Personality of Michelangelo Buonarroti - Research Paper Example

Michelangelo Buonarroti If you look up the word ‘Renaissance’ in the dictionary, you'll find that it literally means ‘rebirth.’ However, the term has also come to refer to a specific period in human history centered in Italy during the Middle Ages. The period is characterized by a revival of arts and sciences that happened beginning in Italy roughly around 1400 ad and ending sometime in the 1600s. “The term ‘Renaissance’ might now be defined as a model of cultural history in which the culture of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe is represented as a repudiation of medieval values in favor of the revival of the culture of ancient Greece and Rome” (Campbell, 2004, p. v-vi). During this period, there was a renewed interest in the symbolism and skill represented in the achievements of the ancient world – the Greeks and early Romans whose ruins still dotted the local landscape. People who lived and worked around these ruins saw them as evidence of a lost golden age of shared culture, reason and creativity. They viewed the frescoes and mosaics as evidence of a society much better off than they were and began working to bring it about in their own world as trade centers began to grow and wealth became more widely available. By the late 1400s, a great deal of artistic practice had grown and the arts had begun to flourish. This was the time of the great masters - Giotto, Da Vinci, Michelangelo. A study of any of these artists reveals the energy and creativity of the age. Because of his position essentially at the height of the Renaissance period, Michelangelo Bounarroti is a logical choice for this type of investigation. His life and his times helps to explain some of the great sensitivity he had in undertaking his many works of art, including painting, sculpture and architecture, reflecting in each the nature of the creative process that was sweeping through Italy at the time. One of the key characteristics of the Renaissance period was the greater number of educated people with money. Artists in towns like Florence quickly linked the mathematical knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans as expressed in their art and architecture to the proportional focus of their own world and realized how this could make their art more representational. These mathematics were a form of shared knowledge between the artists and the businessmen who paid them. “In an age of non-standard shipping units, one had to be able to calculate contents and quantities of shipments fairly rapidly” (Lemaitre & Lessing, 1993, p. 15). Painters used this foundational knowledge of geometry to depict everyday elements in their paintings that helped to convey their deeper intentions to the greatest possible audience. “In the same way that a painter could reduce the human form or settings to a play of geometrical figures, so could the merchant simplify all things to geometrical configurations” (Lemaitre & Lessing, 1993, p. 15). The melding of mathematics with artistic expression enabled artists to give their figures an impression of weight and volume that presented a more three dimensional appearance. This new ability to create realism within the flat surface of a painting and other forms of expression led artists to continue investigating other ways in which the world was revealed through the senses. This, in turn, contributed to an even greater explosion of thought, design and implementation that would eventually change the world. Michelangelo Buonarroti of Florence was actually born closer to the coast in the town of Caprese in the year 1475. His father was the governor of the town when Michelangelo was born, but he lost this position soon afterward and the family had to move back to Florence. His mother was a frail woman so Michelangelo was given to a wet nurse to care for him. This wet nurse was the daughter and wife of nearby stonecutters, giving the infant child his first taste of stone cutting tools which would one day make him famous. “If I have anything good in my talent, this has come to me from having been born in the purity of the air of your Arezzo countryside; and also from having received with the milk of my wet nurse, the chisel and hammer with which I make my figures,” Michelangelo told his friend and biographer (cited in Labella, 1990, p. 44). His mother's health continued to decline and she died when Michelangelo was only six years old. Although he had both older and younger brothers, Michelangelo's interest was in art and this interest distanced him from the rest of his family. His father considered it the work of common laborers (Labella, 1990, p. 45). His personal history informs his artworks as he expresses his understanding of deep personal strife as he became forced to choose between his family and his heart's desire. Michelangelo was “touchy and quick to respond with fierce words, he tended to keep to himself, out of shyness according to some but also, according to others, a lack of trust in his fellows” (Bonner, 2001), aspects of his character that also come out in his work. Because of the high emphasis on art and cultural development during the Renaissance, Michelangelo was placed under the tutelage of another Florentine painter, Domenico Ghirlandaio in spite of his father's disapproval. After he outpainted his teacher with enough talent to cause his fellow students to feel resentment toward him, Michelangelo earned the attention of one of the wealthiest patrons in Florence at the time, Lorenzo de Medici, the Magnificent. Although he had a high reputation as a painter, it was the talent that emerged during a sculpting class sponsored by the Magnificent that led to him moving into the de Medici household (Bonner, 2001). Like many of the painters of the Renaissance period, it was through this patronage and others that followed that Michelangelo was able to develop as an artist, sculptor and architect. However, as with other artists, he rarely had a choice as to where he would live, what major themes must be expressed in his work or even, sometimes, what type of medium he would be working with. With the Magnificent, Michelangelo was encouraged to explore his ideas in any way he liked. The Magnificent had him further his studies into Humanism, anatomy and art, but this kind of freedom would be lost when Lorenzo died and the Medici family came under Lorenzo's son, Piero (Bonner, 2001). Two of the pieces Michelangelo created during this early period reveal some of the conflicts of thought that were taking place during the Renaissance period. These two works are the Madonna of the Stairs and The Battle of the Centaurs. “Already at 16, my mind was a battlefield: my love of pagan beauty, the male nude, at war with my religious faith. A polarity of themes and forms … one spiritual, the other earthly” (Michelangelo, cited in Bonner, 2001). This conflict is also seen in the slightly later sculptures "Bacchus" and the "Pieta." Between the earlier and later works, though, Michelangelo shows greater mastery of this conflict by combining a classic construction within each sculpture with a more intuitive sense of body expression. As he matured, he would continue to perfect this understanding. Throughout his life, Michelangelo preferred to work with sculpture so he actively sought employment in this field, but he often had patrons who changed their minds or failed to honor their financial agreements. His shift from sculpture after creating the magnificent sculpture "David" to ambitious frescoes in the Sistine Chapel was because of this common dependence on patrons for his livelihood. Although ordered to paint the ceiling by Pope Julius II, Michelangelo was able to create his own vision for the ceiling. This was because the Pope had fallen through on an earlier deal with Michelangelo and owed him some leverage (Bonner, 2001). Such a give and take relationship wasn't unknown during this time and is something Michelangelo had in common with other masters such as da Vinci. Despite his pleasure with the completed work, it is reported that Julius II was not completely happy with it because it lacked ‘the final touch’ (King, 2003, p. 299). Other great religious works created by Renaissance masters used very expensive gold leaf and ultramarine to indicate the revered nature of the figures by giving them rich clothing. Although the Pope demanded Michelangelo add these touches, Michelangelo refused arguing that the people of the Bible stories shown in the panels were not rich people. He also convinced the Pope that these materials would cause the frescoes to break down earlier (King, 2003). Michelangelo was often pessimistic about his work, writing “my work is not progressing in such a way as to make me think that I deserve anything” (Stone, 1962, p. 46), but he proved that he was up to the challenge of the ceiling. He proved Bramante wrong about his abilities in his successful creation of a foreshortened Jonah (Stone, 1962) and his work has continued to awe visitors to the present day. Michelangelo stood out as a master artist not only because of the talent he displayed in executing his visions but also because of his mastery of the numerous materials with which he worked. However, he was not alone in this field. The Renaissance period was full of people who excelled in artistic expression and material mastery. Collectively, the many master artists of the Italian states introduced naturalism, perspective, proportion and a new approach to capturing light and shadow within an image. Michelangelo's techniques necessarily built upon the artistic discoveries of artists who had come before him such as Giotto, Masaccio, Botticelli, and da Vinci. Like Michelangelo, Giotto (1267-1337) earned his fame as a painter, a sculptor and an architect. He led the way in painting human figures that appeared more 'real' with greater attention to dimension and shading. “Even during his lifetime, he was admired and highly regarded for his naturalism and his expressive, representative art” (Gallwitz, 1999, p. 116). Giotto also chose to express his subjects in ways that highlighted the emotional element. “In concentrating on these essentials, he created compelling pictures of people under stress, of people caught up in crises and soul-searching decisions” (Pioch, 2002). Masaccio's (1401-1428) contribution was new techniques of perspective, proportion and light to create greater dimension within the frame. “Masaccio was the first Renaissance artist to have grasped and interpreted man’s deepest and most mundane reality. In his painting the rigorous construction of spatial perspective, and the sapient use of chiaroscuro and color, accompany a profound human and moral content expressed in intense, tragic drama” ("Masaccio", 2006). Botticelli (1445-1510) was brilliant at portrait painting. “Pure visual poetry, they are stylistically the quintessence of Botticelli; there is a deliberate denial of rational spatial construction and no attempt to model solid-looking figures; instead the figures float on the forward plane of the picture against a decorative landscape backdrop, and form, defined by outline, is willfully modified to imbue that outline with expressive power” (West, 1996, p. 10). However, Botticelli's contributions weren't widely recognized until long after Michelangelo had died. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a known contemporary of Michelangelo and helped drive the younger artist to new heights as they sometimes even competed for patrons. Da Vinci revolutionized painting with his explorations in color, light, landscapes and expression. He is considered the master of chiaroscuro and the sfumato technique. Chiaroscuro is a technique in which the artist adds subtle shading between the light and dark areas of a form to heighten the dimensional effect. Sfumato is a word derived from the Italian word for smoke. This technique add layers of color over an area to create an illusion of depth as the colors begin to blend into one another within the haziness of distance. “His use of soft lines and colors created the illusion of movement which became the trademark of High Renaissance art” (Connor, 2006). It was his mastery of these techniques that earned da Vinci the title of Father of the High Renaissance. Michelangelo made his own impression on the Renaissance, however, having a similar effect on the art of those who have come after him. Michelangelo used the techniques of these earlier and contemporary masters and made his figures seem to be in more constant motion. Clothing was elegantly draped across them in ways that could be mistaken for real and forms had a sufficiently solid dimension to them that made it seem they, too, could start moving on their own at any moment. A surviving full-sized cartoon of a piece called the "Battle of Anghiari" shows a number of nude men in various states of alertness as they become aware of an impending attack. The image captures the moment of transition between a playful bath and a serious preparation for battle. “These nudes, posed in a variety of turning and animated poses, established the Mannerist conception of the male nude as the principal vehicle for the expression of human emotions” (West, 1996, p. 96). It is within the images of the Sistine Chapel, untarnished by the grime of ages that had come to mask them in the modern age, that his skill as a colorist are fully exposed. “Although he restricted himself to the nude in painting, his expressive use of the idealized human form had a tremendous impact on contemporaries and future generations – even Raphael was not above directly referring to the Sistine Chapel sibyls, with his fresco of Isaiah in Sant’ Agostino” (West, 1996, p. 107). As this statement suggests, future masters such as Raphael (1483-1520) were influenced greatly by Michelangelo as much as Michelangelo was influenced by his predecessors. Raphael took Michelangelo's techniques and further pushed the idea of naturalism by focusing on composition, balance and unity. Upon his arrival in Florence where he was able to study the works of da Vinci and Michelangelo, Raphael's “drawing style changed from the tight contours and interior hatching he had learned from Perugino toward the freer, more flowing style of Leonardo. From Leonardo's “Virgin of the Rocks” he evolved a new Madonna type seated in a soft and gentle landscape … He adopted the “Mona Lisa” format for his portraits, and he also studied closely the sculpture of Michelangelo” "Western Painting", 2005). Several of his works also begin to demonstrate a greater concern with light and shade that helped pave the way into the Baroque period that would soon follow. Demonstrating through his own body of work that one artist did not necessarily need to feel pigeon-holed into a single medium in which to express himself, Michelangelo was an example of his times and a contributor to the artistic techniques and themes being developed. He has served as an inspiration for generations of artists from Raphael to the present day. Proving himself equally competent in sculpture, fresco, paint and architecture, Michelangelo is still known as one of the greatest artistic innovators of his time. As such, he has come to stand as a symbol of the Italian Renaissance and its changing climate. His willingness to dispense with contemporary traditions and concepts in order to pursue his own ideas of design theory and composition enabled him to achieve mastery far beyond that of many artists before or since while also encouraging others to explore their own abilities to fullest extent. References Bonner, Neil R. (Ed.). (December 14, 2001). Michelangelo Buonarroti. Michelangelo.com, Inc. Retrieved from Campbell, Gordon. (2004). Renaissance Art and Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press. Connor, Linda. (2006). “Leonardo da Vinci: A Portrait of a Man and His Time.” Computer Application in Education. Manitoba, Canada: University of Manitoba. Gallwitz, Karl Ludwig. (1999). The Handbook of Italian Renaissance Painters. Munich: Prestel. King, Ross. (2003). Michelangelo & The Pope’s Ceiling. New York: Walker & Company. Labella, Vincenzo. (1990). A Season of Giants: 1492-1508. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Lemaitre, Alain J. & Lessing, Erich. (1993). Florence and the Renaissance. Paris: Terrail Press. “Masaccio: The Birth of Perspective.” (2006). Cartage. Retrieved from Stone, Irving (Ed.). (1962). I, Michelangelo, Sculptor: An Autobiography Through Letters. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc. Pioch, Nicolas. (July 27, 2002). “Giotto di Bondone.” WebMuseum Paris. Retrieved from “Renaissance Art and Architecture.” (2004). The Columbia Encyclopedia. Sixth Ed. New York: Columbia University Press. West, Shearer. (1996). The Bullfinch Guide to Art History. Boston: Bullfinch Press. “Western Painting.” (2006). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica. Read More