Thoughts on Michelangelo in Our Time of Crisis

by Gregg Chadwick

Frequent readers know that I enjoy the wit and erudition of Tyler Green. His Modern Art Notes Podcast is always worth a listen. The latest episode, embedded above, features art historian William E. Wallace and curator Julian Brooks.

Wallace discusses his latest book - “Michelangelo, God’s Architect: The Story of His Final Years and Greatest Masterpiece.” Wallace's new book is available on Bookshop. 

 Tyler writes :"The book offers a rich and lively biographical examination of the last two decades of Michelangelo’s life, a period when he became the architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and other buildings, even as he continued to sculpt and draw." 

Michelangelo

The Florentine Pietà

 1547-55

Wallace's discussion of Michelangelo's late Pietàs is exceptionally interesting. These are two of my favorite sculptural works by Michelangelo because of their incomplete nature. 

Michelangelo 
Two Views of the Rondanini Pietà 
1564
Castello Sforzesco, Milano
photos by Gregg Chadwick

I have spent hours in the company of Michelangelo's two late pietàs in Florence and Milan. 

There is an intently spiritual nature to these sculptures. The marble seems to flicker like candlelight. Form seems to melt with time. My painting La Vita Trasparente (The Transparent Life) was inspired by my visits to the Castello Sforzesco which houses Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà. Watching a couple stroll through the garden along the castle wall reminded me of the hope that new love brings. Life flickers with light and hope in these moments. Now, as the Covid-19 crisis rages through Northern Italy and the world, I am brought back to the time that I painted La Vita Trasparente. I think of my friends in Milan, Verona, and Trento. Many are health care workers on the front lines of the pandemic. Today, it seems that the curve may be breaking in Italy. I hope this is a positive shift. I send my thoughts to all of you caught up in this struggle. Take care my friends. 

Gregg Chadwick
La Vita Trasparente (The Transparent Life) 
48"x38" oil on linen 2014
Private Collection, New York

In the second half of this podcast Tyler Green chats with Julian Brooks who co-curated with Emily J. Peters, the exhibition “Michelangelo: Mind of the Master” at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Brooks explains to us how Michelangelo used his drawings. Brooks discusses Michelangelo's studies for his unfinished and now lost Battle of Cascina, with detail and excitement. I wrote about Michelangelo's drawings after viewing the monumental 2017 exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. My thoughts then - 

These drawings are sumptuously beautiful, and set the stage for the rest of Michelangelo's artistic life. Michelangelo's touch is all over these works. The use of chalk in many of the drawings, rather than pen and ink, opens up a sensuous physicality that feels more like flesh than stone.

A map of desire seems to be drawn across the back of many of Michelangelo's figures. In the gallery I think of the poetry and art to come - Cavafy, Isherwood, Bachardy, Bacon, and Hockney.

Sadly, the Getty is temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is scheduled to be at the Getty through June 7. The catalog is available on Bookshop. 

Thoughts On the Exhibit "Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Part 1)

by Gregg Chadwick

Intimately viewing the drawings of Michelangelo helps pull the veil of fame off of this towering figure. In spite of the title of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to give humanity back to artistic gods is no easy feat. The Met has done it twice in fourteen years. First was the 2003 exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and now those of Michelangelo in 2017. Both exhibits have given a sense of hope and human possibility back to viewers in times of struggle and uncertainty.

In its exhibition, Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer the Metropolitan Museum has created a temporary museum dedicated to the life, times, and art of Michelangelo. It includes 133 drawings and poems created by Michelangelo that link the artworks to ongoing projects by the artist and his workshop. One of Michelangelo's earliest paintings is included and a small group of his sculptures in marble fill out the show. Also included are drawings by Michelangelo's mentors and artworks by his students and mentees. In a central gallery, a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel ceiling hangs as a canopy above the gallery.

Process and practice 

Like his older contemporary Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo was able to create astonishing works of art out of the simplest means of chalk, ink and paper. In Renaissance era Florence, both Leonardo and Michelangelo learned from established artists. Leonardo was apprenticed to Verrocchio, and Michelangelo was attached to Ghirlandaio's artistic workshop. Complex painting projects such as the Tornabuoni chapel, that Ghirlandaio's workshop was engaged in from 1485-1490 while Michelangelo was there, began with quick idea sketches on paper that were then fleshed out with more involved studies. Apprentices would often pose for these studies. Perhaps the young Michelangelo inspired a figure somewhere on the walls of this chapel? Copying the master's work was also part of the training for young artists. Process and practice were the keys to the growth of a young artist in Renaissance Florence.

The Met's exhibition opens with a group of drawings by Ghirlandaio and then moves on to examples of Michelangelo's studies based on earlier Florentine artists. In many of the works, with quick strokes of the pen coupled with a dense cross-hatching to create shadow and form, Michelangelo sculpts a form out of the paper.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564) 

Study of a Kneeling Man in a Cloak Seen from the Rear

pen and brown ink 11 1/2" x 7 7/8"

Albertina, Vienna

(formerly in the collection of Peter Paul Rubens?)

Included with Michelangelo's early studies after the Italian masters is a richly pigmented fantasy based on an engraving by the 15th century German artist Martin Schongauer. ( I wrote about this painting in 2009 when the artwork was first exhibited at the Met as an  early work by Michelangelo - link here.)

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564)

The Torment of Saint Anthony (after Schongauer)

c. 1487–88. Oil and tempera on panel, 18 1/2 x 13 1/4 in.

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

Martin Schongauer

St. Anthony

engraving printed on paper 15th-century - German 

Emulation and Personal Discovery

The young Michelangelo absorbed the influence of his predecessors into a rapidly developing personal style based on an exploration of the human form. Moving from a faux antique look such as the recently attributed sculpture The Young Archer to poetically observed life studies, Michelangelo like Leonardo before him learned that "accurate understanding derives from investigation and experience." 

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564) 

The Young Archer

 37" x 13 1/4" x 14" marble sculpture ca. 1490

Lent by the French State, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs

In 1504, Michelangelo received a commission by the Republic of Florence for a grand mural of the Battle of Cascina in the Great Council Hall. At the same time Leonardo was working on his own mural for the grand space. Leonardo's chalk drawings for his battle scene are full of expressive movement and grand drama. After viewing Leonardo's powerful designs, Michelangelo, as evidenced in the Met's exhibit, went back to the well and drew a red chalk artwork inspired by the figures of Adam and Eve in Masaccio's fresco in the Brancacci Chapel. Curiously, in this chapel during his apprenticeship, Michelangelo was slugged viciously by a rival artist. His broken nose was never properly reset. Years later he went back to the scene  and reclaimed the space and Masaccio's art for his own use.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564) 

Study of Adam and Eve after Masaccio

1504  red chalk, 12 13/16" x 7 3/8 "

Musée du Louvre

More Like Flesh than Stone

Moving on from his inspiration, Michelangelo began a series of evocative drawings for the planned Battle of Cascina. Jonathan Jones in The Lost Battles writes that "time is included in Michelangelo's vision" in these studies. Jones continues - "There is a tragic power to these drawings. He portrays young men in their full strength and beauty and yet shades them with intimations of ruin."

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) 
Study of the Torso of a Male Nude Seen from the Back
1504  black chalk with lead white gouache highlights on paper 7 11/16" x 10 5/8"
Albertina, Vienna
(formerly in the collection of Peter Paul Rubens?) 

These drawings are sumptuously beautiful, and set the stage for the rest of Michelangelo's artistic life. Michelangelo's touch is all over these works. The use of chalk in many of the drawings, rather than pen and ink, opens up a sensuous physicality that feels more like flesh than stone. Remarkably to me, in the Met's exhibit, a few of the drawings feature a model sporting a hipster worthy mustache who could have walked out of 21st century Brooklyn.
A map of desire seems to be drawn across the back of many of Michelangelo's figures. In the gallery I think of the poetry and art to come - Cavafy, Isherwood, Bachardy, Bacon, and Hockney.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) 
Study of the Torso of a Male Nude Seen from the Back
1504  black chalk with lead white gouache highlights on paper 7 11/16" x 10 5/8"
Albertina, Vienna
(formerly in the collection of Peter Paul Rubens?)

Coming up soon on Speed of Life - Part 2 on "Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

*All photos of exhibit and artwork by Gregg Chadwick 2017

The Golden Ratio in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Frescoes

A fascinating new study by Brazilian researchers* entitled "More Than A Neuroanatomical Representation in The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo Buonarroti, A Representation of the Golden Ratio" presents a compelling look at Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes. (*DEIVIS DE CAMPOS, TAIS MALYSZ, JO~AO ANTONIO BONATTO-COSTA, GERALDO PEREIRA JOTZ, LINO PINTO DE OLIVEIRA JUNIOR, ANDANDREA OXLEY DA ROCHA)

"We report our use of Image Pro Plus Software 6.0 to demonstrate mathematical evidence that Michelangelo painted “The Creation of Adam” using the Divine Proportion/Golden Ratio (G R) (1.6). The GR is classically associated with greater structural efficiency and is found in biological structures and works of art by renowned artists. Thus, according to the evidence shown in this article, we can suppose that the beauty and harmony recognized in all Michelangelo’s works may not be based solely on his knowledge of human anatomical proportions, but that the artist also probably knew anatomical structures that conform to the GR display greater structural efficiency."

 "In this context, an important mathematical relationship is found in countless works of art from the Renaissance period (Livio, 2002). The mathematical relationship known as the Divine Proportion/GoldenRatio (GR) (U 5 1.6) is the ratio between two lines of unequal length, where the ratio between the length of the shorter line and the longer line is the same as the ratio between length of the longer line and the sum of the lengths (Hutchison and Hutchison, 2010), as follows: b/a 5 (a1b)/b = U  1.6 (Fig. 1).The GR is classically associated with greater structural efficiency (Livio, 2002) and has puzzled scientists for centuries due to its frequent occurrence in nature. Moreover, intriguing studies have shown the presence of GR in the organization of numerous natural structures, such as the shape of spiral galaxies(Livio, 2002; Hutchison and Hutchison, 2010), the g-Ratio of the nervous fibers (De Campos, 2014), spiral molluscan shells and plants (Newell et al., 2008). In addition, GR can be found not only in natural phenomena, but also in a variety of works by architects and designers, in famous musical compositions and the works of many other artists, including Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Durer (Livio, 2002)."

Fig. 2. The Creation of Adam fresco (1508–1512).Michelangelo Buonarroti. Extracted from Barreto and Oliveira, 2004. All measurements were taken with the aid ofImage Pro Plus Software 6.0; Media Cybernetics, SilverSpring, MD, USA. To calibrate the Image Pro Plus Soft-ware, the following commands were used: Measure/Cali-bration/Spatial

Fig. 3. The ceiling of the Sistene Chapel (1508–1512). Michelangelo Buonarroti. Extracted from Barretoand Oliveira, 2004. As in Figure 2, all measurements weretaken with the aid of Image Pro Plus Software 6.0; MediaCybernetics, Silver Spring, MD, USA. To calibrate theImage Pro Plus Software, the following commands wereused: Measure/Calibration/Spatial. 

More at:

Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes linked to the golden ratio http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ca.22580/epdf … http://fw.to/EqeMp2S  #art