Via Larga where he met Angelo Ambrogini, Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and other humanists of the Neo-Platonic School as well as a variety of poets, philosophers, and intellectuals. Lorenzo himself was a man of exceptional cultivation.
Michelangelo’s first major work during his stay with the Medici was a low relief for what became the ‘Casa Buonarroti’ entitled Battle of the Centaurs.
Bacchus, 1497.
Marble, height: 203 cm.
Museo del Bargello, Florence.
Naked Man, Standing, 1501.
Pen and brown ink, 37 × 19.5 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Michelangelo’s full maturity as a sculptor was already obvious. His works not only demonstrate a mastery of anatomy that drove his rivals to despair, but go on to show a ferociously proud soul and even less imitable powers of dramatisation. Wholeheartedly swept up in ardent warfare, Michelangelo’s combatants are true athletes and masters of every exercise performed in a palestra, with muscles bulging and chests thrust forward and defiant stares that resonate physical and moral strength, adding a note of gripping pathos to each of Michelangelo’s works. Just as in the admirable Slave in the Louvre, which is perhaps the best example, his subjects not only brave their adversaries but the gods as well, and this is what makes them supremely eloquent representations of “being a free soul”.
Lorenzo de’ Medici’s death in April 1492 interrupted this enviable lifestyle. The Medici’s arrogant son Piero had no real taste for the arts and sciences that were his father’s joy and glory. It appears he would have Michelangelo sculpt in snow or send him on errands for semi-precious stones. But the youth put his time to better use with his marble Hercules (long on display at the chateau in Fontainebleau until stolen in the 17th century) as well as with his wooden Crucifix. The latter was executed as a gift to the priory of the Santo Spirito Convent in Florence for having hosted him there. Long missing, Crucifix was found, restored and set up in the sacristy of the Santo Spirito Church.
However, a storm was brewing that would bring down Medici rule. Cardiere, a singer in the Medici social circle, told Michelangelo of a vision, twice experienced, in which Lorenzo had appeared before him dressed only in a torn black shirt to ask him to tell his son Piero that he would soon be driven out of the city – upon which the young artist promptly fled to Bologna with a pair of friends. Given the extraordinary stress levels Michelangelo imposed on himself, these brusque depressions are not surprising. Nature, pushed to the limit, suddenly took its revenge. Likewise, he fled Rome in 1506 after imagining that Pope Julius II was going to have him killed. He went on to flee Florence just as suddenly during the siege of 1529, though only to return and stand tall among his fellow citizens once the initial panic had worn off.
Study for the statue of David and left arm study.
Quill and ink, 26.4 × 18.5 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
In Bologna, Michelangelo netted a most flattering commission: the execution of several figures for the Arca (Shrine) di San Domenico in the church of the same name. This famous monument, started in the 13th century by Niccolo di Pisa and continued in the 15th century by Niccolo da Bari (known as Niccolo dell’ Arca), depicts the development of Tuscan sculpture from its beginning to its demise. Michelangelo’s contributions were the statues of St Petronius and St Proculus as well as the statuette Angel Holding a Candelabra. Until recently, the monument generated singular confusion over which sculptor did which work. However, there is no doubt about the statuette and close examination confirms material evidence from the archives: to carry a torch, this athletically-built child deploys the strength of Atlas carrying the Earth. This sombre-faced child with a gigantic torso, who looks like a miniature male adult, can only be the product of Michelangelo’s chisel. Admirable in its own right for its representation of sharply focused vitality, the Angel Holding a Candelabra offends credibility. Why turn an angel into Hercules just to lift a torch? The angel’s role and character call for suavity and Michelangelo’s predecessor, Niccolo dell’ Arca, fathomed the requirements for this subject very differently: his figure radiates inexpressible grace and charm. As for the St Petronius, he stands barefoot and capped in a mitre as he holds forth a scale model of the church; the figure is much alive and almost tortured, with disappointing drapery effects. It resembles Jacopo della Quercia’s statue of the same saint, created for the façade of the San Petronio Church. Indeed, their busts show striking similarities in terms of looks, hairstyle, and hang of the cloak. Michelangelo only recovers his own style in the lower half of the statue, where the comparison is not to his advantage. For its part, St Proculus prefigures his David even though the saint is shorter, stockier, and more juvenile, with garments of lifelike pleating but an unpleasant look on his face, very unlike the one on his future masterpiece.
The most striking thing about the works of Michelangelo’s youth, i.e. Battle of the Centaurs, the Angel Holding a Candelabra, and the The Holy Family (Tondo Doni); is the overemphasised muscles of his heroes. Instead of being round and pudgy, even the child figures have arms that look able to handle the heaviest chores and roughest fist-fights – this rebel genius yearned for a more robust humanity replete with more powerful limbs and more muscular bodies. Moving moral messages worried him little at the time: the facial features are usually morose or impassive. Like the Ancient Greeks, he was sacrificing faces for torsos.
The only period where Michelangelo excelled at representing childhood was 1494 to 1504. Chubby fulsome faces and natural life-like baby smiles are evident in the Holy Infant of the The Holy Family (Tondo Doni), the Madonna of Bruges and in one low-relief marble Madonna at the Bargello National Museum in Florence and another at Royal Academy of Arts in London. But before 1494 and after 1504, all the children look very athletic. And his recourse to compressed relief betrays a debt to Donatello.
David, 1504.
Marble, height: 434 cm.
Galleria dell’Academia, Florence.
David, 1504.
Marble, height: 434 cm.
Galleria dell’Academia, Florence.
Slave, Named Atlas, c. 1530.
Marble, height: 277 cm.
Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence.
St Matthew, 1505–1506.
Marble, height: 271 cm.
Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence.
Once back in Florence, Michelangelo did a small marble of St John the Baptist (known as Giovannino in Italy) for a poorer Medici. This statue has been linked to another found in Pisa which now resides in a Berlin museum – it is a cold stilted piece of work and its attribution to Michelangelo is highly questionable. Returning to his home town Florence, Michelangelo entered his period of greatest serenity, or perhaps it should be called impassiveness.
At the foot of the pulpit from which Savonarola bellowed out his sinister warnings, Michelangelo went on from St John the Baptist to his Sleeping
