5. Michelangelo was creating sculptures for Julius II’s memorial when the Pope told him to design and paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling. Since he so strongly believed he was a sculptor and not a painter he despised the project from the beginning writing to a friend he whined, “This miserable job has given me a goiter…The force of it has jammed my belly up beneath my chin. Beard to the sky…Brush splatterings make a pavement of my face…I’m not a painter.” And then he painted the most exceptional, admired, and powerful style of the High Renaissance.
Grew up impoverished in the Tuscan town of CapreseHis family lay claim to nobility which Michelangelo used to advance himself in lifeApprenticed at age 13 in Ghirlandaio’s workshop where he learned the technique of Frescos and Studied the Classical drawingsRecruited by Lorenzo Medici where he studies Neo-platonism, and sculpture with Bertoldodi Giovanni, who was a pupil of DonatelloWhen Lorenzo died in 1492 he traveled to Venice and Bologna
Upon his return to Florence he sculptedthe first Italian Pietà, (virgin supports the dead Christ in her lap) he was 25 years old, northern European sculptors had long designed pietàs but not ItaliansCommissioned by a French Cardinal and installed as a tomb monument in Old St. Peter’sMichelangelo traveled to Carrara in central Italy to select what? Marble, which he did throughout his lifeHe would explore the marble and believed the work already existed within the marble and it was waiting for him to rescue it.What are the elements that make this a Renaissance sculpture? Classicism in the drapery and anatomy, emotion, movement,, details, What are some of the inconsistencies?. Age and scale are irrelevant, legs to hold her son are enlarged to support Christ’s body, her face is young and full of sorrow, while her body is monumental Why did Michelangelo want the viewer to look directly into Christ’s face? To see and share his sufferingHe wanted to be known as a sculptor not a painter, but People accused him of not doing the work so he snuck into the basilica and places a carved marble sash across Mary’s chest with his name.
How does this differ from Donatello and Verrocchio’s David’s? They are designed to be after the conquest of Goliath, with his head at their feet, they are bronze, emotional power, muscular nude, concentrated gaze What is David contemplating? How to kill Goliath, seconds before he does soCommissioned to be atop a buttress of the cathedral, but Florentines so related to the plight of David due to the wars they had fought and one against Sienna, Pisa, and Milan that they put it in front of the government building, in the Palazzo dellaSignoria
