Michelangelo

by Miles J. Unger

  It was, as the courtly Leonardo sniffed, grubby work, “a very mechanical exercise, causing much perspiration which mingling with the grit turns into mud . . . and [the sculptor’s] dwelling is dirty and filled with dust and chips of stone.” Adding to the usual difficulties of carving such a monumental sculpture, Michelangelo had to extract his masterpiece from a damaged block. Vasari, for one, stressed the sorry state of the column in order to highlight the miracle of Michelangelo’s achievement, though his credibility is undercut by the fact that he mistakenly attributed the initial bungled attempt to one Maestro Simone da Fiesole, rather than Agostino di Duccio. Condivi’s account is more laconic. He simply notes that the previous artist “was not so skillful as he ought to have been.”

  Vasari’s exaggerations aside, it is clear that Michelangelo was confronting less-than-ideal conditions. The Operai themselves noted that the stone “had been badly blocked,” and even had the job been competently done, Michelangelo would still have been forced to fit his own figure into contours meant for a very different form. The officers themselves recognized the hurdles he faced, and before offering the contract to the young sculptor they requested from him a small-scale model in wax to demonstrate how his ideas could be realized. In fact, for all its beauty, the David still shows some of the constraints imposed by the unusual dimensions of the roughed-out piece of marble, particularly in the shallow space into which Michelangelo had to squeeze his hero’s massive frame.

  Michelangelo worked at his usual furious pace and by February 1502 he had made such progress that the officers of the Arte della Lana agreed to pay him an advance of 400 gold florins, far more than the fee originally proposed. He might have completed the statue earlier but for the fact that six months later progress was stalled when Michelangelo took on another project—to produce a life-size David in bronze for the politically well-connected Pierre de Rohan, the Maréchal de Gié. This time it was not a question of Michelangelo shirking his duty; in fact, he made it clear he had no interest in the new commission, which was far more conventional than the monumental David he was already carving and required him to work in what for him was the uncongenial medium of bronze. The contract was practically forced on him by Florence ’s Dieci di Balia (the Ten of War), who wanted to remain on friendly terms with the French marshal, one of the most important figures at the court of King Louis, Florence ’s chief foreign protector. The maréchal had been contemplating the commission since 1494 when, in the company of his master, King Charles, he resided at the Medici Palace during the French occupation of the city. During those weeks he had fallen in love with Donatello’s bronze David, which stood in the courtyard. Recalling the exquisite sculpture eight years later, he wrote to the Dieci expressing his great desire to obtain a version of that famous work for his own collection. Given the importance of French goodwill for the continued survival of the Republic, Michelangelo was obliged to comply with his government’s urgent request.

  This incident illustrates once again the vital link between art and politics in sixteenth-century Italy. Particularly in Florence, as culturally vibrant as it was militarily feeble, art was a powerful tool of diplomacy and statecraft. Politicians and the governments they led were second only to princes of the Church as patrons of the kind of large-scale commissions that excited Michelangelo, and he could ill afford to offend those who ruled the state.

  Unlike the famous David in marble, this smaller version in bronze—like the Donatello upon which it was modeled—showed the shepherd boy standing on the severed head of Goliath—that is, after the victory is already won. Michelangelo was forced to adhere to this traditional iconography because the French marshal expected the new work to follow, if not to replicate, the one he admired, a restriction that further diminished the artist’s enthusiasm for the project. Michelangelo’s bronze has long since vanished, so we can only guess at its appearance, but one clue may be found on a sheet of sketches in Michelangelo’s hand that includes a figure resembling available descriptions. It shows a young David posing jauntily with his right foot on the head of his defeated foe. One hand rests on his outthrust hip, the other—which appears to hold the knife with which he has just hacked through Goliath’s neck—rests on his right thigh. Whether this drawing represents his initial conception of the monumental marble or a sketch for the lost bronze, it possesses little of the nobility, poise, and grandeur the world has come to associate with Michelangelo’s colossus.

  Michelangelo, Studies for the David, c. 1501. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY

  Since paper was expensive, Michelangelo often reused the same sheet for multiple sketches. In addition to the rapid sketch of the victorious David, this particular sheet also includes a much more careful drawing of the marble Gigante ’s right arm, the one that clutches the stone he will soon launch at Goliath to deadly effect. Next to these studies Michelangelo inscribed a brief couplet that offers some insight into the artist’s state of mind: “Davicte cholla fromba,/e io choll’ arco/Michelagnolo” (David with his sling, I with the bow. Michelangelo.) The meaning, at least on the surface, is clear: Just as David slays the Giant with his sling, so do I, Michelangelo, slay him with my bow. The bow almost certainly refers to the trapano, the bow-shaped hand drill that was a common tool in the sculptor’s kit. But who is the giant he intends to overcome? On the most obvious level he represents the herculean task the artist has set himself, one in which he expects to emerge victorious despite difficult circumstances and in the face of skeptics. Michelangelo identifies with the biblical hero, casting himself as a patriotic warrior who uses his particular gifts not only to advance his art but as a weapon in the virtuous struggle of Florence against its enemies.

  But there is more to these lines than mere chest-thumping. Michelangelo always conceived the sculptor’s craft as a metaphysical quest. This most material of art forms becomes in Michelangelo’s conception a means of probing for pure spirit beneath a shell of gross matter, one that defines the artist as well as the matter upon which he works his will. This was not merely an abstract conceit: Michelangelo saw the art of sculpture as, crucially, a process of self-discovery, of self-actualization. In a passage that was almost certainly known to him, the late classical philosopher PlotinusIV used the art of sculpture as a metaphor for the means by which we perfect our moral selves: “Withdraw into yourself and look. If you do not see beauty within you, do as does the sculptor of a statue that is to be beautiful; he cuts away here, he smoothes it there, he makes this line lighter, this one purer, until he disengages beautiful lineaments in the marble. Do you do this too. . . .” Reversing the analogy, the artist, discovering form within the mass, experiences release from his own carnal nature. The giant slain by the sculptor’s bow, then, is in some sense Michelangelo himself, or at least the grosser aspects of his nature that he defeats through the redemptive power of his art.

  III. PATRIOTIC HERO

  When Michelangelo returned to Florence and accepted the commission for the David, he was taking on a public role. In Rome he was employed by various princes of the Church, but as a foreigner he was insulated from the poisonous political atmosphere of that most violent and conspiratorial city. In republican Florence, he could not separate himself from political intrigues or insulate himself from the changing fortunes of his native land—nor was there any indication he wished to. He was a Florentine patriot, eager to serve in any way he could on behalf of his beleaguered compatriots. He might have grumbled when the Signoria saddled him with an unwelcome commission, but he was more than willing to take on the role of his people ’s champion and chief propagandist.

  By the beginning of 1504, the David was nearly finished and Michelangelo could no longer ignore demands by leading officials to see for themselves what he was up to behind the high walls of the shed behind the Duomo. Vasari’s account of the Gonfaloniere ’s visit gives the author an opportunity to poke fun at those who thought they could teach the artist his trade:

  It happened at this time that Pi
ero Soderini, having seen it in place, was well pleased with it, but said to Michelangelo, at a moment when he was retouching it in certain parts, that it seemed to him that the nose of the figure was too thick. . . . [I]n order to satisfy him [Michelangelo] climbed upon the staging, which was against the shoulders, and quickly took up a chisel in his left hand, with a little of the marble-dust that lay upon the planks of the staging, and then, beginning to strike lightly with the chisel, let fall the dust little by little, nor changed the nose a whit from what it was before. Then, looking down at the Gonfaloniere, who stood watching him, he said, “Look at it now.” “I like it better,” said the Gonfaloniere, “you have given it life.” And so Michelangelo came down, laughing to himself at having satisfied that lord, for he had compassion on those who, in order to appear full of knowledge, talk about things of which they know nothing.

  Whether or not the scene occurred exactly as Vasari described, it’s the kind of tale Michelangelo relished, since it illustrated his belief that patrons were officious busybodies whom artists were free to ignore. The flesh-and-blood Michelangelo—as opposed to the Apollonian hero of Vasari’s imagination—would doubtless have greeted the Gonfaloniere ’s interference with something more pungent than gentle laughter, but the tensions hinted at in the story were very real. To traditionalists the notion that the artist was a visionary who should follow his own unique genius, without regard to those who employed him, was a novel and somewhat disconcerting concept—not least of all because it reversed the natural social order in which great lords dictated to menial laborers and in which intellectual achievement was the monopoly of men who never dirtied their hands. This was a world turned upside down, a world in which the creative contribution of the artist was increasingly decisive while the role of those who initiated and paid for the work was belittled. Vasari’s anecdote was one more salvo in an ongoing struggle between artists and patrons over who controlled the making and the meaning of art. It was a war in which Michelangelo himself was the most able general, a leader whose charisma and tactical brilliance scattered his adversaries in headlong flight.

  Soderini’s visit also suggests that the project had undergone a profound transformation since Michelangelo first signed the contract two years earlier. The first indication of the change occurred on June 23, 1503, the “vigil of St. John the Baptist,” when a public viewing of the still-unfinished statue was arranged by city leaders. The viewing reflected intense curiosity on the part of both high officials and ordinary citizens, and Michelangelo reluctantly bowed to the pressure. Since the Feast of St. John was the equivalent of our July 4th—the desert preacher was the city’s patron saint, and Florence was known as the City of the Baptist—the date was fraught with symbolism, an indication, perhaps, that the project had already been taken out of the hands of the Opera del Duomo and co-opted by the politicians.

  Given that Il Gigante was now apparently viewed as a kind of public trust, a reappraisal of its intended location was in order. As a biblical hero, the future king of Israel was eminently suited to the sacred context of the cathedral, a powerful symbol of virtue triumphing over a godless enemy. But throughout Florentine history, David had been explicitly linked in the public’s mind to the city’s political and military fate. He was the defender of his people against an implacable foe, a citizen-soldier taking up arms in a moment of crisis. The crucial symbolic role of David in Florentine political life is captured in an inscription placed on the base of Donatello’s bronze statue: “The victor is whoever defends the fatherland. God crushes the wrath of an enormous foe. Behold! a boy overcame a great tyrant. Conquer, o citizens! Kingdoms fall through luxury, cities rise through virtues. Behold the neck of pride severed by the hand of humility.”

  Michelangelo’s colossus had the potential to embody this civic imperative far more effectively than Donatello’s epicene figure, particularly since the earlier work was associated with the hated Medici, in whose palace it stood before being brought to the courtyard of the Palazzo della Signoria in 1494. But Il Gigante could play a starring role in the civic arena only if he were released from the decorative fabric of the Cathedral where, 40 feet high above the street, his impact would be negligible.

  The leading citizens now clamoring for a change of venue may well have been encouraged by an almost century-old act of artistic abduction, one with obvious parallels to the current situation. In 1416, a marble David carved by Donatello for the Opera del Duomo and intended for the interior of the Cathedral was relocated to the Palace of the Priors, where it took its place alongside other civic monuments. Driving home the political symbolism of this change of venue, the city fathers added a patriotic inscription to the pedestal: “To those who fight bravely for the fatherland the gods will lend aid even against the most terrible foes.”

  It’s difficult to know the precise role Michelangelo played in the decision to move the David off his perch just below Brunelleschi’s soaring dome, but there can be little doubt he approved of the change. In fact, it seems likely that shortly after signing the contract with the Opera del Duomo he was already casting about for an alternative. Having studied the prospective site, Michelangelo would have realized how unsatisfactory it was, since viewers at street level would receive only the vaguest impression of the work. As Vasari noted, when a sculpture is “to be placed at a great height . . . the finish of the last touches is lost.” In the Pietà, despite the impeccable finish given to the visible portions, Michelangelo only roughed out those parts that would have been hidden from viewers, or left them out altogether; it’s unlikely he would have expended enormous effort on the David to render details no one would ever have seen. The delicacy of Michelangelo’s carving—particularly the treatment of the abdomen and chest, where David’s graceful contraposto is realized with a subtlety that relies on a deep knowledge of anatomy—would have been wasted on those craning their necks to see the figure silhouetted against the Tuscan sky.

  Of course it’s possible that Michelangelo brought his statue to a high degree of finish late in the game, only after learning of the change in plans, but it seems likely that he never anticipated his statue being exiled atop the northeastern buttress of the Duomo. He might well have assumed that as soon as the city fathers had a chance to see the masterpiece taking shape in the shed behind the Duomo they would realize it was worthy of a more prominent site. As Michelangelo himself surely recognized, the power of his conception simply rendered the original project obsolete, demanding a new context and a new conceptual framework. Though there is no documentary evidence to prove it, Michelangelo himself was surely a driving force behind the change, as would be the case for the Sistine Ceiling, where a relatively modest commission was transformed at the artist’s insistence into the awe-inspiring panorama we see today.

  The debate went public on January 25, 1504, when the Signoria convened a pratica—a kind of ad hoc committee called to resolve particularly thorny issues—to discuss the fate of The Giant. Thirty experts and assorted dignitaries assembled in the offices of the Opera del Duomo. Among them were artists, officials, and leading citizens, including such famous names as Leonardo da Vinci, Filippino Lippi, Piero di Cosimo, and Sandro Botticelli, as well as humble artisans like the woodworker Bernardo della Ciecha. “Seeing that the statue of David is almost finished,” the official account declared, “and desiring to install it and to give it an appropriate and acceptable location . . . and because the installation must be solid and structurally sound according to the instructions of Michelangelo, master of the said Giant, and of the consuls of the Arte della Lana . . . they decided to call together . . . competent masters, citizens, and architects.”

  The fact that so few speakers called for placing David on the buttress of the cathedral suggests that a decision to move the statue had been reached even before the pratica was assembled. This was the belief of at least one participant, the architect Francesco Monciatto. Though he was inclined to favor the original site because “it was made to be placed on the external
pilasters or buttresses around the church,” he admits he ’s fighting a losing battle. “I advise that since it is quite apparent that you have given up the first plan,” he concludes, “then [consider either] the palace or the vicinity of the church.”

  In all, nine possible locations were considered, but from the beginning the vast majority preferred a site either on the platform in front of the Palazzo della Signoria or in the adjacent Loggia dei Lanzi, the vaulted gallery that formed the southern border to the square in front of the capitol. In either case, most had already concluded that the David should be located in the civic rather than religious heart of the city.

  Michelangelo himself did not attend the meeting, but his interests were well represented. Numerous speakers, including Filippino Lippi and a jeweler named Salvestro, insisted that the artist was in the best position to know where the work should go. “I believe that he who made it can give the best location,” Salvestro said, “and I think that it would be best in the vicinity of the Palazzo, and he who has made it, without a doubt, knows better than anyone else the place most suitable for the appearance and manner of the figure.” The notion that the artist should control the presentation of his work reinforces the point Vasari was making in his anecdote about the Gonfaloniere ’s visit to Michelangelo’s workshop. The humble jeweler, even more than the art historian, articulates the modern belief that it was the artist who determined the meaning of his work—a view with which Michelangelo himself heartily agreed and for which he advocated vociferously throughout his career.