Michelangelo Essay, Research Paper

Michelangelo

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Michelangelo was pessimistic in his poetry and an optimist in his artwork. Michelangelo’s

artwork consisted of paintings and sculptures that showed humanity in it’s natural

state. Michelangelo’s poetry was pessimistic in his response to Strazzi even though he

was complementing him. Michelangelo’s sculpture brought out his optimism.

Michelangelo was optimistic in completing The Tomb of Pope Julius II and persevered

through it’s many revisions trying to complete his vision. Sculpture was Michelangelo’s

main goal and the love of his life. Since his art portrayed both optimism and pessimism,

Michelangelo was in touch with his positive and negative sides, showing that he had a

great and stable personality.

Michelangelo’s artwork consisted of paintings and sculptures that showed humanity in

it’s natural state. Michelangelo Buonarroti was called to Rome in 1505 by Pope Julius II

to create for him a monumental tomb. We have no clear sense of what the tomb was

to look like, since over the years it went through at least five conceptual revisions. The

tomb was to have three levels; the bottom level was to have sculpted figures

representing Victory and bond slaves. The second level was to have statues of Moses

and Saint Paul as well as symbolic figures of the active and contemplative

life-representative of the human striving for, and reception of, knowledge. The third

level, it is assumed, was to have an effigy of the deceased pope. The tomb of Pope

Julius II was never finished. What was finished of the tomb represents a twenty-year

span of frustrating delays and revised schemes. Michelangelo had hardly begun work on

the pope’s tomb when Julius commanded him to fresco the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

to complete the work done in the previous century under Sixtus IV. The overall

organization consists of four large triangles at the corner; a series of eight triangular

spaces on the outer border; an intermediate series of figures; and nine central panels,

all bound together with architectural motifs and nude male figures. The corner triangles

depict heroic action in the Old Testament, while the other eight triangles depict the

biblical ancestors of Jesus Christ. Michelangelo conceived and executed this huge work

as a single unit. It’s overall meaning is a problem. The issue has engaged historians of

art for generations without satisfactory resolution. The paintings that were done by

Michelangelo had been painted with the brightest colors that just bloomed the whole

ceiling as one entered to look. The ceiling had been completed just a little after the

Pope had died. The Sistine Chapel is the best fresco ever done.

Michelangelo embodied many characteristic qualities of the Renaissance. An

individualistic, highly competitive genius (sometimes to the point of eccentricity).

Michelangelo was not afraid to show humanity in it’s natural state – nakedness; even in

front of the Pope and the other religious leaders. Michelangelo portrayed life as it is,

even with it’s troubles. Michelangelo wanted to express his own artistic ideas. The most

puzzling thing about Michelangelo’s ceiling design is the great number of seemingly

irrelevant nude figures that he included in his gigantic fresco. Four youths frame most

of the Genesis scenes. We know from historical records that various church officials

objected to the many nudes, but Pope Julius gave Michelangelo artistic freedom, and

eventually ruled the chapel off limits to anyone save himself, until the painting was

completed. The many nude figures are referred to as Ignudi. They are naked humans,

perhaps representing the naked truth. More likely, I think they represent Michelangelo’s

concept of the human potential for perfection. Michelangelo himself said, “Whoever

strives for perfection is striving for something divine.” In painting nude humans, he is

suggesting the unfinished human; each of us is born nude with a mind and a body, in

Neoplatonic thought, with the power to be our own shapers. Michelangelo has a very

great personality for his time. In Rome, in 1536, Michelangelo was at work on the Last

Judgment for the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, which he finished in 1541. The largest

fresco of the Renaissance, it depicts Judgment Day. Christ, with a clap of thunder, puts

into motion the inevitable separation, with the saved ascending on the left side of the

painting and the damned descending on the right into a Dantesque hell. As was his

custom, Michelangelo portrayed all the figures nude, but prudish draperies were added

by another artist (who was dubbed the “breeches-maker”) a decade later, as the

cultural climate became more conservative. Michelangelo painted his own image in the

flayed skin of St. Bartholomew. Although he was also given another painting

commission, the decoration of the Pauline Chapel in the 1540s, his main energies were

directed toward architecture during this phase of his life. Instead of being obedient to

classical Greek and Roman practices, Michelangelo used motifs-columns, pediments, and

brackets-for a personal and expressive purpose. A Florentine-although born March 6,

1475, in the small village of Caprese near Arezzo-Michelangelo continued to have a

deep attachment to his city, its art, and its culture throughout his long life. He spent

the greater part of his adulthood in Rome, employed by the popes; characteristically,

however, he left instructions that he be buried in Florence, and his body was placed

there in a fine monument in the church of Santa Croce.

Michelangelo portrayed both optimism and pessimism. Sculptures was where he wanted

his heart dedicated. Michelangelo gave up painting apprenticeship to take up a new

career in sculpture. Michelangelo then went to Rome, where he was able to examine

many newly unearthed classical statues and ruins. He soon produced his first

large-scale sculpture, the over-life-size Bacchus (1496-98, Bargello, Florence). One of

the few works of pagan rather than Christian subject matter made by the master, it

rivaled ancient statuary, the highest mark of admiration in Renaissance Rome. At about

the same time, Michelangelo also did the marble Pieta (1498-1500), still in its original

place in Saint Peter’s Basilica. One of the most famous works of art, the Pieta was

probably finished before Michelangelo was 25 years old, and it is the only work he ever

signed. The youthful Mary is shown seated majestically, holding the dead Christ across

her lap, a theme borrowed from northern European art. Instead of revealing extreme

grief, Mary is restrained, and her expression is one of resignation. In this work,

Michelangelo summarizes the sculptural innovations of his 15th-century predecessors

such as Donatello, while ushering in the new monumentality of the High Renaissance

style of the 16th century.

Michelangelo was pessimistic in his response to Strazzi. I did not see Strazzi as

complementing him. Michelangelo responds in a pessimistic tone to what should have

been a complement. Michelangelo said, “sleep is precious; more precious to be stone,

when evil and shame are aboard; it is a blessing not to see, not to hear. Pray, do not

disturb me. Speak softly”. During his long lifetime, Michelangelo was an intimate of

princes and popes, from Lorenzo de’ Medici to Leo X, Clement VIII, and Pius III, as well

as cardinals, painters, and poets. Neither easy to get along with nor easy to

understand, he expressed his view of himself and the world even more directly in his

poetry than in the other arts. Much of his verse deals with art and the hardships he

underwent, or with Neoplatonic philosophy and personal relationships. The great

Renaissance poet Ludovico Ariosto wrote succinctly of this famous artist: “Michael more

than mortal, divine angel.” Indeed, Michelangelo was widely awarded the epithet”divine”

because of his extraordinary accomplishments. Two generations of Italian painters and

sculptors were impressed by his treatment of the human figure: Raphael, Annibale

Carracci, Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Titian.

In conclusion, Michelangelo (1475-1564), was arguably one of the most inspired

creators in the history of art and, with Leonardo da Vinci, the most potent force in the

Italian High Renaissance. As a sculptor, architect, painter, and poet, he exerted a

tremendous influence on his contemporaries and on subsequent Western art in general.

Michelangelo was pessimistic in his poetry and an optimist in his artwork. Michelangelo’s

works showed humanity in it’s natural state. Michelangelo’s sculptures were his goals.

Michelangelo was very intelligent for the works that he did. Michelangelo always

wanted to finish the works that he worked on before moving on to another. I think that

Michelangelo was to good of a person. He educates the people of today as well as the

people in his time about the true religious aspects that there is to learn. Michelangelo

was a role model for the people of his time as well as for the people of today.

Michelangelo was also a great poet, a pessimist, but a great one. Michelangelo is my

role model. I respect him for the works that he did and the talent that he had. I want

to be like Michel.

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