Michelangelo Smashed His Pietà to Pieces

When you go to see Michelangelo’s Moses your guide will point to a little furrow on its knee and tell a silly tale.  “When Michelangelo had finished the statue, it seemed so real and alive that he ordered it to speak.  And seeing that it wouldn’t, he slammed down his hammer on it—here, on the knee—in a fit of anger and frustration.”   They make a sort of Rumplestiltskin out of the Master.

Michelangelo’s Moses, in San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

The groove on Moses’ knee looks more like ordinary vandalism: it was made with a pointed chisel, not a hammer, and with several careful, even taps with the mallet, not a tomahawk slam.  And the frustrated creator story, told of artists already in Greek and Roman times, was unbelievable even then.

And yet Michelangelo did actually slam down his hammer on the Duomo Pietà, his last great statue, in just such an access of rage.  And he didn’t stop beating away at—crushing—the beautiful statue on which he had been working off and on for months, maybe years, until he had ruined it for good.

His first blow was the most emotional and ineffective: he struck the Christ squarely in the breast, breaking off a piece that included a nipple and perhaps the lower half of the Virgin’s hand.  The second and third blows were effected with a clearer object: they knocked off Christ’s long and beautifully-modelled arm.

A close-up of the Duomo Pietà showing where the pieces were stuck back together by another sculptor. The X marks the place where the severed left leg would have been put back in place.

And now that such grave damage had been done, Michelangelo meant to make sure there was no going back; and without much passion he picked up the biggest pointed chisel that was lying around and cut away Christ’s unsupported left leg from where it rested on the Virgin’s knee and from the base.   That leg may have been the weakest feature of the design and he had probably never liked it much and was glad to be rid of the problem forever. His heart was no longer beating fast by the time the leg was off.  There was only the relief and emptiness that comes after revenge.   He had hated the block but now it was no longer offensive.  Months later, at the insistence of a servant of his, he gave it away to a rich man who had been begging him for a figure; and Michelangelo didn’t even object to a bad sculptor’s plan to repair and finish it.  He had stopped loving it and its future love affairs didn’t concern him anymore.

How could Michelangelo do such a thing and who put the figure back together again?
See Michelangelo’s Little Secret

The Sculptor Is the Least of Artists

That’s what the painters used to say when the debate about sculpture and painting was on.

Michelangelo was both a painter and a sculptor. Here are two of his famous works: the painting of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and his marble statue of Dusk in the Medici Chapel at Florence.

The painters spoke from a very high horse. They said things like:

The sculptor copies the most, abstracts the least.  He does no more than transform an already great and suggestive object—the stone.  He needn´t create light or color or mass or perspective on a figure; he need only turn it like the moon to catch the sunlight.

Yes, he is the least, the very least, of artists, the one who understands least about art.  Unable to comprehend that the aesthetic impression is a spiritual thing, he needs something to TOUCH.  He is the artist with the smallest imagination, for he needs a MODEL for each of the works of his mind.  No retentive power.  No aptitud for imagining in three dimensions.

Among artists he is the blue-collar worker.  His work is hard and dirty.  He needs his whole body to cut out a figure, while a painter´s stress is all mental, all intellectual. The sculptor uses up his vital energy in the struggle with his material.  Yet ultimately his goals are the same as the painter´s: a spiritual effect through illusion.

The price he pays in work and time to achieve his effect is just too great, or anyway out of proportion. He actually WASTES his time carving.  He should use it to draw and to model—his intellectual or aesthetic contribution stops with these.  The “work” is usually not the big stone but his little plaster or wax model for it.   Putting his mind to sleep while slaving for long hours over the hard stone is IRRESPONSIBLE of him. He should have someone else copy his model in stone for him; he should do no more than what only he can do: the final chisel-work.

Michelangelo spent—Michelangelo WASTED— whole years of his life in the quarries of Carrara and Pietrasanta looking for good blocks to carve. What IS the job of the sculptor?  How much of his time should he spend gathering materials, sharpening tools, building scaffolds, making frames and supports?  Is it right that he tire himself out on the initial roughing out of his figure in the block?  Is that sculpture—that stage of the project?  There is no aesthetic judgment required here, is there?

Now the sculptor, by his nature, didn´t care for talk of this sort.  He listened politely to the big gang of haughty painters  and then turned away and got back to work.  He worked until he surrendered late at night.  In a way, he was the deeper of the two artists—his love for his work had to be greater.  Why?

Because he had to hold out through many reproductions and losses of his figure while always keeping his ideal in mind.  One by one he would lose his original figures as he converted them into more permanent material—clay to wax or plaster to wax again (if for a bronze figure) or stone.  Dozens of times along the way he would see other options and be tempted to change his original idea.  Each time he would be invited to question it, to re-evaluate it, to give it up.  But he held out. Perhaps he understood the fleeting nature of beauty better than the painter.  He must have been the greater lover.

See 100swallows’ comment on the disadvantages of sculpture compared to painting.

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Velazquez Dreamed of Becoming Somebody

Nobody is ever happy. Take Diego Velazquez.

He could paint better than anyone. All the painters in Spain envied him.
Here is one of his early works, a boy and an old woman in the kitchen pouching eggs.

Before he was even twenty-five he beat all the masters in a contest and became the king’s painter. He and his family moved into an apartment next to the royal palace in Madrid and received a royal salary.  Diego hurried out to buy a carriage and hire some servants.
That, when most of the country, including many painters, were living well below the poverty level.

Here are some very poor boys playing  in Velazquez’s hometown, Seville. The painting is by his contemporary Murillo.

And his good fortune didn’t stop there.  He became the very king’s friend. They used to sit and chat. Not even many of the highest nobles could brag about a privilege like that. Palace servants and great nobles alike would watch Velaquez walk right through the palace and into the private quarters of King Philip, the most powerful man in Europe. Or they would see the king make his way to Velazquez’s studio, to watch him paint.

Velazquez made this portrait of his friend, King Philip IV

Yet Diego got used to being gifted and lucky.  He wasn’t satisfied.   He wanted to be a gentleman too. It didn’t matter that he was a world-famous painter and an intelligent and cultivated man. In the Spain of his time you had to be a nobleman to be respected.   He climbed ranks in the palace service. First he became one kind of servant and then another. But that was merely rising in the “firm”.

What he really needed was a title. How do you get a title? You have to show that one of your ancestors was a nobleman. Diego spent a lot of money over many years digging up old papers and getting reports from friends and relatives but he couldn’t find a single aristocrat in his family tree.  When his nobility application stalled, he went to the king.  “Could you help me, Majesty? I’d like to become a  Knight of St. James.”

Though the king was the king and the highest-ranking nobleman, even his good word was barely enough to make the bureaucrats waive the noble ancestor requirement for Diego. And it was only in the last year of his life that he became a Knight.

One of his last paintings was this one, called Las Meninas (the Maids of Honor). He shows himself painting a big portrait of the king and queen (standing where we viewers stand, outside the picture) and surrounded by members of the royal household.

It is his biggest and maybe his only self-portrait.  He stands full-length. Perhaps now he was finally proud enough to put himself in a picture.
After he died, someone (his son-in-law?) painted the cross of St. James on Velazquez’s doublet.  The great painter was a certified gentleman.

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