Michelangelo Buonarroti: works. Creative suffering and platonic love of Michelangelo Buonarroti: A few fascinating pages from the life of a genius. What year was Michelangelo born?

Michelangelo Buonarroti(1475-1564) is the third great genius of the Italian Renaissance. In terms of personality scale, he approaches Leonardo. He was a sculptor, painter, architect and poet. The last thirty years of his work fell on the Late Renaissance. During this period, restlessness and anxiety, a premonition of impending troubles and upheavals, appear in his works.

Among his first creations, the statue “Swinging Boy” attracts attention, which echoes the “Disco Thrower” by the ancient sculptor Myron. In it, the master manages to clearly express the movement and passion of the young creature.

Two works - the statue of Bacchus and the Pieta group - created at the end of the 15th century, brought Michelangelo wide fame and glory. In the first, he was able to amazingly subtly convey the state of slight intoxication and unstable balance. The Pieta group depicts the dead body of Christ lying on the lap of the Madonna, mournfully bending over him. Both figures are fused into a single whole. The impeccable composition makes them surprisingly truthful and reliable. Departing from tradition. Michelangelo depicts the Madonna as young and beautiful. The contrast of her youth with the lifeless body of Christ further enhances the tragedy of the situation.

One of Michelangelo's highest achievements was statue "David" which he risked sculpting from a block of marble lying unused and already damaged. The sculpture is very high - 5.5 m. However, this feature remains almost invisible. Ideal proportions, perfect plasticity, rare harmony of forms make it surprisingly natural, light and beautiful. The statue is filled with inner life, energy and strength. It is a hymn to human masculinity, beauty, grace and elegance.

Michelangelo's highest achievements also include works. created for the tomb of Pope Julius II - “Moses”, “Bound Slave”, “Dying Slave”, “Waking Slave”, “Crouching Boy”. The sculptor worked on this tomb with breaks for about 40 years, but never completed it. However then. that the sculptor managed to create what are considered the greatest masterpieces of world art. According to experts, in these works Michelangelo managed to achieve the highest perfection, ideal unity and correspondence of internal meaning and external form.

One of Michelangelo’s significant creations is the Medici Chapel, which he added to the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence and is decorated with sculptural tombstones. The two tombs of Dukes Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici are sarcophagi with sloping lids, on which there are two figures - “Morning” and “Evening”, “Day” and “Night”. All the figures look joyless, they express anxiety and a gloomy mood. These were precisely the feelings Michelangelo himself experienced as his Florence was captured by the Spaniards. As for the figures of the dukes themselves, when depicting them Michelangelo did not strive for portrait resemblance. He presented them as generalized images of two types of people: the courageous and energetic Giuliano and the melancholic and thoughtful Lorenzo.

Of Michelangelo's last sculptural works, the group “Entombment”, which the artist intended for his tomb, deserves attention. Her fate turned out to be tragic: Michelangelo broke her. However, it was restored by one of his students.

In addition to sculptures, Michelangelo created beautiful works painting. The most significant of them are paintings of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.

He tackled them twice. First, by order of Pope Julius II, he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, spending four years on it (1508-1512) and doing a fantastically difficult and enormous job. He had to cover more than 600 square meters with frescoes. On the huge surfaces of the ceiling, Michelangelo depicted Old Testament scenes - from the Creation of the world to the Flood, as well as scenes from everyday life - a mother playing with her children, an old man immersed in deep thought, a young man reading, etc.

For the second time (1535-1541) Michelangelo creates the fresco “The Last Judgment”, placing it on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. In the center of the composition, in a halo of light, is the figure of Christ, raising his right hand in a menacing gesture. There are many naked human figures around him. Everything depicted on the canvas is in a circular motion, which begins at the bottom.

the spruce side, where the dead are depicted rising from their graves. Above them are souls who strive upward, and above them are the righteous. The very top part of the fresco is occupied by angels. At the bottom of the right side there is a boat with Charon, who drives sinners to hell. The biblical meaning of the Last Judgment is expressed clearly and impressively.

IN recent years Michelangelo's life deals architecture. He completes the construction of the Cathedral of St. Peter, making changes to Bramante's original project.

Everyone knows who Michelangelo is, one way or another. The Sistine Chapel, David, Pieta - this is what this genius of the Renaissance is strongly associated with. Meanwhile, dig a little deeper, and most are unlikely to be able to clearly answer what else the wayward Italian is remembered by the world. Expanding the boundaries of knowledge.

Michelangelo made money from forgeries

It is known that Michelangelo began with sculptural falsifications, which brought him a lot of money. The artist purchased marble in huge quantities, but no one saw the results of his work (it is logical that the authorship had to be hidden). The most notorious of his forgeries may be the sculpture "Laocoon and His Sons", which is now attributed to three Rhodian sculptors. It was suggested in 2005 that the work may be a fake by Michelangelo, citing that Michelangelo was among the first to arrive at the site and was one of those who identified the sculpture.

Michelangelo studied the dead

Michelangelo is known as an excellent sculptor who was able to recreate the human body in marble in the smallest detail. Such painstaking work required an impeccable knowledge of anatomy, meanwhile, at the beginning of his career, Michelangelo had no idea how the human body works. To make up for the missing knowledge, Michelangelo spent a lot of time in the monastery morgue, where he examined dead people, trying to understand all the intricacies human body.

Michelangelo hated painting

They say that Michelangelo sincerely did not like painting, which, in his opinion, was significantly inferior to sculpture. He called painting landscapes and still lifes a waste of time, considering them “useless pictures for ladies.”

Michelangelo's teacher broke his nose out of envy

As a teenager, Michelangelo was sent to study at the school of the sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni, which existed under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici. The young talent showed great diligence and diligence in his studies and quickly achieved not only success in the school field, but also won the patronage of the Medici. Incredible successes, attention from influential people and, apparently, a sharp tongue led to the fact that Michelangelo made many enemies at school, including among teachers. Thus, according to the work of Giorgio Vasari, the Italian Renaissance sculptor and one of Michelangelo’s teachers, Pietro Torrigiano, out of envy of his student’s talent, broke his nose.

Michelangelo was seriously ill

For the last 15 years of his life, Michelangelo suffered from osteoarthritis, a disease that causes joint deformities and pain in the limbs. His work helped him avoid losing his ability to work completely. It is believed that the first symptoms appeared during work on the Florentine Pieta.

Also, many researchers of the work and life of the great sculptor claim that Michelangelo suffered from depression and dizziness, which could have appeared as a result of working with dyes and solvents, which caused poisoning of the body and all further accompanying symptoms.

Secret self-portraits of Michelangelo

Michelangelo rarely signed his works and never left behind a formal self-portrait. However, he still managed to capture his face in some pictures and sculptures. The most famous of these secret self-portraits is part of the Last Judgment fresco, which you can find in the Sistine Chapel. It shows Saint Bartholomew holding a flayed piece of skin that represents the face of none other than Michelangelo.

Michelangelo was a poet

We know Michelangelo as a sculptor and painter, but he was also an accomplished poet. In his portfolio you can find hundreds of madrigals and sonnets that were not published during his lifetime. However, despite the fact that contemporaries were unable to appreciate Michelangelo’s poetic talent, many years later his work found its audience, so in 16th-century Rome the sculptor’s poetry was extremely popular, especially among singers who transcribed poems about mental wounds and physical disabilities to music.

Michelangelo's major works

There are few works of art in the world that could evoke as much admiration as these works by the great Italian master. We invite you to look at some of Michelangelo's most famous works and feel their greatness.

As a child, I read a lot, and there was a period when I became hooked on books from the “Lives of Remarkable People” series. I enjoyed reading the biographies of various writers, musicians, and artists, but I was especially struck by the biography of Michelangelo Buonaotti. I even begged my mother for an album with illustrations of his works, although in German and terribly expensive for those times (3 rubles 40k), I still have it.

1. Portrait of Michelangelo Buanorotti. OK. 1535. Marcello Venusti. Capitoline Museum, Florence.

"The life and work of Michelangelo Buonarroti lasted almost a whole century - from 1475 to 1564. Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475 in Caprese, in Tuscany. He was the son of a minor official. His father named him Michelangelo: without thinking for a long time, but by inspiration from above, he wanted it to show that this being was heavenly and divine to a greater extent than is the case with mortals, as was later confirmed. His childhood was spent partly in Florence, partly in the countryside, in the family estate. The boy’s mother died when he was six years old. According to the tax census, the family belonged to the upper strata of the city for centuries, and Michelangelo was very proud of this. At the same time, he remained lonely, lived quite modestly and, unlike other artists of his era, never sought to improve his own financial situation. First of all, he cared. about his father and four brothers. Only for a short period, already at the age of sixty, along with his creative activity, friendly relations with Tommaso Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna also acquired deep vital significance for him.

1. Marble bas-relief. 1490-1492. (Florence, Buonarroti Museum.)

In 1488, his father sent thirteen-year-old Michelangelo to study in the bottega (workshop) of Domenico Ghirlandaio, who at that time was revered as one of the best masters not only in Florence, but throughout Italy. Michelangelo's skill and personality grew so much that Domenico was amazed to see how he did some things differently than a young man should, for it seemed to him that Michelangelo defeated not only other students, and Ghirlandaio had many of them, but also often is not inferior to him in the things created by him as a master. So, when one of the young men who studied with Domenico, drew several figures of dressed women with a pen from Ghirlandaio, Michelangelo snatched this sheet from him and, with a thicker pen, re-circulated the figure of one of the women in a manner that he considered more perfect, so that it amazes not only the difference between the two manners, but also the skill and taste of such a brave and daring youth, who had the courage to correct the work of his teacher. And so it happened that when Domenico was working in the large chapel in Santa Maria Novella and somehow came out of there, Michelangelo began to draw from life a plank scaffold with several tables covered with all the accessories of art, as well as several young men who worked there. It was not for nothing that when Domenico returned and saw Michelangelo’s drawing, he said: “Well, this one knows more than I do” - so he was amazed at the new manner and the new way of reproducing nature.

2. "Holy Family" ("Madonna Doni") 1503 -1504. Florence, Uffizi Gallery.

But a year later, Lorenzo Medici, nicknamed the Magnificent, called him to his palace and gave him access to his gardens, where there was a rich collection of works by ancient masters. The boy practically independently mastered the necessary technical skills of a sculptor. He sculpted from clay and drew from the works of his predecessors, accurately choosing exactly what could help him develop his own innate inclinations. They say that Torrigiano, who became friends with him, but motivated by envy because, as he saw, he was valued higher and was worth more than him in art, as if in jest, punched him on the nose with such force that he forever marked it broken and an ugly crushed nose; for this Torrigiano was expelled from Florence...

3. Crucifixion.

After the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1492, Michelangelo returned to his father's house. For the church of Santo Spirito in the city of Florence, he made a wooden crucifix, placed and still stands above the semicircle of the high altar with the consent of the prior, who provided him with premises where, often dissecting corpses to study anatomy, he began to perfect that great art of drawing which he purchased later.

Shortly before the French king Charles VIII forced the artist's patrons, the Medici, to leave Florence in 1494, Michelangelo fled to Venice and then to Bologna. Michelangelo understood that he was wasting his time; he returned with pleasure to Florence, where for Lorenzo, the son of Pierfrancesco de' Medici, he carved St. John as a child and immediately from another piece of marble of a life-size sleeping Cupid, and when it was finished, through Baldassarre del Milanese it was shown as a beautiful thing to Pierfrancesco, who agreed with this and said to Michelangelo: “If you bury it in the ground and then send it to Rome, having forged it as an old one, I am sure that it will pass for an ancient one there and you will get much more for it than if you sell it here.”

4. Lamentation of Christ ("Pieta"), 1498 - 1499. Vatican, Cathedral of St. Petra.

Thanks to this story, Michelangelo's fame became such that he was immediately summoned to Rome. An artist of such rare talent left a worthy memory of himself in a city so famous by sculpting a marble, entirely round sculpture of the lamentation of Christ, which upon its completion was placed in the Cathedral of St. Peter's in the chapel of the Virgin Mary, healer of fever, where the temple of Mars used to be. Michelangelo put so much love and work into this creation that only on it (which he did not do in his other works) he wrote his name along the belt tightening the chest of the Mother of God.

On August 4, 1501, after several years of civil unrest, a republic was proclaimed in Florence. Some of his friends wrote to him from Florence asking him to come there, for the marble that lay spoiled in the care of the cathedral should not be missed. A wealthy corporation of wool merchants gave the master an order to create a sculpture of David.

5.David, 1501-1504. Florence, Academy of Fine Arts.

Michelangelo breaks with traditional way interpretation of the image of David. He did not depict the winner with a giant's head at his feet and a strong sword in his hand, but presented the young man in the situation that precedes the clash, perhaps just at the moment when he senses the confusion of his fellow tribesmen before the duel and from afar distinguishes Goliath mocking his people. The artist gave his figure the most perfect contrapposto, as in the most beautiful images of Greek heroes. When the statue was completed, a commission consisting of prominent citizens and artists decided to install it in the main square of the city, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. This was the first time since antiquity, that is, in more than a thousand years, that a monumental statue of a naked hero had appeared in a public place. This could have happened due to the fortunate coincidence of two circumstances: firstly, the ability of the artist to create for the residents of the commune a symbol of its highest political ideals and, secondly, the ability of the community of townspeople to understand the power of this symbol. His desire to defend the freedom of his people answered at this moment the most sublime aspiration of the Florentines.

6. Moses. OK. 1515. Rome, Church of San Pietro in Vincoli .

After the Lamentation of Christ, the Florentine giant and the cardboard, Michelangelo's fame became such that in 1503, when Julius II was elected after the death of Pope Alexander VI (and Michelangelo was then about 29 years old), he was invited with great respect by Julius II to work on his tomb. Since antiquity, nothing like this has been built for an individual in the West. In total, this work included forty marble statues, not counting various stories, puttas and decorations, all the cutting of cornices and other architectural debris. He also completed a marble Moses five cubits high (235 cm!), and none of the modern works can compare with this statue in beauty. They say that while Michelangelo was still working on it, the rest of the marble that was intended for the said tomb and remained in Carrara arrived by water, and was transported to the rest in the Piazza St. Petra; and since the delivery had to be paid, Michelangelo went, as usual, to the pope; but since His Holiness was busy that day important matters, relating to the events in Bologna, he returned home and paid for the marble with his own money, believing that His Holiness would immediately give orders in this regard. The next day he went again to talk to the pope, but when they did not let him in, the gatekeeper said that he should be patient, because he was ordered not to let him in.

7. Madonna and Child, 1504 (Church of Notre Dame, Bruges, Netherlands).

Michelangelo did not like this act, and since it seemed to him that this was not at all like what had happened to him before, he, angry, told the papal gatekeepers that if His Holiness needed him in the future, let him be told where he was going - left. Returning to his workshop, he boarded the post office at two o'clock in the morning, ordering his two servants to sell all household items to the Jews and then follow him to Florence, where he was leaving. Arriving in Poggibonsi, in the Florentine region, he stopped, feeling safe.

But not much time passed before five messengers arrived there with letters from the pope to bring him back. But, despite the requests and the letter in which he was ordered to return to Rome on pain of disgrace, he did not want to hear anything. Only yielding to the requests of the messengers, he finally wrote a few words in response to His Holiness that he asked for forgiveness, but was not going to return to him, for he had thrown him out like some kind of tramp, which he did not deserve for his faithful service, and that the pope could where Still look for a servant for yourself.

8. Christ Carrying the Cross, 1519-1521. Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome.

Soon the pope, perhaps concerned about the lack of a suitable place for the tomb, became obsessed with an even more ambitious project - the reconstruction of St. Peter's Basilica. Therefore, he temporarily abandoned his previous plans. In 1508, the master finally returned to Rome, but did not get the opportunity to work on the tomb. His Holiness did not insist on completing his tomb, saying that building a tomb during his lifetime was bad luck and meant inviting death. An even more stunning order awaited him: in memory of Sixtus, the uncle of His Holiness, to paint the ceiling of the chapel built in the palace by Sixtus. But Michelangelo wanted to finish the tomb, and the work on the ceiling of the chapel seemed big and difficult to him: bearing in mind his little experience in painting with paints, he tried in every way to get rid of this burden. Seeing that His Holiness persisted, Michelangelo finally decided to take it on. Until October 31, 1512, Michelangelo painted more than three hundred figures on the vault of the Sistine Chapel.

9. "The Creation of Adam" (fragment of the Sistine Chapel painting)

After completing the chapel, he willingly took up the tomb in order to complete it this time without so many hindrances, but he always subsequently received more troubles and difficulties from it than from anything else, but throughout his life and for a long time he became known as one way or another, ungrateful towards the pope who so patronized and favored him. So, returning to the tomb, he worked on it continuously, at the same time putting in order the drawings for the walls of the chapel, but fate did not want this monument, begun with such perfection, to be completed in the same way, for something happened at that time the death of Pope Julius, and therefore this work was abandoned due to the election of Pope Leo X, who, shining with enterprise and power no less than Julius, wished to leave in his homeland, as a memory of himself and the divine artist, his fellow citizen, such miracles as he could to be created only by such a great sovereign as he. And therefore, since he ordered that the facade of San Lorenzo in Florence, the church built by the Medici family, be entrusted to Michelangelo, this circumstance was the reason that the work on the tomb of Julius remained unfinished.

10.Tomb of Duke Lorenzo. Medici Chapel. 1524—1531. Florence, Cathedral of San Lorenzo.

Throughout the pontificate of Leo X, political vicissitudes did not leave Michelangelo. Firstly, the pope, whose family was hostile to the della Rovere family, prevented the continuation of work on the tomb of Julius II, from 1515 he occupied the artist with the design, and from 1518 with the implementation of the facade of the Church of San Lorenzo. In 1520, after useless wars, the pope was forced to abandon the construction of the facade and, in turn, commissioned Michelangelo to erect the Medici Chapel next to San Lorenzo, and in 1524 ordered the construction of the Laurentian Library. But the implementation of these projects was also interrupted for a year when the Medici were expelled from Florence in 1526. For the Florentine Republic, now proclaimed in last time Michelangelo, acting as commander of the fortifications, hastened to carry out the plans for new fortifications, but betrayal and political intrigue contributed to the return of the Medici, and his projects remained on paper.

11. Angel with a candlestick. 1494-1495. Church of San Domenico, Bologna.

The death of Leo led to such confusion among artists and art both in Rome and Florence that during the life of Adrian VI, Michelangelo remained in Florence and worked on the tomb of Julius. But when Adrian died and Clement VII was elected pope, who strove to leave behind glory in the arts of architecture, sculpture and painting, no less than Leo and his other predecessors, Michelangelo was summoned to Rome by the pope.

The Pope decided to paint the walls of the Sistine Chapel, in which Michelangelo painted the ceiling for his predecessor Julius II. Clement wanted the Last Judgment to be written on these walls, namely on the main one, where the altar is, so that it would be possible to show in this story everything that was possible in the art of drawing, and on the other wall, on the contrary, it was ordered It was above the main doors to show how Lucifer was expelled from heaven for his pride and how all the angels who sinned with him were cast into the depths of hell.

12. "The Last Judgment". 1534-1541

Many years later it was discovered that Michelangelo made sketches and various drawings for this plan, and one of them was used to paint a fresco in the Roman church of Trinita by a Sicilian painter who served Michelangelo for many months, rubbing his paints.

This work was commissioned by Pope Clement VII shortly before his death. His successor, Paul III Farnese, prompted Michelangelo to hastily complete this painting, the most extensive and spatially unified in the entire century. The first impression we get when standing before the Last Judgment is the feeling that we are facing a truly cosmic event. In the center of it is the powerful figure of Christ. In addition to the extraordinary beauty in this creation, one can see such a unity of painting and its execution that it seems as if it was painted in one day, and such subtlety of finishing cannot be found in any miniature. He worked on completing this creation for eight years and opened it in 1541, on Christmas Day, striking and surprising all of Rome with it, and moreover, the whole world.

13. Apostles Peter and Paul, c. 1503/1504. Cathedral, Siena.

In 1546, the artist was entrusted with the most significant architectural commissions of his life. For Pope Paul III, he completed the Palazzo Farnese (the third floor of the courtyard facade and the cornice) and designed for him a new decoration of the Capitol, the material embodiment of which, however, lasted for quite a long time. But, of course, the most important order, which prevented him from returning to his native Florence until his death, was for Michelangelo his appointment as the chief architect of St. Peter's Cathedral. Convinced of such trust in him and faith in him on the part of the pope, Michelangelo, in order to show his good will, wished that the decree should declare that he served on the construction for the love of God and without any remuneration. In full consciousness, he made a will consisting of three words: he gave his soul into the hands of the Lord, his body to the earth, and his property to his closest relatives, ordering his loved ones to remind him of the passions of the Lord when he departed from this life. And so on February 17, 1563, according to the Florentine reckoning (which would have been in 1564 according to the Roman reckoning), Michelangelo passed away.

14. Pieta Bandini (Pieta with Nicodemus). 1550. Museum of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence.

Michelangelo's talent was recognized during his lifetime, and not after death, as happens with many; for we saw that the high priests Julius II, Leo X, Clement VII, Paul III and Julius III, Paul IV, and Pius IV always wanted to have him with them, and also, as we know, Suleiman - the ruler of the Turks, Francis of Valois - the king French, Charles V - Emperor. The Venetian Signoria and Duke Cosimo de' Medici - all of them rewarded him with honor only in order to take advantage of his great talent, and this falls to the lot only of those people who have great merits. But he belonged to such people, for everyone knew and everyone saw that all three arts had achieved such perfection in him that you would not find either among ancient or modern people over many, many years. He had such and such a perfect imagination, and the things that seemed to him in the idea were such that it was impossible to carry out such great and amazing plans with his hands, and he often abandoned his creations, moreover, he destroyed many; Thus, it is known that shortly before his death he burned a large number of drawings, sketches and cardboards created with his own hands, so that no one could see the work he had overcome, and the ways in which he tested his genius in order to show it as nothing less than perfect.

And let it not seem strange to anyone that Michelangelo loved solitude, like a man in love with his art, which requires that a person be completely devoted to it and think only about it; and it is necessary that the one who wants to engage in it avoids society, for the one who indulges in thinking about art is never left alone and without thoughts, while those who attribute this to eccentricities and oddities in him are mistaken, for whoever wants to work well, he should remove himself from all worries, since talent requires reflection, solitude and peace, and not mental wandering."

Giorgio Vasari. "Biography of Michelangelo."

15.Head of Christ (fragment of the Lamentation of Christ statue)

Personal life of Michelangelo.

In 1536, Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, came to Rome, where this 47-year-old widow poetess earned the deep friendship, or rather, even the passionate love of 61-year-old Michelangelo. He dedicated several of his most ardent sonnets to his great platonic love, created drawings for her and spent many hours in her company. The ideas of religious renewal that worried the participants in Vittoria’s circle left a deep imprint on Michelangelo’s worldview in these years. Their reflection is seen, for example, in the fresco “The Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel.

Vittoria is the only woman whose name is firmly associated with Michelangelo, whom most researchers tend to consider homo-, or at least bisexual.

According to researchers of Michelangelo's intimate life, his ardent passion for the Marquise was the fruit of a subconscious choice, since her holy lifestyle could not pose a threat to his homosexual instincts, although Michelangelo's friend and biographer Condivi generally described his chastity as monastic. “He put her on a pedestal, but his love for her could hardly be called heterosexual: he called her “the man in the woman.”

16.Vittoria Colonna, portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo

Biographers of the famous artist note: “The correspondence of these two remarkable people is not only of high biographical interest, but is an excellent monument of a historical era and a rare example of a live exchange of thoughts, full of intelligence, subtle observation and irony.” Researchers write about the sonnets dedicated to Michelangelo Vittoria: “The deliberate, forced platonism of their relationship aggravated and brought to crystallization the love-philosophical structure of Michelangelo’s poetry, which largely reflected the views and poetry of the Marchioness herself, who during the 1530s played the role of Michelangelo’s spiritual guide . Their poetic “correspondence” attracted the attention of their contemporaries; Perhaps the most famous was sonnet 60, which became the subject of special interpretation.” Records of conversations between Vittoria and Michelangelo, heavily processed, were preserved in the posthumously published notes of the Portuguese artist Francesco d'Holland.

Sonnet No. 60

And the highest genius will not add
One thought to the fact that marble itself
It conceals in abundance - and that’s all we need
A hand obedient to reason will reveal.
Am I waiting for joy, is anxiety pressing on my heart,
The wisest, good donna, - to you
I am obliged to everything, and the shame is heavy for me,
That my gift does not glorify you as it should.
Not the power of Love, not your beauty,
Or coldness, or anger, or the oppression of contempt
They bear the blame for my misfortune, -
Because death is merged with mercy
In your heart - but my pathetic genius
By loving, he is capable of extracting one death.

Michelangelo

Fragments of the painting of the Sistine Chapel:

17. Christ.

18. "The Creation of Eve"

19. "Creation of luminaries and plants"

20. "The Fall"

21. "The Flood"

22. "Noah's Sacrifice"

23. Prophet Isaiah

24. Prophet Jeremiah.

25. Cumaean Sibyl

26. Delphic Sibyl

27. Erythraean Sibyl.

The High Renaissance, or Cinquecento, which gave humanity such great masters as Donato Bramante, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael Santi, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Giorgione, Titian, covers a relatively short period - from the end of the 15th to the end of the second decade of the 16th century.

Fundamental changes associated with the decisive events of world history and the successes of advanced scientific thought have endlessly expanded people's ideas about the world - not only about the earth, but also about the Cosmos. The perception of people and the human personality seems to have become larger; in artistic creativity this was reflected in the majestic scale of architectural structures, monuments, solemn fresco cycles and paintings, but also in their content and expressiveness of images.

Art High Renaissance characterized through concepts such as synthesis, summary. He is characterized by sophisticated maturity, concentration on the general and the main; figurative language became generalized and restrained. The art of the High Renaissance is a living and complex artistic process with dazzlingly bright ups and the subsequent crisis - the Late Renaissance.

In the second half of the 16th century. in Italy, the decline of the economy and trade was increasing, Catholicism entered into the fight against humanistic culture, culture was experiencing a deep crisis, disappointment in the ideas of the Renaissance. Under the influence of external circumstances, there was an understanding of the frailty of everything human, the limitations of its capabilities.

The heyday of the High Renaissance and the transition to the Late Renaissance can be traced to one human life - the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Michelangelo

Michelangelo was a sculptor, architect, painter and poet, but most of all, a sculptor. He valued sculpture above all other arts and was in this respect an antagonist to Leonardo. Sculpting is carving by chipping and trimming stone; The sculptor, with his mind’s eye, sees the desired shape in a block of stone and “cuts” into it deep into the stone, cutting off what is not the shape. This is hard work - not to mention a lot of physical stress; it requires the sculptor to have an infallible hand: what has been broken off incorrectly cannot be put back again, and special vigilance of inner vision. This is how Michelangelo worked. As a preliminary stage, he made drawings and sketches from wax, roughly outlining the image, and then entered into single combat with a marble block. In the “release” of the image from the block of stone hiding it, Michelangelo saw the hidden poetry of the sculptor’s work.

Freed from the “shell”, his statues retain their stone nature; they are always distinguished by the solidity of their volume: Michelangelo Buonarroti famously said that a good statue is one that can be rolled down a mountain without a single part breaking off. Therefore, almost nowhere do his statues have arms that are freely retracted and separated from the body.

Other distinguishing feature Michelangelo’s statues – their titanic quality, which later transferred to human figures in painting. The mounds of their muscles are exaggerated, the neck is thickened, likened to a mighty trunk carrying the head, the roundness of the hips is heavy and massive, the blockiness of the figure is emphasized. These are titans, whom the hard stone has endowed with its properties.

Buonarroti is also characterized by a growing sense of tragic contradiction, which is also noticeable in his sculpture. The movements of the “titans” are strong, passionate, but at the same time, as if constrained.

Michelangelo's favorite technique is contrapposto, which comes from the early classics (Myron's Discobolus), reformed into the technique of serpentinato (from the Latin serpentine): screwing the figure into a spring around itself through a sharp turn of the upper torso. But Michelangelo's contrapposto does not resemble the light, undulating movement of Greek statues; rather, it resembles a Gothic bend, if not for its powerful physicality.

Although the Italian Renaissance was a revival of antiquity, we will not find there a direct copy of antiquity. The new spoke to antiquity on equal terms, like master to master. The first impulse was admiring imitation, the final result was an unprecedented synthesis. Having begun as an attempt to revive antiquity, the Renaissance creates something completely different.

Mannerists will also use the serpentinata technique, snake turns of figures, but outside of Michelangelo’s humanistic pathos these turns are nothing more than pretentiousness.

Another ancient technique often used by Michelangelo is chiasmus, moving balance (“Doriphorus” by Polycletus), which received a new name: ponderatio – weighing, poise. It consists of a proportionate distribution of force tension along two intersecting diagonals of the figure. For example, the hand with the object corresponds to the opposite supporting leg, and the relaxed leg corresponds to the free hand.

Speaking about the development of High Renaissance sculpture, its most important achievement can be called the final emancipation of sculpture from architecture: the statue is no longer dependent on the architectural unit.

Pieta

"Pieta", St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican

One of the most famous works Michelangelo Buonarroti - sculptural composition “Pieta” (“Mourning of Christ”) (from the Italian pieta - mercy). It was completed in 1498–1501. for the chapel of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and dates back to the first Roman period of Michelangelo's work.

The very plot of the image of Mary with the body of her dead Son in her arms came from the northern countries and was by that time widespread in Italy. It originates from the German iconographic tradition of Versperbilder (“image of the supper”), which existed in the form of small wooden church images. Mary's mourning of her Son is an extremely important moment for Catholicism. With her immeasurable suffering (for the suffering of a mother who sees the torment of her son is immeasurable), she is exalted and exalted. Therefore, Catholicism is characterized by the cult of the Mother of God, who acts as the Intercessor of people before God.

Maria is depicted by Michelangelo as a very young girl, too young for such an adult son. She seems to have no age at all, to be outside of time. This emphasizes the eternal significance of mourning and suffering. The mother’s grief is light and sublime, only in the gesture of her left hand does mental suffering seem to spill out.

The body of Christ lies lifeless in the arms of the Mother. This sculpture is not at all similar to others by Michelangelo. There is no titanicity, strength, or muscularity here: the body of Christ is depicted as thin, weak, almost muscleless, it does not have that stonyness and massiveness. The unfinished contrapposto movement is also not used; on the contrary, the composition is full of staticity, but this staticity is not one about which one can say that there is no life in it, no thought. It seems that Mary will sit like this forever, and her eternal “static” suffering is more impressive than any dynamics.

Michelangelo expressed the deeply human ideals of the High Renaissance, full of heroic pathos, as well as the tragic sense of the crisis of the humanistic worldview during the period Late Renaissance.

Comprehension

Buonarroti's conflicts with the popes, acting on the side of the besieged pope and king of Florence, the death and exile of friends and associates, failure with many architectural and sculptural ideas - all this undermined his worldview, faith in people and their capabilities, and contributed to an eschatological mood. Michelangelo felt the decline of a great era. Even in his worship human beauty great delight is associated with fear, with the consciousness of the end, which must inexorably follow the embodiment of the ideal.

In sculpture this was manifested in the technique of non finita - incompleteness. It manifests itself in the unfinished processing of the stone and serves the effect of the inexplicable plasticity of the figure, which has not completely emerged from the stone. This technique by Michelangelo can be interpreted in different ways, and it is unlikely that one of their explanations will become final; rather, all explanations are correct, since by their multiplicity they reflect the versatility of the use of the technique.

On the one hand, man in the sculpture of the late Michelangelo (and therefore the Late Renaissance) strives to break free from stone, from matter, to become complete; this means his desire to break free from the bonds of his corporeality, human imperfection, and sinfulness. We remember that this problem of the impossibility of leaving the framework established for man by nature was central to the crisis of the Renaissance.

On the other hand, the incompleteness of the sculpture is the author’s recognition of his inability to fully express his idea. Any completed work loses the original ideality of the plan, the idea, so it is better not to finish the creation, but only to outline the direction of the aspiration. This problem is not limited to the problem of creativity: transforming, it goes from Plato and Aristotle (from the world of ideas and the world of things, where matter “spoils” ideas), through the crisis of the Renaissance, through Schelling and the romantics to the symbolists and decadents of the late 19th century. The non finita technique gives the effect of a creative impulse, brief, not completed, but strong and expressive; if the viewer picks up this impulse, he will understand what the figure should become upon incarnation.

MICHELANGELO Buonarroti
(Michelangelo Buonarroti)
(1475-1564), Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet. Even during Michelangelo's lifetime, his works were considered the highest achievements of Renaissance art.
Youth. Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on March 6, 1475 into a Florentine family in Caprese. His father was a high-ranking member of the city administration. The family soon moved to Florence; her financial situation was modest. Having learned to read, write and count, Michelangelo in 1488 became a student of the artists Ghirlandaio brothers. Here he became acquainted with basic materials and techniques and created pencil copies of works by the great Florentine artists Giotto and Masaccio; already in these copies the sculptural interpretation of forms characteristic of Michelangelo appeared. Michelangelo soon began working on sculptures for the Medici collection and attracted the attention of Lorenzo the Magnificent. In 1490 he settled in the Palazzo Medici and remained there until Lorenzo's death in 1492. Lorenzo Medici surrounded himself with the most prominent people of his time. There were poets, philologists, philosophers, commentators such as Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, Pico della Mirandola; Lorenzo himself was a wonderful poet. Michelangelo's perception of reality as spirit embodied in matter undoubtedly goes back to the Neoplatonists. For him, sculpture was the art of "isolating" or freeing the figure enclosed in a stone block. It is possible that some of his most striking works, which appear "unfinished", may have been deliberately left that way, because it was at this stage of "liberation" that the form most adequately embodied the artist's intention. Some of the main ideas of Lorenzo's Medici circle served as a source of inspiration and torment for Michelangelo in his later life, in particular the contradiction between Christian piety and pagan sensuality. It was believed that pagan philosophy and Christian dogmas could be reconciled (this is reflected in the title of one of Ficino’s books - “Plato’s Theology of the Immortality of the Soul”); that all knowledge, if rightly understood, is the key to divine truth. Physical beauty, embodied in the human body, is an earthly manifestation of spiritual beauty. Bodily beauty may be glorified, but this is not enough, for the body is the prison of the soul, which strives to return to its Creator, but can only achieve this in death. According to Pico della Mirandola, during life a person has free will: he can ascend to the angels or plunge into an unconscious animal state. The young Michelangelo was influenced by the optimistic philosophy of humanism and believed in the limitless possibilities of man. The marble relief Battle of the Centaurs (Florence, Casa Buonarroti) has the appearance of a Roman sarcophagus and depicts a scene from the Greek myth about the battle of the Lapithian people with the half-animal centaurs who attacked them during a wedding feast. The plot was suggested by Angelo Poliziano; its meaning is the victory of civilization over barbarism. According to the myth, the Lapiths were victorious, but in Michelangelo's interpretation the outcome of the battle is unclear. The sculptor created compact and tense masses of naked bodies, demonstrating virtuoso skill in conveying movement through the play of light and shadow. The chisel marks and jagged edges remind us of the stone from which the figures are made. The second work is a wooden Crucifix (Florence, Casa Buonarroti). Head of Christ with eyes closed lowered to the chest, the rhythm of the body is determined by crossed legs. The subtlety of this work distinguishes it from the power of the figures in the marble relief. Due to the danger of a French invasion in the fall of 1494, Michelangelo left Florence and, on his way to Venice, stopped for a while in Bologna, where he created three small statues for the tomb of St. Dominica, work on which was interrupted due to the death of the sculptor who began it. The following year he returned briefly to Florence and then went to Rome, where he spent five years and produced two major works in the late 1490s. The first of them is a human-sized statue of Bacchus, intended for all-round viewing. The drunken god of wine is accompanied by a small satyr who feasts on a bunch of grapes. Bacchus seems ready to fall forward, but maintains his balance by leaning back; his gaze is turned to the cup of wine. The muscles of the back look elastic, but relaxed muscles of the abdomen and thighs demonstrate physical, and therefore spiritual, weakness. The sculptor achieved a difficult task: to create the impression of instability without compositional imbalance, which could disrupt the aesthetic effect. A more monumental work is the marble Pieta (Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica). This theme was popular during the Renaissance, but here it is treated rather restrainedly. Death and the sorrow that accompanies it seem to be contained in the marble from which the sculpture is made. The relationship of the figures is such that they form a low triangle, or more precisely, a conical structure. The naked body of Christ contrasts with the lush, rich in chiaroscuro robes of the Mother of God. Michelangelo depicted the Virgin Mary as young, as if she were not Mother and Son, but a sister mourning the untimely death of her brother. Idealization of this kind was used by Leonardo da Vinci and other artists. In addition, Michelangelo was an ardent admirer of Dante. At the beginning of the prayer of St. Bernard in the last canzone of the Divine Comedy says: “Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio” - “Our Lady, daughter of her Son.” The sculptor found the ideal way to express this deep theological thought in stone. On the vestment of the Mother of God, Michelangelo carved for the first and last time the signature: “Michelangelo, Florentine.” By the age of 25, the period of formation of his personality had ended, and he returned to Florence in the prime of all the possibilities that a sculptor can have.
Florence during the Republic.
As a result of the French invasion in 1494, the Medici were expelled, and for four years a de facto theocracy of the preacher Savonarola was established in Florence. In 1498, as a result of the intrigues of Florentine leaders and the papal throne, Savonarola and two of his followers were sentenced to be burned at the stake. These events in Florence did not directly affect Michelangelo, but they are unlikely to have left him indifferent. Savonarola's returning Middle Ages were replaced by a secular republic, for which Michelangelo created his first major work in Florence, the marble statue of David (1501-1504, Florence, Accademia). The colossal figure, 4.9 m high, together with its base, was supposed to stand near the cathedral. The image of David was traditional in Florence. Donatello and Verrocchio created bronze sculptures of a young man miraculously slaying a giant whose head lies at his feet. In contrast, Michelangelo depicted the moment preceding the fight. David stands with a sling thrown over his shoulder, clutching a stone in his left hand. The right side of the figure is tense, while the left is slightly relaxed, like an athlete ready for action. The image of David had a special meaning for the Florentines, and Michelangelo's sculpture attracted everyone's attention. David became the symbol of a free and vigilant republic, ready to defeat any enemy. The site near the cathedral proved unsuitable, and a committee of citizens decided that the sculpture should guard the main entrance to the government building, the Palazzo Vecchio, in front of which a copy of it now stands. Perhaps, with the participation of Machiavelli, another major state project was conceived in these same years: Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were commissioned to create two huge frescoes for the Great Council Hall in the Palazzo Vecchio on the theme of the historical victories of the Florentines at Anghiari and Cascina. Only copies of Michelangelo's cardboard of the Battle of Cascina have survived. It depicted a group of soldiers rushing to arms when they were suddenly attacked by their enemies while swimming in a river. The scene is reminiscent of the Battle of the Centaurs; it depicts naked figures in all sorts of poses, which were of greater interest to the master than the plot itself. Michelangelo's cardboard probably disappeared ca. 1516; according to the autobiography of the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, he was a source of inspiration for many artists. The only painting undoubtedly belonging to Michelangelo, the tondo Madonna Doni (Florence, Uffizi), dates back to the same time (c. 1504-1506), which reflected the desire to convey complex poses and to plastically interpret the forms of the human body. The Madonna leaned to the right to take the Child sitting on Joseph's knee. The unity of the figures is emphasized by the rigid modeling of the draperies with smooth surfaces. The landscape with naked figures of pagans behind the wall is poor in detail. In 1506 Michelangelo began work on the statue of Matthew the Evangelist (Florence, Accademia), which was to be the first of a series of 12 apostles for the Cathedral of Florence. This statue remained unfinished, since two years later Michelangelo went to Rome. The figure was carved from a marble block, maintaining its rectangular shape. It is performed in a strong contrapposto (tense dynamic imbalance of the pose): the left leg is raised and rests on the stone, which causes a shift in the axis between the pelvis and shoulders. Physical energy transforms into spiritual energy, the strength of which is transmitted by the extreme tension of the body. The Florentine period of Michelangelo's work was marked by an almost feverish activity of the master: in addition to the works listed above, he created two relief tondos with images of the Madonna (London and Florence), in which varying degrees of completeness are used to create expressiveness of the image; a marble statue of the Madonna and Child (Notre Dame Cathedral in Bruges) and an unpreserved bronze statue of David. In Rome during the times of Pope Julius II and Leo X. In 1503, Julius II took the papal throne. No patron used art for propaganda purposes as extensively as Julius II. He began the construction of a new cathedral of St. Peter's, repairing and enlarging the papal residence on the model of Roman palaces and villas, painting the papal chapel and preparing a magnificent tomb for himself. The details of this project are unclear, but, apparently, Julius II imagined a new temple with its own tomb like a tomb French kings in Saint Denis. Project for the new Cathedral of St. Petra was entrusted to Bramante, and in 1505 Michelangelo received an order to design the tomb. It should have stood freely and had a size of 6 by 9 m. There should have been an oval room inside, and about 40 statues outside. Its creation was impossible even at that time, but both dad and the artist were unstoppable dreamers. The tomb was never built in the form Michelangelo intended, and this “tragedy” haunted him for almost 40 years. The plan of the tomb and its semantic content can be reconstructed from preliminary drawings and descriptions. Most likely, the tomb was supposed to symbolize a three-stage ascent from earthly life to eternal life. At the base there should have been statues of the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, symbols of the two ways to achieve salvation. At the top there should have been two angels carrying Julius II to heaven. As a result, only three statues were completed; The contract for the tomb was negotiated six times over a period of 37 years, and the monument was eventually installed in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli. During 1505-1506, Michelangelo constantly visited the marble quarries, choosing material for the tomb, while Julius II increasingly insistently drew his attention to the construction of the Cathedral of St. Petra. The tomb remained unfinished. In extreme irritation, Michelangelo fled Rome on April 17, 1506, the day before the foundation of the cathedral was laid. However, dad remained adamant. Michelangelo was forgiven and received an order to make a statue of the pontiff, which was later destroyed by the rebellious Bolognese. In 1506, another project arose - frescoes of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It was built in the 1470s by Julius's uncle, Pope Sixtus IV. In the early 1480s, the altar and side walls were decorated with frescoes with gospel scenes and scenes from the life of Moses, in the creation of which Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Rosselli participated. Above them were portraits of popes, and the vault remained empty. In 1508, Michelangelo reluctantly began painting the vault. The work lasted just over two years between 1508 and 1512, with minimal assistance from assistants. Initially it was intended to depict the figures of the apostles on thrones. Later, in a letter of 1523, Michelangelo proudly wrote that he had convinced the pope of the failure of this plan and received complete freedom. Instead of the original project, the painting we see now was created. If the side walls of the chapel represent the Age of Law (Moses) and the Age of Grace (Christ), then the ceiling painting represents the very beginning of human history, the Book of Genesis. The ceiling painting of the Sistine Chapel is a complex structure consisting of painted elements of architectural decoration, individual figures and scenes. On the sides of the central part of the ceiling, under a painted cornice, there are giant figures of Old Testament prophets and pagan Sibyls seated on thrones. Between the two cornices there are transverse stripes imitating a vault; they demarcate alternating major and minor narrative scenes from the Book of Genesis. The lunettes and spherical triangles at the base of the painting also contain scenes. Numerous figures, including the famous ignudi (nude), frame scenes from the Book of Genesis. It is unclear whether they have any special meaning or are purely decorative. Existing interpretations of the meaning of this mural could form a small library. Since it is located in the papal chapel, its meaning must have been orthodox, but there is no doubt that Renaissance thought was also embodied in this complex. This article can only present a generally accepted interpretation of the main Christian ideas embedded in this painting. The images fall into three main groups: scenes from the Book of Genesis, prophets and sibyls, and scenes in the vaults. The scenes from the Book of Genesis, like the compositions on the side walls, are arranged in chronological order, from the altar to the entrance. They fall into three triads. The first is related to the creation of the world. The second - the Creation of Adam, the Creation of Eve, Temptation and Expulsion from Paradise - is dedicated to the creation of humanity and its fall. The latter tells the story of Noah, ending with his drunkenness. It is no coincidence that Adam in the Creation of Adam and Noah in the Intoxication of Noah are in the same position: in the first case, a person does not yet possess a soul, in the second he refuses it. Thus, these scenes show that humanity was deprived of divine favor not once, but twice. The four sails of the vault contain scenes of Judith and Holofernes, David and Goliath, the Brazen Serpent and the Death of Haman. Each of them is an example of God's mysterious participation in the salvation of his chosen people. The prophets who predicted the coming of the Messiah spoke about this divine help. The climax of the painting is the ecstatic figure of Jonah, located above the altar and below the scene of the first day of creation, towards which his gaze is directed. Jonah is the herald of the Resurrection and eternal life, for he, like Christ, who spent three days in the tomb before ascending to heaven, spent three days in the belly of the whale, and was then restored to life. Through participation in the Mass at the altar below, the faithful participated in the mystery of the salvation promised by Christ. The narrative is constructed in the spirit of heroic and sublime humanism; both female and male figures are full of masculine strength. The nude figures that frame the scenes indicate Michelangelo's taste and response to classical art: taken together, they constitute an encyclopedia of the positions of the naked human body, as was the case in both the Battle of the Centaurs and the Battle of Cascina. Michelangelo was not inclined towards the quiet idealism of the Parthenon sculpture, but preferred the powerful heroism of Hellenistic and Roman art, expressed in the large, pathos-filled sculptural group Laocoon, found in Rome in 1506. When discussing Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, their preservation must be taken into account. Cleaning and restoration of the mural began in 1980. As a result, soot deposits were removed and the dull colors gave way to bright pink, lemon yellow and green; the contours and relationship of figures and architecture became clearer. Michelangelo appeared to be a subtle colorist: he managed to enhance the sculptural perception of nature with the help of color and took into account the high ceiling height (18 m), which in the 16th century. could not be illuminated as brightly as is possible now. (Reproductions of the restored frescoes were published in Alfred A. Knopf's monumental two-volume The Sistine Chapel, 1992. Among the 600 photographs are two panoramic views of the frescoes before and after restoration.) Pope Julius II died in 1513; He was replaced by Leo X from the Medici family. From 1513 to 1516, Michelangelo worked on statues intended for the tomb of Julius II: figures of two slaves (Louvre) and a statue of Moses (San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome). The slave breaking his bonds is depicted in a sharp turn, like the Evangelist Matthew. The dying slave is weak, as if he is trying to rise, but he freezes in powerlessness, bowing his head under his arm twisted back. Moses looks to the left, like David; Indignation seems to boil within him at the sight of the worship of the golden calf. The right side of his body is tense, the tablets are pressed to his side, and the sharp movement of his right leg is emphasized by the drapery thrown over it. This giant, one of the prophets embodied in marble, personifies terribilita, "terrifying power."
Return to Florence. The years between 1515 and 1520 were the time of collapse of Michelangelo's plans. He was under pressure from the heirs of Julius, and at the same time he served the new pope from the Medici family. In 1516 he received a commission to decorate the façade of the Medici family church in Florence, San Lorenzo. Michelangelo spent a lot of time in the marble quarries, but after a few years the contract was terminated. Perhaps at the same time the sculptor began work on the statues of four slaves (Florence, Accademia), which remained unfinished. In the early 1500s, Michelangelo traveled constantly back and forth between Florence and Rome, but in the 1520s, commissions for the New Sacristy (Medici Chapel) of San Lorenzo and the Laurentian Library kept him in Florence until he left for Rome in 1534. Library Reading Room Laurentian represents long room made of gray stone with light walls. The lobby, a high room with numerous double columns recessed into the wall, seems to be struggling to contain the staircase pouring onto the floor. The staircase was completed only towards the end of Michelangelo's life, and the vestibule was completed only in the 20th century.

Collier's Encyclopedia. - Open Society. 2000 .