Michelangelo

By Eugène Müntz

Michelangelo, like Leonardo, was a man of many talents; sculptor, architect, painter and poet, he made the apotheosis of muscular movement, which to him was the physical manifestation of passion. He moulded his draughtsmanship, bent it, twisted it, and stretched it to the extreme limits of possibility. There are not any landscapes in Michelangelo's painting. All the emotions, all the passions, all the thoughts of humanity were personified in his eyes in the naked bodies of men and women. He rarely conceived his human forms in attitudes of immobility or repose. Michelangelo became a painter so that he could express in a more malleable material what his titanesque soul felt, what his sculptor's imagination saw, but what sculpture refused him. Thus this admirable sculptor became the creator, at the Vatican, of the most lyrical and epic decoration ever seen: the Sistine Chapel. The profusion of his invention is spread over this vast area of over 900 square metres. There are 343 principal figures of prodigious variety of expression, many of colossal size, and in addition a great number of subsidiary ones introduced for decorative effect. The creator of this vast scheme was only thirty-four when he began his work. Michelangelo compels us to enlarge our conception of what is beautiful. To the Greeks it was physical perfection; but Michelangelo cared little for physical beauty, except in a few instances, such as his painting of Adam on the Sistine ceiling, and his sculptures of the Pietà. Though a master of anatomy and of the laws of composition, he dared to disregard both if it were necessary to express his concept: to exaggerate the muscles of his figures, and even put them in positions the human body could not naturally assume. In his later painting, The Last Judgment on the end wall of the Sistine, he poured out his soul like a torrent. Michelangelo was the first to make the human form express a variety of emotions. In his hands emotion became an instrument upon which he played, extracting themes and harmonies of infinite variety. His figures carry our imagination far beyond the personal meaning of the names attached to them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Parkstone International
• Release date: Dec 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781781606124

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Author: Eugène Müntz

© Confidential Concepts, worldwide, USA

© Parkstone Press International, New York, USA

ISBN 978-1-78160-612-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world.

Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case, we would appreciate notification.

Eugène Müntz

Michelangelo

TABLE OF CONTENT

MICHELANGELO

Childhood

The Medici Factor

Homecoming and Travel

Inner Tension

The Da Vinci Factor

The Unprecedented Sculptor

The Architect

Beyond Peerless Painting

The Sketch Artist

A Most Exceptional Individual

Biography

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Self Portrait with Turban Quill,

36.5 x 25 cm. The Louvre, Paris.

MICHELANGELO

The name Michelangelo has come to mean genius. Firstly because his talents spanned sculpture, painting, architecture, army engineering and even poetry to the extent that he became the personification of original thinking and avant-garde esthetics. Secondly, he is the artist through whom Humanism found full expression.

In the Renaissance, Humanism was more an attitude and style of thinking than a doctrine. The focus was on Man, not abstract intellectual ideas. The key issues were: What does Man come from? Where does he belong in the Universe? What, indeed, is Man? Is perfection of this world? The answers were never final or dogmatic but open to analysis, debate and investigation. Humanism could mutate from Christian to Pagan, from secular to whatever.

Humanism took first root in Florence under leading Neo-Platonists such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Leonardo da Vinci. From there it spread throughout Europe. The powerful creativity, expressiveness and intensity of Michelangelo’s works beautifully illustrate the Humanist conception of the world. To best understand the artist, we must begin with a look at his life.

Childhood

The close of the 15th century marked the start of a new era. Decades of plague, war and famine had thrown Europe into a period of radical change. Mindsets were changing. Medieval values were rejected as people with a deep need for social change looked to their flourishing economies and a range of new technologies. Lorenzo de Medici, François I and other great Europeans maintained that the arts were as important as war. Moreover, the printing press made culture more accessible to greater numbers of people. It was in these revolutionary times that a minor civil servant from the petty nobility of Florence was appointed local governor (podestà) of the diocese of Arezzo. His name was Lodovico di Leonardo Buonarroti Simoni and he settled in