Arts
If Michelangelo had lived in some other time or some other place, he might never have become an artist. But as fate would have it, he was born in the midst of the greatest flowering of the arts in the history of Europe, an age we call the Renaissance. The name comes from the French word for “rebirth” and it refers to a time, at the end of the Middle ages, when people began to rediscover the great achievements of their ancient past. This remarkable reawakening of learning and creativity lasted for about 200 years, from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Though the Renaissance spread all over Europe, it was born in Italy, where magnificent Roman ruins were constantly being unearthed in fields and vineyards and at construction sites. The discovery of those ancient buildings, as well as masterpieces of antique sculpture and Greek and Roman writings on science and philosophy, inspired a whole new way of thinking and a whole new kind of art.
The very heart of Renaissance art was in Florence. By Michelangelo’s time, the city had become a living museum, with masterpieces of painting and sculpture almost everywhere you turned — on the walls of churches and monasteries and in the public squares. Though there were talented artists in other places — in Venice and Rome and Siena, for instance — the very greatest came from Florence. The city had already produced Giotto, Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and many, many others.
The reputation of Florence as a place where artists grew like wildflowers after a summer rain is demonstrated by the following story, which may or may not be true. A certain young sculptor is said to have created a statue in the Greek style that he then buried in the ground to make it look old. He sold it as an antique to a Roman art dealer who in turn sold it to a wealthy art collector. When it eventually dawned on the collector that he had been cheated, he hired an agent to find out who the artist might be, not out of anger, but out of curiosity. It seemed to him that anyone who could make a fake that convincing must be every bit as good a sculptor as the ancient Greeks. So where did he tell the agent to begin the search? It was obvious to him that anyone that skilled would have to be from Florence. And, he was right. He traced the statue to Michelangelo, who would one day be judged the very greatest of all the great artists Florence ever produced. He would tower over the last years of the Renaissance, not merely shining in one of the arts — painting, sculpture or architecture — but mastering all three.
It was the human form that most interested Michelangelo as an artist. To understand his subject better, Michelangelo went to the hospital of Santo Spirito and got permission to study anatomy in the morgue. He spent hours there dissecting bodies, memorizing the origins and insertions of the muscles, the positions of tendons and veins. It was a gruesome exercise, taking apart the dead to discover their secrets. But it was there that he gained his astonishing power to bring forth life from a block of stone.
In 1498, Michelangelo received an important job to make a sculpture for a tomb. The sculpture was a pieta. The word pieta means pity in Italian. The sculpture shows Mary holding the dead body of her son, Jesus Christ. It took Michelangelo two years to carve the Pieta, which is one of his finest works. At age 24, he was becoming known as a great sculptor.
Michelangelo started to work on David, which was called the Giant, in 1501. It was originally planned to be placed in front of Florence Cathedral. When Michelangelo finished the sculpture in 1504, the government decided to put it somewhere else. The Giant was moved to the city square, called the Piazza della Signoria. It took 40 men five days to move David.
Michelangelo Pieta 1548
Michelangelo began work on this pieta in 1548. He gave his own facial features to the standing figure. The figure is thought to be either Nicodemus, the man who was said to have carried Christ’s body to the tomb, or Joseph of Arimathea. It was in Joseph’s tomb that Christ’s body was placed. The other figures seen here are Christ and his mother, Mary. Many people believe that Michelangelo made this pieta for his own tomb.
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[...] Arts Pieta (Rondanini Pieta) According to Michelangelo‘s first biographers, Vasari and Condivi, the sculptor began this work to adorn his own tomb, which at one time he wanted to be in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Its making was fraught with difficulties, and on one occasion the left leg of the Christ figure was broken. Michelangelo left the sculpture unfinished, and it was continued by Tiberio Calcagni, who worked especially on the figure of the Magdalene, on Christ’s right. The extreme torsion to which Michelangelo liked to submit the human body reappears in the figure of Christ: it is more pronounced than ever here, dictated as it is by the inertia of his lifeless body, which slips as Nicodemus, the Virgin and Mary Magdalene try to lift it. Michelangelo is perhaps thinking of certain late 15th century Florentine paintings, such as the moving and dramatic Depositions by Botticelli, in which teh figures are linked together by an intricate interweaving of arms and hands. Michelangelo Pieta (Rondanini) [...]
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[...] Arts Pieta The most immediate precedents for Michelangelo’s Pieta, which shows the Virgin holding the large, lifeless body of her son on her lap, are perhaps to be sought in the paintings of the late-fifteenth century artists Cosme Tura and Ercole de Roberti of Ferrara. In this work, we are struck by the extreme youth of the Virgin cradling an adult Christ in her lap. This was explained, in the 16th century, as symbolizing the immaculateness of Mary, who bore none of the physical signs of sin. The sculpture has stood in the first chapel in the right aisle of St Peter’s in Rome since 1749. It is the only one of the artist’s works to bear his signature: on the ribbon crossing the Virgin’s breast we read: MICHEL. ANGELUS. BONAROTUS. FLORENT. FACIEBAT. The expression of absorbed resignation on Mary’s face combines here with the dynamism of opposing forces that is so typcial of Michelangelo’s work. [...]
