Discovering the Artist Michelangelo 

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 –1564) Perhaps the greatest influence on western art in the last five centuries, Michelangelo was an Italian sculptor, architect, painter and poet in the period known as the High Renaissance. His great works were almost entirely in the service of the Catholic Church, and include a huge statue of the biblical hero David (over 14 feet tall) in Florence, sculpted between 1501 and 1504, and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome (commissioned by Pope Julius II), painted between 1508 and 1512. After 1519 Michelangelo was increasingly active in architecture; he designed the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, completed after his death. Along with contemporaries Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, he is considered one of the great masters of European art.

A number of Michelangelo's works of painting, sculpture and architecture rank among the most famous in existence. His output in these fields was prodigious; given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches and reminiscences, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. He sculpted two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, before the age of thirty. 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. His design of the Laurentian Library pioneered Mannerist architecture. At the age of 74, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. He transformed the plan so that the western end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification, after his death.

Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive.  In fact, two 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".

In his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called Il Divino ("the divine one"). His contemporaries often admired his terribilità—his ability to instil a sense of awe. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned, highly personal style resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.

Michelangelo produced his first masterpiece when he was only in his early twenties. The is called the Pietà  "The Pity"; 1498–1499 is a work is housed in St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City. It is the first of a number of works of the same theme by the artist.

This famous work of art depicts the body of Jesus on the lap of his mother Mary after the Crucifixion. The theme is of Northern origin.

Michelangelo's interpretation of the Pietà is unprecedented in Italian sculpture. Since its creation in 1499, Michelangelo's Pietà has inspired emotion, faith, and imitation through its elegant depiction of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. Yet few know the secrets that are still being uncovered about this centuries-old statue.

 Michelangelo carved it from a single slab of marble. 

Specifically, he used Carrara marble, a white and blue stone named for the Italian region where it is mined. It's been a favorite medium of sculptors since the days of Ancient Rome. 

 Pietà is the only work Michelangelo every signed.

If you look closely, the sculptor’s signature can be found across Mary's chest. Sixteenth century art historian Giorgi Vasari told the tale of how Michelangelo made his mark: 

One day Michelangelo, entering the place where the Pieta was displayed, found there a great number of strangers from Lombardy, who were praising it highly, and one of them asked one of the others who had done it, and he answered, 'Our Gobbo from Milan.' Michelangelo stood silent, but thought it something strange that his labors should be attributed to another; and one night he shut himself in there, and, having brought a little light and his chisels, carved his name upon it. 

Michelangelo later regretted the vanity of this act, and resolved never to sign another piece of his work. 

The piece made Michelangelo famous when he was only 24. 

Thanks in part to putting his name in plain sight on the Pietà, Michelangelo's reputation grew as the public's love of the statue did. The artist lived to the age of 88, enjoying decades of acclaim and appreciation for his works. 

The sculpture has been criticized for Michelangelo's depiction of Mary. 

Some church observers sneered that the artist made her look too youthfulto have a son who was 33 years old, as Jesus was believed to be at his death. Michelangelo defended this choice to his biographer Ascanio Condivi: 

Michelangelo has long been praised for marrying Renaissance ideals of classical beauty with poses that favored naturalism. Another nod to Renaissance influence is a structure that ultimately resembles a pyramid, formed by Mary's head, flowing down her arms and to the bottoms of her robes. 

Mary's robes hide a creative compromise. 

If you look closely, you can see that Mary's head is a bit too small for her very large body. When designing Mary's measurements, Michelangelo could not impose realistic proportions and have her cradle her adult son as he envisioned. So, he had to make her—the statue's support—oversized. To play down this poetic license on her form, Michelangelo carved out sheets of gentle draping garments, camouflaging Mary's true fullness.  

The Pietà was brutally attacked. 

Michelangelo had a habit of shouting at his sculptures and even occasionally lashing out at them with his tools. But it was an unemployed geologist from Hungary who won infamy on Pentecost Sunday of 1972 by leaping over the railings at St. Peter's Basilica to attack the Pietà with a hammer. With 12 blows, Laszlo Toth knocked off Mary's left arm, snapped off the tip of her nose, and damaged her cheek and left eye. 

Its destruction was not deemed a criminal offense. 

The authorities chose not to criminally prosecute Toth for his destruction of the priceless work of art. However, a Rome court deemed him "a socially dangerous person," and committed the man to a mental hospital for two years. After he was released, Toth was deported.

Its restoration was a matter of debate. 

When a work of art is damaged in this way, its exhibitors are forced to debate what's best—leaving it as it is (like Cleveland's The Thinker that was mangled in a bombing) or altering the original to restore it. The Vatican heard three arguments on this matter. 

The first declared that the Pietà's damage was now a part of its meaning, speaking to the violence of our modern age. Others proposed that the sculpture be repaired, but with visible seams as a reminder of this grave assault. Ultimately, a seamless restoration was chosen, with the goal of making it impossible for observers to know that Toth had even touched Michelangelo's masterpiece. 

The restoration took 10 months.

Master craftsmen picked through the 100 bits of marble broken off of the Pietà and puzzled them back together. In a makeshift lab built around the statue, these workers spent five months identifying pieces as small as fingernails. Next, they used an invisible glue and marble powder to affix the pieces back onto the Pietà and filled any gaps with replacement pieces. And once the integral restoration was completed, the final step was securing the restored work behind bulletproof glass. 

This was not the first time it was behind bulletproof glass. 

In 1964, the Vatican loaned the Pietà to the United States, where it was displayed as part of the 1964 New York World's Fair. To ensure the safety of this statue, organizers erected a barrier of seven massive sheets of plexiglass that collectively weighed more than 4900 pounds. Then, to make sure crowds would safely pass by the sculpture, conveyor belt-style mobile walkways were installed. 

The Pietà's attack had an unexpected silver lining. 

During its diligent restoration, workers discovered a secret signature on the piece. Hidden in the folds of Mary's left hand was a subtle "M" believed to stand for Michelangelo.  

The Dying Slave (c. 1514) by Michelangelo. Photograph courtesy Wikimedia Commons

In 1505 Pope Julius II – one of the most powerful men in Europe and also one of the greatest patrons of the arts – commissioned his tomb from one of the world’s greatest artists, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, better known as Michelangelo, born on this day, 6 March, in 1475.

It wasn’t an easy commission. Michelangelo spent years choosing the marble; the plans changed; he took on another, better-known commission from the pontiff – the Sistine Chapel ceiling – and only completed this sculpture, the Dying Slave, in the years following Julius II’s death in 1513.

This particular artwork was originally intended to represent a prisoner – the initial tomb’s design was to feature a number of convicts, symbolising the soul’s imprisonment in flesh.

However, while the artist’s sculpture never actually adorned the pope’s tomb - and is currently in the Louvre’s permanent collection - it did help give rise to a new kind of art.

“As sulptor, painter, poet, architect and engineer, Michelangelo Buonarroti remains one of the most influential artists in history, as well as being the most significantly documented artist of the sixteenth century,” explains our book, 30,000 Years of Art. ”His output was immense, and his highly-charged style gave rise, in the generations that followed the High Renaissance, to the next major artistic movement in the West: Mannerism.”

Michelangelo establish a combination of his painting style with his sculpture. This creative style evokes the beauty of the curve, as in the golden mean or sacred ratio. It started a form known as Mannerism. Thus Mannerism, ‘the stylish style’ is one that strove towards an extreme refinement and elegance in painting, sculpture and printmaking as well as in architecture and the decorative arts.”

The charged, highly-stylised poses of Michelangelo’s figures in both his sculptures and his paintings impressed later artists so much that they tried to imitate the style, with varying degrees of success.

You can see many examples of the intertwining limbs that inspired mannerism in the Sistine Chapel. Yet Michelangelo, who regarded himself primarily a sculptor, truly captures this naturalistic, limpid, yet highly emotional style in the lowly, godforsaken Dying Slave.

“The treatment is less forced and the line more languid,” according to 30,000 Years of Art, when comparing the sculpture to the Sistine Chapel frescos. “The attitude of the Dying Slave is one of complete submission to the event; death is as sweet as it is victorious. The form has a gentility and sensuousness, unusual in the male nude in Western art, but characteristic of Michelangelo’s early sculptural style.”

Critique Assignment

Observe the sculpture titled Pieta by Michelangelo, the Italian Artist and answer the critique questions below. Study the vocabulary list and see how many of the words you can place in your answers.

Study the Vocabulary Below and Answer the Questions

Sacred = Something you have that is of a religious nature or importance.

Madonna= The symbol of the young mother of Jesus holding her baby.

Vatican= The city within a city. The Vatican is the city in which the Catholic Church resides.

Texture= A visual 2 dimensional form of the surface of a subject.

Positive/Negative space= The space around a piece of sculpture or the space around the subject in a painting

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Answer the the following questions below and be sure to hit submit to receive credit for this study.

I see  ________________________________________________________________________________.

I wonder­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_____________________________________________________________________________.

I think_______________________________________________________________________________.

I feel________________________________________________________________________________.

I believe the artist was trying to share with me to see differently by showing me that_______________

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