Michelangelo The Optimistic Artist Essay, Research Paper

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 Piet? (1498-1500), still in its original place in

Saint Peter’s Basilica. One of the most famous works of art, the Piet?

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.

Last Judgment

Michelangelo?s Last Judgment, the large fresco on the altar wall One

of Michelangelo?s best known creations is the of the Sistine Chapel,

dates from 1536-1541?about 20 years sculpture David (1501-1504). The

4.34-m after the famous ceiling frescoes were painted. The painting

(14.2-ft) tall marble statue shows an alert David represents one of

the earliest examples of mannerist art. This waiting for his enemy

Goliath. It was originally is an alarming view of Judgment Day, with

grotesque and created for the piazza in front of the Palazzo Vecchio

twisted figures. While Christ stands in the center of the in Florence,

Italy, but was later moved to the Galleria fresco meting out justice,

the saved rise on the left and the dell?Accademia damned descend on

the right.

34b