Okay, let's unpack this. When you hear the name
Michelangelo, your mind probably jumps straight
to a single monumental image. Oh, absolutely.
The fingers. The outstretched fingers of God
and Adam on the Sistine ceiling, or, you know,
maybe you picture the perfect challenging beauty
of the David. Right. But the man behind those
masterpieces, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti
Simone, was... Well, he was less a calm classical
genius and more a volatile, solitary force of
nature. Far more. He was, I mean, he was the
undisputed high Renaissance giant. And unlike
his great contemporary and, let's be honest,
rival, Leonardo da Vinci, he mastered all four
major disciplines of art. All four. Sculptor,
painter, architect, and poet. His contemporaries
didn't just admire him, they revered him. They
lauded him as supreme in not one art alone, but
in all three. And they gave him that ultimate
nickname, Il Divino. Our mission today is to
move beyond that postcard mythology and, you
know, dive deep into the real man. We are sorting
through this incredible volume of surviving correspondence,
sketches, and firsthand biographical notes to
understand the true source of his legendary power,
his terabilita. That untranslatable quality,
that ability his work has to instill a sense
of... sometimes even frightening emotional power
in you when you see it. Exactly. So we're delivering
the essential chronology, sure, but we're really
focusing on the deep cuts, the drama behind his
greatest commissions, the political perils that
shaped his career, and the surprising psychological
contradictions of his personal life. You'll leave
this deep dive with a comprehensive, nuanced
understanding of why Michelangelo remains, five
centuries later, the ultimate definition of the
Renaissance genius. So where do we start? Let's
begin where his destiny began. Most of us, I
think, we think of Michelangelo as being purely
a creature of Florence. Right, the heart of the
city. But his origins are surprisingly far from
that glittering, sophisticated center. He was
born in 1475 in a small town called Caprese in
the Republic of Florence. And that location tells
you something immediately. His family had aspirations.
They were small -scale Florentine bankers. But
they'd failed financially. So they weren't wealthy.
No. His father, Ludovico, had to rely on these
brief government posts out in the countryside
just to make ends meet. And this lingering sense
of lost social standing. It played Michelangelo
his entire life. And it was ironically compensated
for by the incredible wealth he later accumulated
through his art. Precisely. And this leads us
to maybe the most revealing anecdote of his early
childhood, a story he himself loved to tell.
His mother died when he was only six in 1481.
Right. So he was sent to live with a nanny and
her husband in a town called Sedignana. And this
wasn't just a random town. No, not at all. Sedignana
was where his father happened to own a small
marble quarry. So the man who would later wrestle
with these colossal blocks of Carrara marble
was literally raised in the presence of the material.
He didn't just drink milk there. He absorbed
the very essence of his calling. There's that
famous quote. Oh, the one about the nurse's milk.
It's perfect. He said, along with the milk of
my nurse, I received the knack of handling chisel
and hammer with which I make my figures. It's
not just a charming story, is it? It's like a
foundational piece of his artistic philosophy.
It is. It suggests his genius was natural, innate,
that it came directly from the earth and the
material itself, not just from human teaching.
It reinforces that later nickname, Il Divino.
But despite the sort of perceived destiny, his
father was entirely against him becoming an artist.
He saw it as a trade, something beneath the family's,
you know, decayed patrician status. Ludovico
forced him into grammar schooling under a humanist
named Francesco d 'Urbino. And Michelangelo naturally
showed zero interest in it. None. He was driven
to the art. He just wanted to seek out other
artists, copy paintings in the Florentine churches.
I mean, Florence at this time was the undisputed
art capital of Italy, arguably the world. So
by age 13, his drive was so undeniable that his
father finally relented. He did. He apprenticed
him to Domenico Ghirlandaio, who ran the largest
and most prestigious fresco workshop in Florence
at the time. And this is where we get the first
real sign of his incredible talent. It really
is. I mean, typically an apprentice was treated
like an indentured servant. You paid for your
training with labor. But within a year, Michelangelo's
father. persuaded Gerlandaio the master to pay
Michelangelo as a working artist. To be paid
at 14? It was almost unheard of. It meant he
was immediately recognized as producing quality,
marketable work. He didn't stay long, though.
From 1490 to 1492, he moved into the Medici orbit,
attending the Platonic Academy founded by Lorenzo
the Magnificent. And this shift was maybe the
most crucial influence on his entire career.
Why is that? Because this is where his art becomes
infused with philosophy. The Academy was home
to these brilliant humanist thinkers like Marsilio
Ficino and Pico della Marandola. They were reviving
Neoplatonism. This idea that earthly beauty is
just a reflection of a divine spiritual beauty
and that the artist's task is to liberate the
perfect ideal form that's hidden inside the material.
So this philosophical grounding directly informs
his whole sculptural process, doesn't it? It's
not just about shaping stone. It's about revealing
the divine form that's already inside the marble.
Absolutely. And during this period, he created
his earliest known works. He did. The Madonna
of the stairs, a shallow relief, shows the influence
of Donatello with this very deep internalized
emotional state. And then there's the Battle
of the Centaurs, which has this dynamic, almost
violent movement that points toward the restless
energy of his later figures. Now for the detail
that physically defined him for life, the incident
with Pietro Torrigiano. Yes. At 17, while he's
still a pupil under the Medici, he was struck
in the nose by a jealous fellow student. Pietro
Torgiano. And it caused this lifelong disfigurement
that you can see clearly in every single one
of his portraits. Right. Torgiano apparently
boasted about it later in life, saying he'd marked
the divine one for life. And this physical vulnerability,
this permanent visible mark, it may have really
contributed to Michelangelo's famously solitary
and melancholic nature. After Lorenzo de' Medici's
death in 1492, the political climate in Florence
got pretty ugly. It did. And Michelangelo...
always intensely focused, carved a wooden crucifix
as a gift for the prior of Santo Spirito Hospital.
In return, he gained permission for something
absolutely critical to his art. Studying anatomy
by dissecting corpses from the hospital. That
is a level of dedication that few artists of
his time could match. We know he returned to
this practice multiple times. This meticulous,
direct study of musculature, bone structure,
tendon placement. It's why his figures look the
way they do. Their physical perfection, their
often painful tension, it's all the result of
deep scientific knowledge married to artistic
skill. This is the foundation of his Terribilita.
The figures are so intensely, almost violently
real. And it was this intense realism that led
to his spectacular entry onto the Roman stage,
which was facilitated by a rather audacious art
fraud. Oh, the story of the Sleeping Cupid is
fantastic. Tell us about it. So Michelangelo
carved this Sleeping Cupid statue. The middleman
handling the sale realized that if it looked
old, it would fetch a much higher price. Of course.
So he instructed Michelangelo to treat the marble
to make it look as if it had been buried for
centuries. And then he passed it off as a valuable
ancient Roman work. The buyer was a cardinal
in Rome, Raphael Riario. He eventually discovered
the deceit. But instead of demanding his money
back or, you know, prosecuting the artist, the
cardinal was so genuinely impressed by the quality
of the carving. the technical skill required
to fake antiquity, that he invited the 21 -year
-old Michelangelo to Rome in 1496. He turned
a forgery scandal into a career -defining opportunity.
It speaks volumes about the power of his technical
skill. But his first major Roman work, the Bacchus,
was a bit of a riskier move. Right. He carved
this over -life -sized statue of the Roman god
of wine, also for Cardinal Riario, who ended
up rejecting it. And you can see why. The Cardinal
was expecting an idealized classical God. What
Michelangelo delivered was this dynamic, psychologically
complex figure. He's not very God -like, is he?
No. His Bacchus has bleary, slightly cross eyes,
a swollen bladder. Yeah. Suggests he's had way
too much to drink. And he's genuinely swaying,
unsteady on his feet. It was too realistic, too
human, maybe too messy for the Roman taste at
the time. But that rejection led directly to
acceptance because the Bacchus showcased his
unique genius, paving the way for the work that
secured his fame forever. The Pieta. Commissioned
by a French ambassador, Cardinal Jean de Bidler,
and it was finished before Michelangelo was even
25. And it was an instant sensation upon its
unveiling in St. Peter's. Vasari, his biographer,
described it as a miracle. It was. Why a miracle?
I mean, beyond the obvious technical perfection
of the drapery and the flawless finish of the
flesh, there's a profound theological audacity
to the composition, isn't there? There is. Mary
is depicted as exceptionally young, perhaps even
younger than Christ would have been at his death.
Deliberate choice. Absolutely. It elevates the
theological over the literal. It implies Mary's
purity and virginity maintained her youthful
perfection, demonstrating the incorruptibility
of her soul. The whole composition is just this
incredible exercise in blending emotional tragedy
with idealized Neoplatonic form. And crucially,
this is the only work we know of that Michelangelo
ever signed. He carved his name right across
Mary's sash. It's a really unusual gesture for
him. It speaks to the confidence and pride he
must have felt in achieving that level of perfection
so young. Legend says he overheard some visitors
attributing the work to another sculptor, which
drove him to sign it himself. After that, he
was secure enough in his reputation that he never
signed a work again. With his fame secured, he
returns to Florence around 1499, and the city,
now under Republican governance, was desperate
for a political symbol. And they commissioned
him to complete the David. This was a massive
undertaking. The block of Carrara marble had
been sitting outside the Duomo workshops for
40 years. Started and abandoned by two previous
sculptors. He was known as Ilgi Gandhi, the giant,
and widely considered ruined. It's a testament
to his ambition that he took on a damaged, enormous
block of marble. The finished David, unveiled
in 1504, became the ultimate symbol of Florentine
freedom. The young underdog defying tyranny.
And unlike earlier depictions of David like Donatello's,
who's shown after the battle. Michelangelo chose
to depict David before the action. He's tense.
He's ready. His brow is furrowed. His veins are
bulging. He's holding the sling casually over
his shoulder. The terribility here is that intense
psychological focus that contained power just
before the explosion of violence. And the statue's
size and political importance led to this massive
civic event, the placement debate. Imagine the
scene. A consulting team with the greatest minds
of the era, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Filippino
Lippiol, meeting to decide where this 17 -foot,
multi -ton statue should stand. And Leonardo
argued it should be housed indoors, in a sheltered
loggia. Right, maybe because he preferred protection
from the elements? Or maybe, maybe his desire
to prevent Michelangelo from taking center stage.
Ultimately, the citizens won out, and it was
placed in the Piazza della Signoria, the heart
of Florentine political life. Which made an undeniable
statement. And that placement right in the civic
square set up the direct rivalry with Leonardo.
Sotirini immediately commissioned Michelangelo
to paint the Battle of Cascina in the Palazzo
Vecchio council chamber. Directly opposite Leonardo's
commission, the Battle of Anghiari. What a high
stakes public artistic duel. And neither mural
was ever completed in fresco. No, Michelangelo
abandoned his for the call to Rome and Leonardo
experimented unsuccessfully with oil paints.
But their preparatory cartoons were revered and
copied for decades. And Michelangelo's cartoon
for Cascino was famous because it showed Florentine
soldiers being ambushed while bathing in the
Arno River. A perfect excuse to display his total
mastery of the male nude figure in every conceivable
twisting pose. It was essentially an anatomy
lesson rendered in charcoal, directly challenging
Leonardo's style. This period also saw his panel
painting, specifically the Donitondo. This piece
is notable for its contrapposto, that twisting
motion, and the vibrant, almost heraldic use
of color, which really offers a clear preview
of the dynamic, muscular forms he would soon
unleash on a much, much grander scale. The callback
to Rome in 1505. This marked a huge transition.
He's moving from the city of his artistic development
to the city of his immense professional struggle
and, ultimately, his triumph. Pope Julius II
summoned him for what should have been the greatest
commission of the era. the papal tomb. And this
became the defining agony of Michelangelo's adult
life. It really did. It was planned as this monumental
structure for old St. Peter's, meant to house
40 statues and be completed in five years. Instead,
it became a 40 -year source of intense personal
frustration. The documents, the correspondence,
they reveal this heartbreaking despair. He repeatedly
calls the tomb commission the tragedy of the
burial. The irony is that out of this frustration
came some of his most profound sculptural works.
The central figure of the later, drastically
reduced tomb is the massive, imposing figure
of Moses, completed around 1516. And this Moses
is a prime example of his terribility. He's not
the gentle, guiding prophet we often see. No,
he is a force barely contained. His gaze is furious.
He looks ready to leap up. Exactly. The statue
depicts Moses returning from Mount Sinai to find
his people worshiping the golden calf. He has
coiled energy, his beard is like a torrent, his
posture suggests just contained rage. And controversially,
he has horns. Which is often a point of confusion
for modern viewers. Why the horns? It all stems
from a mistranslation of the Latin Vulgate Bible,
which describes Moses' face as cornuta. That
can be translated as horned or shining forth
with rays of light. Michelangelo chose the literal,
more aggressive depiction. Which perfectly aligns
with the character's terribility. A divine power
that is almost too much for a human vessel to
hold. Beyond Moses, the tomb project also yielded
these famous incomplete figures. Yes. The figures
known as the captives. Particularly the rebellious
slave and the dying slave. They were intended
for the lower register of the tomb, and they
are stunning in their emotional weight. And the
later, even more incomplete figures like the
Atlas Slave, they offer this unique window into
his method. Because they appear to be struggling
to free themselves from the rock. Illustrating
his Neoplatonic belief that the perfect form
was trapped inside the marble, and his job was
to liberate it. Precisely. They are figures of
raw, unfinished potential. They reveal the struggle
of the artist with the material itself. They
went on to influence modern sculptors like Rodin
so intensely. But the reason Julius II interrupted
the tomb was for the most spectacular commission
of his life, the Sistine Chapel ceiling. And
here is where it gets really interesting, because
the source material suggests he didn't even want
the job. The sheer irony is delicious. Michelangelo
did not consider himself a painter. He publicly
declared sculpture his one true art. So what
happened? Well, biographers like Vasari suggest
that his rival, the architect Bramante, championed
Michelangelo for the sealing commission, hoping
that forcing him into fresco painting, a medium
he was supposedly unfamiliar with, would guarantee
his failure. And his humiliation. So he was set
up to fail by his enemies. That's the story.
And the initial commission, which began in 1508,
was actually manageable. just painting the 12
apostles on the triangular pendentives. But Michelangelo,
in true fashion, found that scope creatively
constraining. Right. So he persuaded Julius II
to grant him a carte blanche, a free hand, to
design the entire decorative scheme. And the
resulting work was just gargantuan, over 500
square meters featuring more than 300 figures.
Representing the entire sweeping narrative from
creation to the path to salvation. The scale
is monumental. especially considering the technical
difficulty of fresco. You have to paint rapidly
onto wet plaster, and you're doing it while looking
straight up. The physical toll must have been
immense. He wrote these famous poems detailing
the strain, complaining that he grew a goiter
from the constant neck straining, and that paint
was perpetually dripping into his eyes. And he
worked largely alone, often locking the doors,
fearful that assistants would steal his secrets
or claim credit. So let's break down the iconography
of the ceiling. Okay, at the center, we have
nine episodes from Genesis running chronologically.
They're separated into three thematic groups.
God's creation of the cosmos, the creation and
fall of humankind. Including the iconic creation
of Adam. Of course. And then the state of humanity
as represented by Noah and the flood story. And
lining the outer edge are the prophets and sibyls.
Yes, the ancient seers who prophesied the coming
of Christ. Seven prophets of Israel and five
sibyls, the prophetic women of the classical
world. This blending of biblical and pagan prophecy
is deeply rooted in the Neoplatonic humanism
he learned at the Medici Academy. It's suggesting
divine truth can be found in both Christian and
classical sources. Now, the creation of Adam
is the most famous panel. But what about the
figures that surround the central scenes, the
ignudi? The ignudi. those 20 heroic, muscular,
naked male youths who sit framing the narrative
panels. They are crucial to understanding the
ceiling's theological complexity. What are they
supposed to be? Well, they're interpreted as
everything from angels to muses to allegorical
representations of the soul's ascent. What they
did was allow Michelangelo to reintroduce the
heroic male nude into sacred art on an unprecedented
scale. Again, emphasizing that neoclatonic idea
that the beauty of the human body is a reflection
of divine perfection. You got it. And we can
actually track his learning curve, can't we?
As he progressed, the figures in the later compositions,
the ones closer to the altar, they actually grew
larger. This was partly a practical adjustment.
When the first half of the scaffolding was removed,
he realized the figures he painted at the entrance
looked too small from the floor of the chapel.
He had to consciously increase the scale to achieve
the necessary monumental impact. We mentioned
his self -portraits. He wasn't subtle about sneaking
himself in, was he? No, but he was incredibly
clever. He painted himself into the action in
a couple of ways. He's generally identified as
the brooding, melancholy prophet Jeremiah. Right,
contemplating the downfall of Jerusalem. But
in a more subtle, self -referential move, he
seems to have painted his own figure as the model
for God the Creator in the separation of light
from darkness. He's effectively putting the artist
in the role of the divine creator. The sealing
took him four years, finishing in 1512, and it
was a triumph that silenced his rivals. It was,
but that triumph was short -lived because the
next great painting commission, the altar wall
fresco, the Last Judgment, brought him his greatest
controversy. This was commissioned two decades
later in 1534 by Pope Clement VII, though it
was completed under Pope Paul III. And this fresco,
which took seven years, created an immediate
and violent backlash. The core issue was his
portrayal of Christ. Absolutely. He depicted
Christ as a massive, muscular, youthful figure,
beardless and crucially stark naked. And he dispensed
with the traditional orderly hierarchy of heaven
and hell. It's all just this chaotic, almost
violent energy. Right. And the sight of Christ
and the Virgin Mary nude on the altar wall of
the holiest chapel in Christendom was deemed
sacrilegious by many conservatives in the Counter
-Reformation Church. The backlash came quickly
from figures like Cardinal Carafa, who campaigned
vigorously for the complete removal, or at the
very least, censorship of the work. And the censorship
arrived in 1564. just weeks after Michelangelo's
death. The Council of Trent formally decreed
that figures in sacred art must be clothed and
modest. So they commissioned Danielle de Volterra,
ironically Michelangelo's own apprentice, to
paint draperies over the offensive parts. Earning
him the nickname Il Bregatone, the breaches maker,
for his unwelcome modifications. And his final
signature in that fresco, the self -portrait,
is just hauntingly dark. It's a profound psychological
statement on artistic torment. He painted himself
into the flayed skin held by St. Bartholomew.
Who was martyred by being flayed alive. Exactly.
By inserting his own likeness into that discarded
drooping skin, Michelangelo seems to be expressing
his own feelings of being flayed by the papal
court, the political machinations, and the constant
agony of his commissions. It's an act of deep
personal confession hidden in plain sight. After
the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo entered this
period where architecture became the primary
vehicle for his genius, but it was often interwoven
with this volatile political relationship he
had with the Medici family. That Medici patronage
in Florence was a real double -edged sword. After
Pope Julius II died, He was succeeded by Pope
Leo X, who was the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
And Leo X commissioned him to reconstruct the
facade of the Basilica of San Lorenzo. Right.
So he spends three arduous years developing these
designs and elaborate models. He even went so
far as trying to open a new marble quarry near
Carrara to source the specific stone he needed.
That detail about the quarry is key. He was never
just the designer. He was the hands -on engineer,
the quarry master, the logistician. He needed
control over the material from the moment it
left the earth. But this project was just abruptly
canceled in 1520 due to financial strain, leaving
the Basilica bare to this day. A massive waste
of his time and emotional energy. But the Medici
quickly reassigned him to another massive project
at San Lorenzo, the family funerary chapel, the
Medici Chapel. Where he created the elaborate
tombs for Giuliano and Lorenzo Medici, featuring
those famous allegorical reclining figures, night,
day. dusk, and dawn. These are not serene classical
figures. They are restless, dynamic, and unsettling.
Oh, absolutely. Night seems to be sleeping anxiously,
and day is a figure of barely contained muscular
power. Scholars interpret them as expressions
of political anxiety and the artist's own restless
soul. And this project, the Medici Chapel, it
leads us directly to one of the most poignant
moments in his life, a story that was literally
hidden for centuries. This is the high political
drama that makes the man so complex. Florence
briefly threw out the Medici and restored the
Republic in 1527. And Michelangelo, who had this
deep, almost Republican streak, took sides against
his longtime patrons. He served as the city's
chief military engineer, overseeing defensive
fortifications against the returning Medici.
So when the Medici regained power in 1530, Michelangelo
was sentenced to death for high treason. The
man who was building their chapel was now a fugitive.
He had to hide for two months, fearing execution.
And the great discovery in 1976, which was finally
opened to the public in 2023, was this tiny concealed
corridor under the new sacristy, the Medici Chapel
itself. And it was filled with his drawings.
Charcoal and chalk drawings on the walls, made
in secret by candlelight or a tiny bit of window
light, while he was hiding from the very people
whose tombs he was designing. The irony is immense.
These crude sketches of figures, heads, legs,
they were a rehearsal, or maybe just a desperate
means of maintaining a sanity and creative output
while under extreme duress. The fact that the
most celebrated artist in Europe was hiding under
his patrons' floorboards is just a stunning illustration
of the intersection of art and political life
in the Renaissance. Once he was pardoned, he
was allowed to finish the chapel, but he also
designed another key Florentine structure, the
Laurentian Library. This library is not just
a building, it's a declaration of a new style.
He designed the interior and most famously the
extraordinary vestibule. He utilized classical
forms, columns, staircases, niches, but he manipulated
them in these dynamic, unsettling ways. Columns
are sunk into the walls, appearing trapped. The
windows are blind. And the staircase seems to
spill out like a torrent of molten lava. Right.
And this deliberate manipulation of classical
harmony essentially establishes him as the forerunner
of Baroque architecture. This is Mannerism in
its most sublime architectural form. In 1534,
he left Florence for good and settled permanently
in Rome, transitioning almost entirely into architecture
for the last three decades of his life. And he
became the preeminent architect for the papacy.
The capstone of this period was St. Peter's Basilica.
At the age of 71, in 1546, he was appointed architect.
Taking over a project that had become this complex
tangle of competing plans and incomplete construction
over the previous 40 years. And Michelangelo
just cut through the complexity. He returned
to the original centralized Greek cross plan
envisioned by Bramante, simplifying the design
and strengthening the structure. His key innovation
was the design of the enormous dome. He famously
said he would raise the Pantheon onto the structure.
And he did. Though it was completed after his
death, it's been called the greatest creation
of the Renaissance and influenced church architecture
worldwide for centuries. Beyond St. Peter's,
he radically redesigned the Capitoline Hill,
the Campidoglio. He unified this awkward asymmetrical
space with the trapezoid piazza and an extraordinary
ovoid pavement design, creating a sense of harmonious
grandeur that was entirely new. Right up until
his death, we see his genius reflecting on his
own mortality, particularly through his final
sculptures. Yes. In his old age, his pitas become
intensely personal, reflecting a deepening faith
and almost palpable exhaustion. The Florentine
Pietà is striking because he depicts himself
as the aged Nicodemus, literally lowering Christ's
body into the tomb. And the sources tell us he
actually smashed parts of the figure of Jesus'
left side. What drove that act of destruction?
Biographers suggest it was a sudden act of intense
frustration, either with the marble quality itself
or maybe a moment of spiritual or artistic anguish
where he felt the stone would not yield the form
he desperately sought. Then we have the Rondinini
Pietà. His last sculpture. He was working on
it literally six days before his death in 1564
at age 88. It's a work of almost radical incompleteness.
He carved the figures away so dramatically that
there was insufficient stone left to fully realize
the form, resulting in this profoundly abstract
quality. The figures of Christ and Mary are barely
there, attenuated, seeming to merge together.
It's a remarkable ending for the master of anatomical
realism. He ends his career by carving away reality
until only the emotion and spiritual essence
remains. A fitting final paradox. His body was
transported back to Florence for burial at the
Basilica of Santa Croce, fulfilling his final
wish to be buried in the city that first recognized
his divine genius. We've covered the art, the
architecture and the political struggles. Now
let's turn to the man who endured all this, the
personality, the habits and the surprising personal
life. What's fascinating here is that given the
sheer volume of surviving correspondence letters
to family, notes to patrons, detailed reminiscences
written by biographers during his lifetime, Michelangelo
is arguably the best documented artist of the
16th century. We have unprecedented access to
his inner workings. And what they reveal is a
man defined by contradictions. The first contradiction
involves wealth versus lifestyle. He once told
his apprentice, however rich I may have been,
I have always lived like a poor man. And that
statement is profoundly misleading. His net worth
was estimated at about 50 ,000 gold ducats when
he died, making him one of the wealthiest individuals
in Italy. Surpassing many contemporary dukes
and princes. Exactly. Yet his habits were notoriously
rough and uncouth. His biographer Paolo Giovio
described his domestic arrangements as incredibly
squalid. He sounds like a true eccentric. Condivi
noted that he ate and drank more out of necessity
than of pleasure. We hear stories of him sleeping
in his clothes and boots for weeks on end. Right,
only removing them when they began to peel off
his skin. We have to pause and consider the level
of obsessive focus this implies. For a man who
was arguably the wealthiest artist in Europe,
This personal squalor suggests his entire identity
was consumed by the stone, the paint or the blueprints.
Almost to the exclusion of basic human comfort.
He was described as solitary and melancholy.
Using the term bizarro, a fantastico -centric,
and fantastic to describe a man who withdrew
himself almost entirely from social company.
But despite that solitude and eccentricity, his
faith was a constant anchor. Absolutely. He was
a devout Catholic whose faith deepened significantly,
particularly after the political turmoil of the
1530s. His late -life enrollment in the secular
Franciscan order reflects this deepening spirituality.
And that profound late -life spiritual focus
is crystallized in his poetry. We have lines
from one of his... later sonnets that perfectly
capture the shift away from earthly glory. Neither
painting nor sculpture will be able any longer
to calm my soul, now turned toward that divine
love that opened his arms on the cross to take
us in. His poetry, however, brings us to the
biggest revelation about his personal life, his
relationships. Right. Michelangelo wrote over
300 sonnets and madrigals, and approximately
60 of those were explicitly addressed to men.
This collection constitutes the first significant
modern corpus of love poetry from one man to
another. This is our aha moment. The longest
and most intense sequence of these poems was
dedicated to Tommaso de Cavalieri, a young Roman
patrician who Michelangelo met in 1532. Michelangelo
was 57, Cavalieri was 23. And the depth of this
emotional connection is extraordinary. Cavalieri
was of high social standing and Michelangelo
was utterly devoted to him. He sent him not only
poetry, but also a series of exquisite mythological
drawings designed to help Cavalieri learn to
draw. These included Ganymede wrapped to heaven
by Jove's eagle and the punishment of Titius.
Those drawings were highly symbolic, weren't
they? Ganymede being the beautiful mortal youth
abducted by Jupiter. Precisely. They are potent
symbols of spiritual and physical desire, often
interpreted through a Neoplatonic lens. Michelangelo
saw Cavalieri as a manifestation of the ideal
beauty he was constantly seeking. And Cavalieri's
own response to Michelangelo was equally intense.
He remained dedicated to him until the artist's
death. But this relationship and the poetry itself
is a source of intense historical controversy.
It is. When Michelangelo's grandnephew published
the poetry in 1623, he consciously centered the
text by changing the gender of the pronouns from
masculine to feminine to obscure the true nature
of the relationship. He insisted the poem should
be read allegorically, purely as expressions
of abstract spiritual neoplatonic love. It was
clearly done to protect the Bonarotti family
honor and Michelangelo's legacy within the highly
conservative counter. Reformation period. What
is the modern consensus now that the original
texts have been restored? Since the English critic
John Addington Simons restored the original male
pronouns in 1893, it's become widely accepted
that the poems should be understood at face value.
They express intense personal desire and indicate
a preference for young men. But the scholarly
debate continues over the physical nature of
the relationship. Well, given Cavalieri's high
social standing and the intense scrutiny of the
papal court, a public physical relationship would
have been difficult, probably not survivable.
The sources acknowledge that these relationships
were often necessarily framed within the realities
of platonic intellectual friendship. Whether
the relationship was consummated or remained
purely spiritual, the poetry itself provides
irrefutable proof of Michelangelo's passionate
personal desire. And that intensity and vulnerability
completely shatter the image of the solitary,
stone -obsessed genius. To balance this, we also
know that late in life, he nurtured a deep platonic
friendship with the noble widow and poet Vittoria
Colonna. This relationship was purely spiritual.
They exchanged powerful spiritual sonnets and
devotional drawings. Condivi, who was keen to
downplay the earlier relationships, really highlighted
this friendship. And finally, we have to return
to the feuds, because his professional life was
defined by intense rivalry, largely fueled by
his terribility. He was intensely competitive
and often paranoid, blaming his troubles with
the tomb of Julius II entirely on the envy of
his great rivals, Bramante and Raphael. He famously
claimed that Raphael got all he had in art from
him. Implying Raphael was just a clever borrower.
Pretty much. And there's an anecdote of their
legendary meeting that perfectly encapsulates
this tension. Tell us. They met on the streets
of Rome. Raphael was accompanied by a large group
of assistants and admirers. Michelangelo was
walking entirely alone. Of course. Michelangelo,
always prickly, commented that Raphael, with
such a following, looked like a chief of police.
Raphael immediately shot back that Michelangelo,
walking alone, looked like an executioner, a
figure who traditionally walked in solitude.
It's a spectacular exchange that just highlights
the intense, almost combative individuality of
Michelangelo. So what does this all mean when
we synthesize the art, the drama, the personal
anguish, and the myth of Michelangelo Buonarroti?
It means we have to recognize him as a revolutionary
who mastered not just one or two, but three separate
monumental arenas of genius. He succeeded because
he achieved a perfect synthesis. He married the
profound classical scholarship he learned at
the Medici Academy with the practical, muscular,
artistic movements of contemporary Florence.
And his impact wasn't just on his own time. He
defined the next generation of art. The expressive
physicality of his style, those twisting, dynamic,
emotionally charged forms, they were the clear
heralds of the Mannerist art movement. Mannerism
took his sense of dramatic tension and subjective
experience and made it the rule, departing definitively
from the calm idealism of the High Renaissance.
Even his failures and unfinished projects had
profound influence. Oh, absolutely. Those struggling,
unfinished slaves for the tune of Julius II with
their visible struggle against the stone profoundly
influenced modern sculptural thought, especially
the psychological realism of artists like Auguste
Rodin and Henry Moore. And as a painter, he was
utterly transformative. Vasari, never one for
understatement, wrote that the Sistine Chapel
ceiling was a veritable beacon to our art, restoring
light to a world that for centuries had been
plunged into darkness. He argued that painters
no longer needed to seek new inventions because
this single work contained every perfection possible.
And architecturally, his work set the standard
for centuries, from the dynamic, unsettling tension
of the Laurentian Library vestibule to the soaring,
majestic dome of St. Peter's Basilica. He was,
quite rightly, revered in his own time. the first
Western artist whose biography was published
while he was still alive. Yet despite being one
of the best documented men of the 16th century,
a man whose legacy was carefully recorded and
curated, we know that Michelangelo deliberately
destroyed many of his detailed drawings, designs,
and preparatory sketches later in his life. He
wanted to erase the evidence of his process,
the struggles, the mistakes. This leads to our
final provocative thought for you to consider.
We have biographers ensuring his life story was
meticulously recorded for posterity, yet we know
he actively tried to destroy the visual evidence
of his effort and technique. What motivated the
seemingly contradictory impulse to erase his
process while ensuring his life story was recorded?
And how does that destructive act shape the way
we perceive his terribilita? that unique ability
to instill awe today? Was the awe only meant
to be inspired by the finished, seemingly effortless
miracle concealing the agonizing human effort
that lay beneath the surface? A lot to chew on
regarding the divine genius and the man who wrestled
with the stone and with his own demons. Thank
you for joining us for this deep dive into Michelangelo.