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Michelangelo Buonarroti: Ceiling
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Michelangelo evidently thought about poetry in the midst of carving, since poems have been found that were scribbled on sheets in the workshop. Michelangelo moved easily between the two media. The rhythmic strokes of the hammer suggested verse; his verse retained elements of its lapidary origins. There was an exalted vision that drove the sculptor's arm, and a spiritual meaning lay beyond the sweat.
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Michelangelo was a man of many-sided character, independent and persistent in his views and his endeavours. His most striking characteristic was a sturdy determination, guided by a lofty ideal. Untiring, he worked until far advanced in years, at the cost of great personal sacrifices. He was not... unyielding to the point of obstinancy. His productions in all departments of art show the great fertility of his mind. In literature he was a devoted student and admirer of Dante.
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Michelangelo wrote many poems in the 1530s and 1540s. Approximately three hundred survive. The earlier poems are on the theme of Neoplatonic love (belief that the soul comes from a single undivided source to which it can unite again) and are full of logical contradictions and intricate images. The later poems are Christian. Their mood is penitent (being sorrow and regretful); and they are written in a simple, direct style.
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By far the most famous section of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, Michelangelo depicts Adam in his full physical form. The act of creation is in the touch of the Creator's hand with that of Adam's. Behind God is the image of Eve, as yet unborn, and other figures representing their descendents. The child, which God touches with his other hand, probably refers to the later birth of Christ.
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Michelangelo dedicated to him over three hundred sonnets and madrigals, constituting the largest sequence of poems composed by him. Some modern commentators assert that the relationship was merely a Platonic affection, even suggesting that Michelangelo was seeking a surrogate son.[15] However, their homoerotic nature was recognized in his own time, so that a decorous veil was drawn across them by his grand nephew, Michelangelo the Younger, who published an edition of the poetry in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed. John Addington Symonds, the early British homosexual activist, undid this change by translating the original sonnets into English and writing a two-volume biography, published in 1893.
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His powers fully matured, Michelangelo now entered the service of the popes and was entrusted with the carrying out of two great undertakings. In 1505 Julius II called him to Rome to design and erect for the pope a stately sepulchral monument. The monument was to be a four-sided marble structure in two curses, decorated with some forty figures of heroic size. Michelangelo spent eight months in Carrara superintending the sending of the marble to Rome. He hoped in carrying out this commission to execute a work worthy of classic times, one containing figures that would bear comparison with the then newly discovered Lacoon. His plans... were brought to nought by a sudden change of mind on the part of Julius, who now began to consider the rebuilding of St. Peter's after the designs of Bramante.
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