Renaissance_ A Short History, The - Johnson, Paul [34]
In the Accademia, Florence, there is the partial figure of the Atlas Slave for the tomb, really the torso and legs alone, the rest of the marble being cut to size but unworked. Why was it abandoned? We do not know. The Dying Slave (Louvre), also intended for the tomb, has the figure complete, and magnificent it is, but the supporting back and base are only roughly worked. Why? We do not know. Two marble tondos of the Virgin and Child, one in the Bargello, Florence, the other the prize possession of the Royal Academy, London, are also incomplete, the superb faces and limbs emerging tentatively out of rough working. Time and again, Michelangelo conceived a grand or beautiful design, roughed it out, worked at it, completed part, and then left the rest, whether from lack of time, pressure of other commissions, dissatisfaction with his work or sheer exhaustion is rarely evident. Of course great artists sometimes prefer their work to be unfinished: it gives an impression of spontaneity and inspiration that a meticulous veneer obscures. But in some cases, as in the great tomb of the Medici, with its awesome figure of the seated, pensive Lorenzo, itself complete as are the two supporting nudes beneath, niches are left empty and an air of incompleteness hovers over the whole.
Did Michelangelo suffer from some sickness of the soul? He was quarrelsome and often angry with himself as well as others. He seems to us an isolated figure, isolated in his greatness, in his lack of a private life or privacy, his heart empty of consummated love, his only competitor and measuring mark the Deity himself. It should also be said that Michelangelo imposed severe limitations on himself. He obviously did not like working in bronze, and rarely did so. It was an unlucky metal for him. His one great bronze effort, a gigantic statue of Julius II, was later melted down in an emergency and made into cannon. He made a wooden crucifix, and painted it. But in general he liked only marble and carving with a high finish, and he preferred an elaborate architectural setting, so that his works are seen from the front, not in the round. All these self-imposed limits increased his difficulties, and Michelangelo was not an artist who, in times of stress, could console himself with creating small objects of beauty. The man and his work were on the grandest of scales, so that his triumphs were epic, but so were his tragedies.
The superhuman great tend to blast and sterilize the territory around them. Michelangelo dwarfed his contemporaries in sculpture, and in the generation after his own no one took on his record. There was a time lapse of some decades before another heroic Italian, Bernini, put on Elijah’s mantle, but by then the Renaissance was finally over and an entirely new epoch in European art, what we call the Baroque, had begun. The Italianized Fleming Giambologna, who claimed to be an heir of Michelangelo and who certainly attempted the heroic in marble and bronze, was also beyond the scope of the true Renaissance spirit. It is appropriate, however, to end this section with a reference to a contemporary of Michelangelo’s middle and later years, Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571). He was in many ways the antithesis of Michelangelo as an artist, but he was a superbly characteristic Renaissance figure in his love and knowledge of the antique, in his technical and artistic daring, in his amazing versatility and in his love of human beauty, which was simultaneously complex and simple.
Like so many Renaissance practitioners of high art, Cellini came from that rich depository of skills, the Florentine artisanate. His grandfather was an expert mason and his father a specialized carpenter who among other things made and put up scaffolding for Leonardo da Vinci’s large-scale projects and carved elaborate musical instruments.