, Paris). A
major reason for his inability to finish Julius's tomb was the immense project he
undertook (1508 -12) to execute on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a pictorial cycle
devoted to the biblical history of humanity.
Michelangelo's organization of the Sistine ceiling frescoes represents perhaps the most
complex composition in Western art. The space contains an intricate illusionistic
architectural structure that serves as a frame for the disposition of the sculpturelike
forms. Of the nine central narrative scenes illustrating events from the creation of the
universe as told in Genesis, the most sublime scene is the Creation of Adam, in which
Michelangelo's new vision of human beauty, first articulated in the David, attains
pictorial form. In the four years that it took to complete the ceiling, Michelangelo
realized the full potential of the High Renaissance style; in the process, he changed the
artistic vision of another great High Renaissance master, Raphael, and altered the course
of Western art.
Disillusion and Maturity
The supreme statements of the potential nobility of human beings expressed in the David
and the Sistine ceiling frescoes gave way after 1520 to more complex, agitated, and
ominous artistic creations. To a profoundly religious and humanistic Michelangelo the
jolting breakup of the Roman church after 1517, the terrible sack of Rome by the troops
of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1527, and the final crushing of the Florentine
Republic in 1530 came as disillusioning blows. A radical change in the artist's outlook
is apparent in the masterwork of his middle age, the architectural and sculptural program
of the Medici Chapel in Florence (1519-34). The overall architectural scheme of the
chapel owes a great debt to Filippo Brunelleschi's nearby Old Sacristy, but the
overwhelming effect of Michelangelo's squeezed niches, crowded windows, and nonsupporting
members is as subtle and disconcerting as the earlier design is clear and rationalistic.
The statues atop the tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano de'Medici retain the human dignity
inherent in all of Michelangelo's works, but they strike a new note of sorrow and
poignancy. In the intense spirituality of its overall design and the disturbing power of
forms such as the figure of Dawn on one of the tombs, the Medici Chapel signals a
dramatic shift in Michelangelo's outlook and style, which hereafter takes on the highly
artificial ideals of beauty that played a key role in the development of Mannerism.
The Final Years
Michelangelo's seemingly inexhaustible powers of artistic invention made it possible for
him in his final three decades to create an even more personal style. This last phase of
his artistic career, spent almost entirely in Rome, is characterized by a militant and
all-encompassing religious outlook and a relative subordination of sculptural to
pictorial and architectural efforts. In his last frescoes, the Last Judgment (1536-41;
Sistine Chapel, Vatican), the Conversion of St. Paul (1542-45; Pauline Chapel, Vatican),
and the Crucifixion of Peter (1545-50; Pauline Chapel, Vatican), he replaced the rational
compositional unity and beauty of the Sistine ceiling frescoes with a visionary world in
which the compression of the figures and the violence of their actions take place in a
supremely spiritual world. His human forms are as powerfully modeled as ever, but they
are now contorted in physical agonies that imply the necessity of human suffering for the
salvation of human souls.
Perhaps Michelangelo's most interesting works of this period are the architectural
commissions he executed in Rome in the last years of his life. His completion of Antonio
da Sangallo's Farnese Palace (1517-50) and his design for the Campidoglio, the plaza and
its rebuilt classical structures atop the Capitoline Hill (begun 1538), both display an
idiosyncratic reordering of the Renaissance architectural vocabulary around outsize and
overwhelmingly powerful elements--the huge cornice of the Farnese and the gigantic,
two-story Corinthian order of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline. This
projection of awesome power also marks Michelangelo's completion and reinterpretation of
Donato Bramante's plan for Saint Peter' S Basilica. Restoring Bramante's Greek-cross plan
for the church, Michelangelo went on to design a powerful exterior unified by a colossal
double Corinthian order and the magnificent ribbed dome that crowns the structure.
In his very last years the aging artist returned to his first love, sculpture, executing
the Pieta, or Deposition (c.1550; Cathedral, Florence) that he intended to have placed on
his own tomb. The omnipresent power of death is revealed in this marble, unfinished and
partially mutilated by Michelangelo in a fit of depression. The aged and resigned
features of the figure of Nicodemus supporting the dead Christ constitute a self-
portrait--the picture of an old and tired believer who willingly accepts the
inevitability of his own death and the possibility of his soul's salvation as he
contemplates the features of the dead Christ. In this, his most intimate statue,
Michelangelo manifests his deeply moral philosophy, his poetic expression, and the
universality of his imagery; he identifies the divine source of that spark of creativity
that sculpted him into one of the greatest of all artistic geniuses.
W. Chandler Kirwi
Bibliography
Alexander, Sidney, Michelangelo the Florentine (1985) and Nicodemus: The Roman Years of
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1984); Buonarroti, Michelangelo, Complete Poems and Selected
Letters, trans. by Creighton Gilbert, 2d ed. (1965; repr. 1980); Cambon, Glauco,
Michelangelo's Poetry (1985); Goldscheider, Ludwig, Michelangelo: Paintings, Sculpture,
Architecture, 4th ed. (1964); Hartt, Frederick, Michelangelo (1965; repr. 1984) and
Michelangelo: Drawings (1970); Hibbard, Howard, Michelangelo, new ed. (1978); Hirst,
Michael, Michelangelo and His Drawings (1988; repr. 1990); Leites, Nathan, Art and Life:
Aspects of Michelangelo (1986); Liebert, Robert S., Michelangelo (1983); Perrig,
Alexander, Michelangelo's Drawings (1991); Tolnay, Charles de, Michelangelo, 5 vols.
(1943-60; repr. 1969-70); Wallace, William E., Michelangelo at San Lorenzo (1994).