David’s hands, the creation of Adam, the Last Judgment, and St Peter’s dome are some of the most powerful and popular images that people familiar with Western art can easily recognise. All these are creations of Michelangelo Buonarroti: sixteenth-century master painter, sculptor, architect and indulgent poet.
An artist in any era who completes two of his greatest commissions in his twenties is bound for success and Michelangelo exactly did that. He produced Pieta and David in his youth and was called Il divino - the divine one - by his contemporaries.
The European Renaissance brought back humankind as the centre of the universe and Michelangelo (1475-1564) was one of its central figures. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is holding a special exhibition of Michelangelo aptly titled “Divine Draftsman and Designer”. The exquisitely curated exhibition, which will be on display till February, has over 200 objects loaned from various museums, entities and private collections. It is a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition because a number of displayed drawings will not be seen again in our time: they cannot be exposed to light beyond a certain number of days so as to conserve them for posterity.
A number of displayed drawings will not be seen again in our time: they cannot be exposed to light beyond a certain number of days so as to conserve them
The exhibition zeros in on the key skill for any creative craftsman: drafting. And Michelangelo’s drawing overpowers the onlooker. Imagine almost five hundred years ago an individual’s command over drawing the human anatomy, such that one can still feel the weight of the body concentrated on the limbs, for example, of a kneeling figure – and that, too, drawn with basic quality chalk or quill pen and ink. The sculpturesque drawing when chiseled in a marble block by Michelangelo brings it to life. His David appears to experience anxiety after having made his decision to confront Goliath. And this translates into the stiffness in David’s hand.
My first introduction to Michelangelo’s life was from Urdu travelogue Khanabadosh where my father, on a visit to Florence, narrated how Michelangelo would secretly go to a local mortuary to dissect dead bodies to learn about human anatomy. The next one was in the Western Arts course at the National College of Arts, Lahore. There, Professor Iqbal Hassan, who had an impressive collection of slides of art and architecture from all over the world, would with his deep voice and crisp English walk us through the details of the Renaissance with images projected on a screen in a semi-dark auditorium. When we saw Michelangelo’s David on the screen, we were told that the work was so perfect that Michelangelo shouted at his sculpture to speak and upon hearing nothing, the artist hit his own David.
Daniel H. Weiss, president and CEO of The Met, introduces the exhibition to the press
The Met exhibition is a lot like a time capsule that takes us through the lifespan of Michelangelo and to the era of the Renaissance itself. It starts with works by Michelangelo’s teacher Domenico Ghirlandaio and contemporaries, and Michelangelo’s own earliest drawings and his first painting “The Torment of Saint Anthony.” Reportedly for that painting the young Michelangelo would visit the fish market to study the shape and colour of fish fins and eyes. One of his early sculptures “Young Archer” is also in the exhibition. This marble sculpture was only attributed to him in 1996.
Every artist is influenced by the context of his times. Michelangelo, too, learnt and drew from studying works by his contemporaries and predecessors. The exhibition brings to the fore Ghirlandaio’s influence on Michelangelo, which runs counter to some of the earlier views. The sketches also tell us about his strong compositions. Not surprisingly a whole section of the exhibition is devoted to the Sistine Chapel. The collection of drawings makes one wonder how sketchbook sized paper drawings helped the master conceive the whole roof depicting biblical stories. The ‘Creation of Adam’ painting in the Sistine Chapel is one of the most famous images in the world and a sheet in the exhibition shows Michelangelo’s conception of the figures in that painting in a brief sketch. At this point Michelangelo was mostly using red chalk, which was not easy to erase – which goes to show the level of confidence that Il Divino had in his drafting. The details of another of his masterpieces ‘The Last Judgement’ are also part of a separate section in the exhibition.
Michelangelo's Pieta
Michelangelo would mostly use both sides of his sketching sheet and would scribble pointers or messages on the corners. It is said that in his last days he wanted to destroy these sketches. Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), who was the first biographer of Michelangelo, and other artists of that time rescued many sketches from a melancholic and aging Michelangelo.
Michelangelo’s poems, sonnets and letters in his own handwriting can also be seen in the exhibition. One letter, written in August 1519 and discovered only in 1967, now shown for the first time, is to his servant of fifteen years Pietro Urbano. Pietro was sent to fetch marble from quarries in Carrara, Italy. Michelangelo is asking him if the required size of marble is available and also chides him to return early. A sonnet tells a friend about the struggles Michelangelo faced in painting the Sistine Chapel. He writes:
“I’ve already grown a goiter from this torture
Hunched up as foul water does to cats in Lombardy (or in any other place)
My stomach’s firmly squashed under my chin…”
On the edge of this sonnet Michelangelo has done a sketch of himself standing on scaffolding whilst painting the Sistine Chapel. This is opposed to the popular belief that he laid on his back on the scaffolding to paint the roof.
Among Michelangelo’s architectural works he was commissioned to work on the Basilica of San Lorenzo, the Medici family’s parish church and their traditional burial site in Florence – and others in Rome, as the Chief Architect later in his life. The exhibition has several of Michelangelo’s architectural drawings and studies and a model of a dome. He would visualise both the plan and the elevation to have a better understanding of his form and space. His elevations, like the facade of San Lorenzo, show how at that time – as is the case with designers of today – only half of the facade is made in detail and the rest shows a simple façade, leaving it to the imagination of the client.
Despite creating paintings and architectural marvels, Michelangelo always considered himself first and foremost a sculptor. As a teacher and mentor, Michelangelo would provide sample drawings for his pupil to copy and learn from. These instructional drawing sheets in the exhibition depict human faces, parts of a human body and even a curvy monster. Unlike Leonardo and Raphael, Michelangelo did not have any students heading towards their own independent and notable careers. With mega commissions throughout his life, Michelangelo would certainly engage many of them for his works. But perhaps Il Divino was not benevolent enough to allow any of his pupils to even approach his mastery…
The writer can be reached at smt2104@caa.columbia.edu
