The Best Artists

Draw the outline of a figure. Shade one side of it. It looks three-dimensional!
That shading was invented in Greek times and was a great breakthrough in drawing and painting.

But soon after its discovery, vase painters were learning to give the impression of volume without shading.
They were doing that with lines alone.

They had started by using lines to decorate the figures on their beautiful vases.
They painted a black area on a red vase and then scratched lines in it with a stylus. The lines decorated the figures and also helped define them.
In time they began to indicate features of anatomy inside the black silhouettes. They drew a line to represent prominences, like bones, but also shadows. Somehow that worked and gave the figures depth. The folds of drapery that they drew also seemed to show them three-dimensionally.
In time the vase-artists became experts at showing volume with their lines. And when a new method of vase painting allowed them to paint in rather than scratch in their lines, they carried this kind of representation farther still and produced some of the most beautiful figure drawings in art.

Theseus slays the Minotaur, while Athena looks on–a Greek platter, about 425 BC

Drawing with the absolute minimum of lines and yet showing the whole volume of a figure has been a challenge to artists ever since. Artists like Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer experimented with these anatomy lines and produced beautiful figures. Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man is famous. Here is Dürer’s version of the man in a circle:

And here are other experiments (after Leonardo) by Albrecht Dürer:

In more recent times men like Picasso and Matisse excelled at this type of drawing too. Few are able to bring it off. Here are two portraits–the first of Stravinsky by Picasso; the second , called Woman in Russian Blouse II, by Matisse.

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Maybe while Michelangelo was working on his models for the little statues of Proculus and Petronius, the Prior or some other lucid prelate dropped in on him to see how things were coming along. He was perhaps a man who liked beautiful figures and smiled in surprise when he saw these lively studies by the young sculptor. Then he thought a moment and the smile died. He might have asked: “Are those our two great saints?”

“Yes, sir,” said Michelangelo. “This is Petronius and this is Proculus.”

“Do you think people dressed like that in their time?”

“I don’t know,” said Michelangelo. “They might have.”

“Proculus is very active,” said the old prelate, a bit foxily. “What do you think he is doing? He looks annoyed or angry—not a very saintly expression, is it?”

Though he was not yet twenty, Michelangelo wasn’t a stranger to philosophical or theological talk. At the Medici palace he had dined with and heard some of the best minds of Italy discussing all the important problems. He quickly came up with an answer:
“He could be going out to fight the battle for the Faith. Perhaps he is angry at some injustice. Christ was angry and looked so when he drove the money-changers out of the temple.”

The prelate looked hard at Michelangelo for a moment to see if he knew he was being hypocritical, decided he did, and relaxed, nodded.
“That might well be but he does look a lot like a young man who is no saint at all. Don’t forget: these statues are going to be placed in church, where all can see them while they pray. A church should be a place of recollection, a place of retreat from the world outside. The outside should stay outside. Nothing a Christian’s eyes might fall on should distract him from the deep meaning of life. These our two saints are examples of how to live.”

“But they would not have prayed all the time,” said Michelangelo.

The prelate was ready to give up. “No, I suppose they wouldn’t.” He didn’t really want to quarrel: he didn’t really want to stop the young sculptor from making beautiful statues. He wasn’t sure himself just how much of the lovely world a man could enjoy with a good conscience. “Go on with your little Proculus,” he said. “It’s a very nice figure. I only want you to think about what you are doing, about the propriety of such a figure in church. Promise me you will.”

“All right.”

Which is it—this world or the next? Why show off the human body? What was his reason for glorifying it? Sure, it was the temple of the soul but it was also a trap. Are we going to turn away from the delights of this world or fondle them dangerously? Did Michelangelo remember the teachings of the Friar Savonarola?

At that very moment back in Florence the great painter Sandro Botticelli was taking a last look at some of his beautiful paintings—the most worldly of them, as he thought. “God forgive me,” he said. “How could I have been so wrong?” And he threw them onto a bonfire. Savonarola had convinced him of his error.

Michelangelo would think about this contradiction the rest of his long life. As he matured, the nervous, robust beauty of his figures changed. By the time he was an old man the defiant scowls of his Proculus and his David had long since given way to faces of resignation and grief: the old Nicodemus of the Duomo Pietà, which Michelangelo meant for his own grave, is his self-portrait.

Michelangelo’s self-portrait as Nicodemus in the Duomo Pietá, Florence (Click twice on thumbnail to enlarge)

Almost everyone pilgrimages to the Sistine Chapel to see the frescoes by Michelangelo on the ceiling and the front wall. Because of him, that chapel is one of the most famous in the world—and it deserves to be.

But there are other paintings there, on the side walls.

When Michelangelo was still a boy, no less an artist than Alessandro Botticelli painted a series about the life of Moses. In one of the famous fragments, Moses meets Jethro’s daughters at the well. Readers of Marcel Proust will remember that M. Swann thinks his lover Odette looks just like one of these red-haired girls by Botticelli.

Jethro’s daughters by Botticelli

Alessandro Botticelli was born after van Eyck painted the Arnolfini Marriage in oils. Many young painters of his generation were beginning to experiment with the new technique but he never took it up. All his work on panels was done in the old fashioned way (colors mixed with eggs—either the yoke or the white or both).

Painting with eggs is done with a fine brush, almost like a pen. To make shadows on a light surface, the painter hatches little lines of a darker color, as he would with a pen and ink. This was soon to be considered a primitive way to paint but Botticelli was such a master that now no one would think of criticizing his work just because his medium was antiquated.

Here is a close-up of The Birth of Venus. The cross-hatching of his shadows–the fine parallel lines–is plainly visible on Venus’ forehead.

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