FREE ESSAY ON MICHAELAGNELO

MICHAELAGNELO

Michelangelo was pessimistic in his poetry and an optimist in his artwork. Michelangelo's
artwork consisted of paintings and sculptures that showed humanity in it's natural state.
Michelangelo's poetry was pessimistic in his response to Strazzi even though he was
complementing him. Michelangelo's sculpture brought out his optimism. Michelangelo was
optimistic in completing The Tomb of Pope Julius II and persevered through it's many
revisions trying to complete his vision. Sculpture was Michelangelo's main goal and the
love of his life. Since his art portrayed both optimism and pessimism, Michelangelo was
in touch with his positive and negative sides, showing that he had a great and stable
personality. Michelangelo's artwork consisted of paintings and sculptures that showed
humanity in it's natural state. Michelangelo Buonarroti was called to Rome in 1505 by
Pope Julius II to create for him a monumental tomb. We have no clear sense of what the
tomb was to look like, since over the years it went through at least five conceptual
revisions. The tomb was to have three levels; the bottom level was to have sculpted
figures representing Victory and bond slaves. The second level was to have statues of
Moses and Saint Paul as well as symbolic figures of the active and contemplative life-
representative of the human striving for, and reception of, knowledge. The third level,
it is assumed, was to have an effigy of the deceased pope. The tomb of Pope Julius II was
never finished. What was finished of the tomb represents a twenty-year span of
frustrating delays and revised schemes. Michelangelo had hardly begun work on the pope's
tomb when Julius commanded him to fresco the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to complete
the work done in the previous century under Sixtus IV. The overall organization consists
of four large triangles at the corner; a series of eight triangular spaces on the outer
border; an intermediate series of figures; and nine central panels, all bound together
with architectural motifs and nude male figures. The corner triangles depict heroic
action in the Old Testament, while the other eight triangles depict the biblical
ancestors of Jesus Christ. Michelangelo conceived and executed this huge work as a single
unit. It's overall meaning is a problem. The issue has engaged historians of art for
generations without satisfactory resolution. The paintings that were done by Michelangelo
had been painted with the brightest colors that just bloomed the whole ceiling as one
entered to look. The ceiling had been completed just a little after the Pope had died.
The Sistine Chapel is the best fresco ever done. Michelangelo embodied many
characteristic qualities of the Renaissance. An individualistic, highly competitive
genius (sometimes to the point of eccentricity). Michelangelo was not afraid to show
humanity in it's natural state - nakedness; even in front of the Pope and the other
religious leaders. Michelangelo portrayed life as it is, even with it's troubles.
Michelangelo wanted to express his own artistic ideas. The most puzzling thing about
Michelangelo's ceiling design is the great number of seemingly irrelevant nude figures
that he included in his gigantic fresco. Four youths frame most of the Genesis scenes. We
know from historical records that various church officials objected to the many nudes,
but Pope Julius gave Michelangelo artistic freedom, and eventually ruled the chapel off
limits to anyone save himself, until the painting was completed. The many nude figures
are referred to as Ignudi. They are naked humans, perhaps representing the naked truth.
More likely, I think they represent Michelangelo's concept of the human potential for
perfection. Michelangelo himself said, "Whoever strives for perfection is striving for
something divine." In painting nude humans, he is suggesting the unfinished human; each
of us is born nude with a mind and a body, in Neoplatonic thought, with the power to be
our own shapers. Michelangelo has a very great personality for his time. In Rome, in
1536, Michelangelo was at work on the Last Judgment for the altar wall of the Sistine
Chapel, which he finished in 1541. The largest fresco of the Renaissance, it depicts
Judgment Day. Christ, with a clap of thunder, puts into motion the inevitable separation,
with the saved ascending on the left side of the painting and the damned descending on
the right into a Dantesque hell. As was his custom, Michelangelo portrayed all the
figures nude, but prudish draperies were added by another artist (who was dubbed the
"breeches-maker") a decade later, as the cultural climate became more conservative.
Michelangelo painted his own image in the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew. Although he was
also given another painting commission, the decoration of the Pauline Chapel in the
1540s, his main energies were directed toward architecture during this phase of his life.
Instead of being obedient to classical Greek and Roman practices, Michelangelo used
motifs-columns, pediments, and brackets-for a personal and expressive purpose. A
Florentine-although born March 6, 1475, in the small village of Caprese near
Arezzo-Michelangelo continued to have a deep attachment to his city, its art, and its
culture throughout his long life. He spent the greater part of his adulthood in Rome,
employed by the popes; characteristically, however, he left instructions that he be
buried in Florence, and his body was placed there in a fine monument in the church of
Santa Croce. Michelangelo portrayed both optimism and pessimism. Sculptures was where he
wanted his heart dedicated. Michelangelo gave up painting apprenticeship to take up a new
career in sculpture. Michelangelo then went to Rome, where he was able to examine many
newly unearthed classical statues and ruins. He soon produced his first large-scale
sculpture, the over-life-size Bacchus (1496-98, Bargello, Florence). One of the few works
of pagan rather than Christian subject matter made by the master, it rivaled ancient
statuary, the highest mark of admiration in Renaissance Rome. At about the same time,
Michelangelo also did the marble Pieta (1498-1500), still in its original place in Saint
Peter's Basilica. One of the most famous works of art, the Pieta was probably finished
before Michelangelo was 25 years old, and it is the only work he ever signed. The
youthful Mary is shown seated majestically, holding the dead Christ across her lap, a
theme borrowed from northern European art. Instead of revealing extreme grief, Mary is
restrained, and her expression is one of resignation. In this work, Michelangelo
summarizes the sculptural innovations of his 15th-century predecessors such as Donatello,
while ushering in the new monumentality of the High Renaissance style of the 16th
century. Michelangelo was pessimistic in his response to Strazzi. I did not see Strazzi
as complementing him. Michelangelo responds in a pessimistic tone to what should have
been a complement. Michelangelo said, "sleep is precious; more precious to be stone, when
evil and shame are aboard; it is a blessing not to see, not to hear. Pray, do not disturb
me. Speak softly". During his long lifetime, Michelangelo was an intimate of princes and
popes, from Lorenzo de' Medici to Leo X, Clement VIII, and Pius III, as well as
cardinals, painters, and poets. Neither easy to get along with nor easy to understand, he
expressed his view of himself and the world even more directly in his poetry than in the
other arts. Much of his verse deals with art and the hardships he underwent, or with
Neoplatonic philosophy and personal relationships. The great Renaissance poet Ludovico
Ariosto wrote succinctly of this famous artist: "Michael more than mortal, divine angel."
Indeed, Michelangelo was widely awarded the epithet"divine" because of his extraordinary
accomplishments. Two generations of Italian painters and sculptors were impressed by his
treatment of the human figure: Raphael, Annibale Carracci, Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino,
Sebastiano del Piombo, and Titian. In conclusion, Michelangelo (1475-1564), was arguably
one of the most inspired creators in the history of art and, with Leonardo da Vinci, the
most potent force in the Italian High Renaissance. As a sculptor, architect, painter, and
poet, he exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and on subsequent Western
art in general. Michelangelo was pessimistic in his poetry and an optimist in his
artwork. Michelangelo's works showed humanity in it's natural state. Michelangelo's
sculptures were his goals. Michelangelo was very intelligent for the works that he did.
Michelangelo always wanted to finish the works that he worked on before moving on to
another. I think that Michelangelo was to good of a person. He educates the people of
today as well as the people in his time about the true religious aspects that there is to
learn. Michelangelo was a role model for the people of his time as well as for the people
of today. Michelangelo was also a great poet, a pessimist, but a great one. Michelangelo
is my role model. I respect him for the works that he did and the talent that he had. I
want to be like Michel. Last Judgment Michelangelo's Last Judgment, the large fresco on
the altar wall One of Michelangelo's best known creations is the of the Sistine Chapel,
dates from 1536-1541-about 20 years sculpture David (1501-1504). The 4.34-m after the
famous ceiling frescoes were painted. The painting (14.2-ft) tall marble statue shows an
alert David represents one of the earliest examples of mannerist art. This waiting for
his enemy Goliath. It was originally is an alarming view of Judgment Day, with grotesque
and created for the piazza in front of the Palazzo Vecchio twisted figures. While Christ
stands in the center of the in Florence, Italy, but was later moved to the Galleria
fresco meting out justice, the saved rise on the left and the dell'Accademia. damned
descend on the right.