Today we continued our tour of Florence by visiting a few of the most highly prized Renaissance works in the city, and even the world. We focused on Michelangelo’s sculptures in the Galleria de la Academia most notably the Slaves, the David, and also his works in the New Sacristy of the Medici Chapel of San Lorenzo.
In the first room in the Academia, we looked at Filippino Lippi & Perugino’s Deposition from the Cross (1503-1507). Laura pointed out to us that this piece is in fact the other side of the high altar piece of Saint Annunziata, a pilgrimage church we saw the first week of our trip. This was considered to be the “good side,” of the altarpiece and faced the congregation. The other side, painted just by Lippi was considered to be old fashioned and thus, it faced the clergy. In this painting, we can see the different hands at work. Lippi painted this piece until his death in 1504, when it was given to Perugino to finish. Lippi painted the two figures closest to the cross, while Perugino, the master out of the two, was responsible for the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene and the saint on the right of the composition.
In the corridor leading up the David are a series of five Slaves carved by Michelangelo. They were originally intended for Pope Julius II’s tomb, however the commission fell through when the Pope died before Michelangelo could complete the project. Right after the David was finished in 1506, Pope Julius II, the infamous warrior Pope, commissioned Michelangelo to sculpt a gargantuan, extravagant tomb. The Pope preliminary envisioned a large multi-tiered architectural structure with more than forty life size statues. The Slaves we saw today were meant to be on the bottom tier supporting a ledge of the second tier. As Michelangelo and Pope Julius II worked together, their personalities meshed and tomb project became bigger and more grandiose. Michelangelo believed this commission would be his masterpiece and would confirm his legacy for future generations. Pope Julius II even sought to change the alignment of St Peters Basilica in the Vatican, so that his new tomb by Michelangelo would be aligned with Saint Peter. This was an extremely bold move and was met with a lot of controversy. In the end, the Pope Julius II altered the Basilica drastically, but did not achieve his ultimate goal. During this time he, again, commissioned Michelangelo to fresco the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in 1508. To the request, Michelangelo famously responded, “ I’m a sculptor, not a painter.” However, from 1508 -1512, Michelangelo followed through with the Pope’s request. By 1512, Pope Julius II was in danger of losing the papacy due to his extravagance and personal ambition. Before the religious council could divest him of the papacy he died. Michelangelo was stripped of the ostentatious commission that would have established his legacy. Pope Julius II’s heirs, the Della Roveres, wanted to keep work on the tomb still going, but not at the level envisioned by the late Pope. The finished product, an extremely toned down version of the original, is now inside the church of Saint Peters in Chains in Rome, instead of Saint Peters Basilica.
There only remain seven rough, unfinished works all of slaves from the original failed commission. The Academia houses five of the seven, while the last two are in the Louvre. Each is bound not by chains, but by ribbons and depicted nude in contoured, twisted poses of agony. Two leading theories of the symbolism of Michelangelo’s prisoners have been put forth. On one hand, Michelangelo’s biographer believes that they represent the arts bound by the death of Pope Julius II. The arts are in mourning for Michelangelo’s lost and failed commission. On the other hand, Vasari, the prominent court artist for Cosimo Primo, believed that the slaves signified the bound city-states, which Pope Julius II conquered during his reign as Pope.
The unfinished sculptures allow the viewer a sneak peak to Michelangelo’s sculptural technique and methodology. Prior to Michelangelo, a top-down approach was widely employed by sculptors. One can clearly see that the slaves seem to be emerging from the blocks of marble from the front-in and the top-down. This technique allowed Michelangelo to carve quicker, especially with the carving instrument he invented, the bow. Michelangelo also had strong views about the theory of sculpture. To understand this, we must take a deeper look through what Baxandall calls, “period eye.” The Renaissance had different ideas and perceptions of the world. We talked about this in regards to the spirtuelle, widely personified during the Renaissance as putti, which Donatello depicted in a choir balcony in the Opera de Duomo. For this case in particular, Michelangelo and others believed that inside every block of marble was a predetermined sculpture waiting to be released, and it was the artist’s job to liberate it by removing the outer marble skin.
The Figure of Atlas is one of the Slaves. It is considered to be Atlas became of the large chunk of stone still at his shoulders, it suggests that he is carrying the weight of the world. It is intended as a clear example of Michelangelo’s carving technique of front- in, and top-bottom. By leaving the work unfinished, Michelangelo purposely highlights the artistic process. This aesthetic is also commonly referred to as the non-finito style, as Ting Chang mentioned in her blog yesterday. Ultimately, it is intended to emphasize the artist’s hand. The chisel and hammer marks visible aid in Michelangelo’s self-propagation not only an artist but also a lone genius. He cultivates this idea directly to contrast with his Florentine contemporary, Raphael, who employs a workshop. Raphael worked with a team of artists to produce commissions, while Michelangelo stresses his unique, anti-collaboration style through leaving the statues in a semi-state of completion. In reality, Michelangelo did not work entirely alone. Records provide evidence that the great sculptor employed assistants to polish his works, to grind pigments, and to do other tedious jobs required of the artist. Here, Michelangelo’s non-finito style purposely promotes the myth of the persona of the lone genius. We finished our tour of the Academia, with discussing one of the most celebrated works form the Renaissance, Michelangelo’s David. The story of the David, starts decades before the Duomo’s commission of the work. Originally, in the 1460s the Florentine cathedral, commissioned a larger than life-size statue to replace where Donatello’s marble David (1408) was supposed to have been situated on top of the building. The commission was given first to a local sculptor Duccio, who ultimately failed. Since Duccio every generation until 1501 had attempted to sculpt a colossus out of the marble. In the 1460s the sculptor, Agostino got as far as sketching out a figure’s pose and proportions. In 1501, Michelangelo was bequeathed this large marble block and contracted by the Duomo to produce a figure for the top of the Cathedral in two years. Michelangelo produces the masterpiece, the David that we see today, out of the hand-me-down block of marble. He believes he has triumphed by producing this monumental work, paralleling David’s victory over Goliath. For example, Michelangelo in a poem writes, “David with his sling, and I with my bow, Michelangelo.” He inherently compares his labor on the David with the Biblical miracle story, again propagating a myth around his larger-than-life persona. The Gilbert article, “the Colossus,” Michelangelo’s David is considered a colossus statue, or a large work of art. Standing at seventeen feet high, five feet wide and four feet deep. The Gilbert article emphasized the new obsession with the colossal starting from the 1500 and onwards.
However, once the figure was finished, it was placed in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. From the proportions, it seems as if Michelangelo always intended to have the sculpture viewed from a close angle, and not from up above. This infers that Michelangelo always had political anti-Medici implications when creating on the David. The statue’s privilege point is from the side, where one witnesses the intensity of his face. From its position in the piazza Signoria, the David gazes towards the south, in the direction of the exiled Medici in Rome. Evidence of its politicizing nature can be derived from iconoclasm done to the figure in the 1530s. During the return of the Medici family to Florence, pro-Medici forces violently attacked the figure and broke off a few toes on its left foot. The David prolongs the moment right before David hurls the stone at Goliath paralyzing him. His head and hand are proportionality larger than the rest of his body, highlighting both David’s intellect and physical strength. In the biblical story, he uses his calm control of his body and mind to defeat his foe. The tense instant is forever immortalized in stone is suspenseful and energetic. Michelangelo’s action-filled David differs from other renditions of the statue, which typically depict David with Goliath’s head in triumph. In addition, Michelangelo individualizes his rendition of David by carving his pupils in a heart shape. This is a more subtle reference to the special relationship between David and God. In the Bible, God the father calls David the “man after my own heart,” and his beloved.
The Academia left us hungry for more Michelangelo, so we ventured to the Medici Chapel to the New Sacristy to view Michelangelo’s tomb for members of the Medici family: the Dukes of Urbino and Nemours. Michelangelo entirely designed the space from the architectural to the sculptural elements during the 1520s -1530s before his departure from Florence. The commission was never fully finished, but extremely close to completion; some of the four personifications of the time of day (night, day, dawn and dusk) remain unfinished as well as the statues for the altar. Michelangelo used a classical vocabulary.
The most notable aspect of the tombs is Michelangelo’s self-portrait as a mask by the personification of Night on the Duke of Nemours’ tomb. Laura mentioned to us that in Italian, the word for mask, larva, has close connotations with a dark sector and frightening spirits. The iconography of the choice of the mask for the self-portrait suggests a false front and disguise. The Paoletti article for today discussed Michelangelo’s use of distorted and contoured self-portraits in his works. For example, other famous self-portraits done by Michelangelo include: the head of Holofernes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the skin from St. Bartholomew in the fresco of the Last Judgment also in the Sistine Chapel. Paoletti discusses how Michelangelo chose to depict himself in a grotesque manner rather than in a traditional realistic way. In addition, the mask emblem is a prominent repeating motif throughout the tomb. Laura asked us to look for “mask-like figures,” around the New Sacristy, and much to our surprise we found the ornamentation in the border detail, in the middle of one of the Duke’s breastplates and on top of the engaged column capitals. After discussing Michelangelo’s self-portrait, as group we discussed the overall theme of the chapel. We came up with several topics: the cyclic themes of renewal, the Medici promotion of the Golden Age. To elaborate, the story of the Medici Golden Age was a self-produced term that is associated with the prosperity of the rule of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Taken as a whole, the New Sacristy was commissioned to further the Medici propagandistic iconography. However, Michelangelo subtly undermines the intended Medici message. By having the mask emblem so prominent throughout the space, it emphasizes the falseness of the self-imposed tyrants. Michelangelo resists his patrons and Medici dynastic rule in general by undermining their iconography.
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