Jan 28, 20225 min read

MICHELANGELO -The Artist, the Man, and his Times

BY WILLIAM E. WALLACE

Life of an artist who graced our world with his out-of-this-world abilities

It is rare to run into a person who is not aware that Michelangelo was the great Italian artist who painted the ceiling of Sistine Chapel. However, it is even rarer to meet a person who knows that Michelangelo was also a famous poet during his time. Moreover, it is a safe bet that no one who is not Italian knows the full name of Michelangelo, let alone be able to pronounce it.

I used to belong to the group that neither knew Michelangelo’s full name, nor was aware that he was well-known for his sonnets/poems. Recently, after reading “Leonard Di Vinci” by Walter Isaacson, in which the rivalry between Di Vinci and Michelangelo was briefly described, I decided that I should learn more about the life and work of this remarkable artist. After reading “Michelangelo – The Artist, the Man and his Times” by William E. Wallace, I think I have made some progress. I highly recommend the book to anyone who has more than a passing interest in a historic figure who was a sculptor, painter, architect and was "supreme in not one art alone but in all three." Below are some highlights of what I have learned.

- Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was his full name. He was born on March 6, 1475 in Caprese, a small town near Arezzo, Tuscany. For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence; Several months after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence, where he was raised. His mother died when he was six years old. During her prolonged illness, and after her death in 1481, Michelangelo lived with a nanny and her husband, a stonecutter, in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. The town was full of marble sculptors. There he gained his love for marble and learned to handle chisel and hammer as well as making some figures.

- At 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed to painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, particularly known for his murals. When in 1489, Lorenzo de' Medici, de facto ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci.

- From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the Platonic Academy, a Humanist academy founded by the Medici. There his work and outlook were influenced by many of the most prominent philosophers and writers of the day. He learned sculpting from Bertoldo di Giovanni, who looked after the Midici sculptor garden.

- Michelangelo had no formal training in architecture. Instead, he studied and incorporated styles that he found around Florence and Rome.

- Despite holding a low opinion of painting, he also created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and The Last Judgment on its altar wall. The painting of the ceiling took approximately four years to complete (1508-1512), spanning 500 square meters and containing over 300 figures. They showed the creation, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and the Great Flood.

- Before the Sistine Chapel, he already completed, before the age of 30, two masterpieces in sculpture, the Pieta (5.7 ft x 6.4 ft) in 1499 and David (17 ft x 6.5 ft) in 1504. Both were carved from a single piece of giant-size marble. Michelangelo supervised the daunting task of transporting the huge marbles from the mountains in Carrara to the City of Florence. He was nearly killed in one of the accidents.

- The Last Judgment was commissioned by Pope Clement VII before his death in 1534. Michelangelo worked on it from 1534 to October 1541. The painting was 45 ft x 40 ft, containing over 300 figures of a variety of poses. The depiction of Christ and the Virgin Mary naked, however, was considered sacrilegious. At the Council of Trent, shortly before Michelangelo's death in 1564, it was decided to obscure the genitals. An apprentice of Michelangelo, Daniele da Volterra, was commissioned to make the alterations. An uncensored copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, is in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples.

- Examples of the architectural achievements of Michelangelo were: a design for the Capitoline Hill with its trapezoid piazza displaying the ancient bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius; the Laurentian Library; the design of the upper floor of the Palazzo Farnese and the interior of the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in which he transformed the vaulted interior of an Ancient Roman bathhouse. There were the Medici Chapel with the statues of Night and Day and Dawn and Dusk, as well as The Tomb of Pope Julius II, the front of which sat the famous sculpture of Moses. When he was appointed the chief architect of the Vatican, he was 79 years old and did not want the job. Several architects had worked on St. Peters Bascila before him, among them Donato Bramante and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. He supervised the final design, including the dome, although its construction was completed after his death.

- In Walter Isaacson’s biography on Di Vinci, it was mentioned that one of the biographers of Michelangelo, Martin Gayford, characterized the artist as “intense, disheveled and irascible”, and stated that Michelangelo once confessed that “My delight is melancholy”. Wallace’s portrait did not support this characterization. Indeed, Michelangelo came across in Wallace’s book as having a group of close friends in all stages of his life. The friends communicated through letters as well as sonnets and poems, many of which have survived. As early as the 1530’s, Michelangelo’s madrigals were set to music by the master and member of the Sistine Choir. He was very generous toward his helpers, particularly Urbino’s wife and son after Urbino’s death. His charity extended to strangers who were in need.

- Michelangelo died in Rome 18 February 1564, at the age of 88 (three weeks before his 89th birthday). His nephew Lionardo made arrangements to transport his body back to Florence for burial, in Basilica di Santa Croce, fulfilling Michelangelo’s wish.

I was fortunate to have been to Rome more than once and had the opportunity to view the paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the painting Last Judgment on the Chapel’s altar wall. Although one may not totally agree with the first sentence in Varsari’s biography, that “God the Father sending Michelangelo as a spirit into the world to redeem art, bringing light where there was darkness”, it is hard not to agree with the German writer Goethe’s statement on the Sistine Chapel:

“Until you have seen the Sistine Chapel, you can have no adequate conception of what man is capable of accomplishing.” - Wolfgang von Goethe

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The sources of the following illustrations are from Wikipedia: