Frank Lin asked:
Who do you think was the better sculptor, Bernini or Michelangelo? ….I’d say Bernini surpasses Michelangelo in skill, facile of skill, and dramatization. He has a larger body of work, was more prolific…
I agree. Bernini was a faster stone carver. He could run circles around Michelangelo. And Bernini had more ideas, more ease at expressing them, less hesitation.
Yet I think Michelangelo was the better artist. Why?
There is more of Michelangelo in his statues than there is of Bernini in his. Every stroke of the hammer seems to come after he has thought about it; and there is no part of his figure that he didn’t re-create. Nothing is merely copied from a real nude. He never just does “a toe” or “an arm for this gesture”. He transforms every single feature, makes it part of a very tight general design; and the design is a vision of his, not a model sitting on a stool.
There is something halting about Michelangelo’s style. Let’s say it is like Hemingway’s style versus Scott Fitzgerald’s. You see that each word of Hemingway’s is molded to fit a rhythm and a sound, and those words mean as much—or more than—the story. Fitzgerald writes well, but it is the story itself he is concerned with and there is no impression that he wouldn’t exchange any word for another, let alone a sound.
Michelangelo’s work is more abstract and so less bound to the real flesh and bone contraption.
His men are Renaissance architecture—they are governed by strict laws of symmetry and geometric design, which here and there he relaxes for surprise and grace. He turns the body into a sort of building. He sculpts broad masses and then decorates them with the accidents of flesh or cloth that serve his architecture.
Michelangelo exaggerated that (geometric) design, Bernini and the Baroque exaggerated gesture. It is typical of Michelangelo’s statues—it was even supposedly a rule of his—that they are compact, that no limbs protrude; and of Bernini’s, that arms and legs and drapery stick out everywhere.
Bernini shows them acting. Bernini entertains. His statues call. Bernini knows that no one will spend time looking at a statue unless it is spectacular, unless it comes half-way toward him.
Michelangelo makes his figure as deep and as beautiful as he can and leaves the viewer to his own resources. His figures meditate—it is as though you surprise them in thought and your look is indiscreet.
The one (Bernini) was an extrovert, the other (Michelangelo), a reclusive brooder. Michelangelo was always trying to please only himself. Bernini was like the stage director as well as the playwright, minding the show. Michelangelo sculpts a lyric poem, Bernini hammers out a catchy ballad.
Bernini’s beauty is of a fleshly kind. He never manages to get into another realm, try as he might—and he tries. His figures stay outside you. You look (since they are invariably DOING something, you watch), you admire. But the action or the detail they show anchors them forever to the material world. Their struggle doesn’t pass from them to you, the viewer.
Michelangelo’s was the stronger personality. Which of his figures could be done by another? Which parts of them?
None. Ever.
Our own time feels more affinity with Bernini’s sculpture, partly because its excellence is more easily reach-able. Michelangelo’s vast mental universe with all its Renaissance swagger and tragedy is long gone. His ideas of perfection too. No one has heard his muse in centuries.
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Swallows, this is your best, most beautifully written post yet. I truly enjoyed reading it. Two different personalities, two different approaches. It’s like asking which personality is better, the extrovert or the introvert. There’s no real answer to it, each has its own good and bad traits. So I see Michelangelo and Bernini as equals.
Hey, erika, thanks! It was a hard post to write and with a compliment like that I can feel it was worth the trouble.
I just thought of another way to talk about the difference between the two and maybe I’ll write that up here as a comment or in another post.
It isn’t a minor question, after all–not for me.
Swallows,
Bernini, what a virtuoso indeed! The things he did with sculpture is incredible — the texture of cloth he was able imitate on sculpture for instance! It doesn’t take one with a patient intellect to appreciate his work.
With Michelangelo I agree with what you’ve said. With him, he spent a lot of time contemplating the emotional framework, as a result his sculpture has intentional restraint; one can almost sense a presence of power lurking inside…Therefore, in order to fully appreciate Michelangelo, it takes more introspection.
With that said, I think their powers being polar opposites, end up canceling out, meaning any superiority in regards to any of them is reliant on personal taste.
Nice, Swallows! Michelangelo is my fave. Bernini is also awesome. I like the soothing, harmonious lines in Michelangelo’s work. This is what makes me content to look at his sculptures for all eternity in absolute bliss. Bernini’s work is amazing, but his lines and elements are more chaotic, disturbed and I can’t look at his sculptures nearly as long with pleasure.
I’m not sure about who was the faster sculptor. Michelangelo was so often pulled off his sculpting to do “other duties as assigned” that I’m surprised that he was able to get anything done. I read once that Pope Leo X sent him to the rock quarries at Carrara for eight years to find good blocks as a sort of punishment because he was unhappy with the artist’s attitude. I’m not sure of the entire truth of that story. And there were also those two Sistine Chapel detours (first the ceiling, then the altar wall). And there was also his stint as architect of St. Peters. In the end it may come down to who had the better patron. The period when Michelangelo worked was an unsettled time fraught with political, religious, and military strife including the sack of Rome by Charles V.
Both sculptors were virtuosos within their own stylistic periods. An interesting question is if there had never been a Michelangelo, would there have been a Bernini at all? So many artists stood on the shoulders of Michelangelo that it’s hard to say how much influence he had on others. Bernini is wonderful, though, isn’t he?
Brenda
Brenda:
Michelangelo lived through very troubled times and was much kicked around by his patrons. But the reason he produced so little was not all their fault. Here is what Vasari says:
“[Michelangelo's] judgment was so severe that he was never content with anything that he did. That this was the case can be proved by the fact that there are few finished statues to be seen of all that he made in the prime of his manhood, and that those he did finish completely were executed when he was young, such as the Bacchus, the Pietà in St, Peter’s, the giant David at Florence, and the Christ in the Minerva. The others…., which altogether do not amount to eleven,…were all left unfinished. For Michelangelo used to say that if he had had to be satisfied with what he did, then he would have sent out very few statues, or rather none at all. This was because he had so developed his art and judgment that when on revealing one of his figures he saw the slightest error he would abandon it and run to start working on another block….
He would often say that this was why he had finished so few statues or pictures.”
Off hand you might think there is a difference between the ability to cut a figure out of marble and pleasing yourself with the figure or the result. But they are so closely tied that they might as well be the same thing.
Bernini was famous in his life, as was his father, for whipping off a figure in no time; and he finished many works. So I think it’s safe to say he was a faster carver.
As for your story about Pope Leo’s punishment of eight years in the quarry, the dates don’t support it. The Pope decided to build the facade for the S. Lorenzo, according to my footnotes by Hellmut Wohl for the Condivi Life, in 1515. Vasari says there was a competition and Michelangelo won and was awarded the contract in January 1518 (although, say those same notes, the commission had been his since November 1516). He spent some thirteen months of 1518 and 1519 at Pietrasanta. In March 1520 Leo inexplicably cancelled the contract.
The Pope didn’t send him to Carrara but to Pietrasanta because those quarries belonged to Florence (and Leo was not on good terms with the Duke of Carrara). This meant much trouble and work for Michelangelo and a waste of time, as he had to even build the road through the mountains there to transport the blocks. And he seems to have resisted at first, which may have been one of the reasons for the ill will with Leo.
There was also ill will between Leo and the relative of Pope Julius, who kept insisting that Michelangelo finish his uncle’s tomb first, according to contract; and Michelangelo seems to have really preferred to do that tomb. And maybe Leo could feel he wasn’t cooperative. In any case, Leo didn’t dismiss Michelangelo but gave him the Medici Chapel project next.
I agree with you that Bernini owed more to Michelangelo than Michelangelo owed to any single artist. Michelangelo gave a greatness to sculpture itself—something no other sculptor had. Bernini’s very ambition had its root in Michelangelo’s legend and work. Who would ever have gotten so excited about the figures of Sansovino or Bandinelli or Cellini or even Donatello, great artists though those men were?
Kimiam:A good example of those disturbed chaotic lines and elements is the St. Teresa in the Coronaro Chapel. And if you compare her robes to the Virgin’s in Michelangelo’s Pietà, you see just how far apart those two men’s idea of art was. Of course Bernini was trying for just that dynamism and what better means!
I mean no disrespect for either of these two great sculptors. They, like Beethoven and Mozart, are pillars of our western art. Nevertheless I have reservations especially about Michelangelo. Neither an academic nor even well read in Art History I am a simple sculptor with strong but malleable views.
If you were an alien with no prejudices, no foreknowledge of these sculptors would you believe that Michelangelo’s David and Pieta were by the same artist?
If you knew the story of David and Goliath and were asked which of the two Michelangelo was trying to depict; using reason only, who would it be?
If you did not know what the Pieta was meant to depict, honestly would you believe it to be a Mother and Son subject?
In the first I would argue that he is huge; facially very ugly and anatomically wrong (head and hands too big).
In the second, even if Mary had borne Jesus at the age of 16 she would have been approaching 50. The actress Sarah Barnhart was also a sculptress and produced this extraordinary work. Surly the great pillar of Renaissance sculpture could have come somewhat closer to the emotion framework Frank Lin mentions. I do not deny, it is very beautiful and moving but for a different story.
Now the first book of Samuel, chapter 16 vv 12 describes David ‘of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look too.’ Judging by the number of intimate relations he subsequently had with women, how could we possibly doubt that? How also could we think that Michelangelo would have missed this? He was well able to create beautiful male faces!
Michelangelo’s attempts at sculpting women are a laugh, they are men with breasts.
Bernini’s work, like Mozart seems to pour out of him, unlike his great predecessor he does not destroy his work (does he?), or even cross anything out! He is streets ahead of him in animated action. Who could miss St Theresa’s passionate emotions either?
It is not so much a matter of who is best, the guy who comes after is always at an advantage, he or she knows what they have to surpass. In their own way they were both ground breakers of sorts.
(On a more technical point, I understand that Michelangelo believed in carving from one block of marble where Bernini used multiple blocks joined together facilitating more difficult poses.)
PS unfortunately none of my html links have worked.