Michel Angelo

Michelangelo was pessimistic in his poetry and an optimist in his

artwork. Michelangelo's artwork consisted of paintings and sculptures

that showed humanity in it's natural state. Michelangelo's poetry was

pessimistic in his response to Strazzi even though he was

complementing him. Michelangelo's sculpture brought out his optimism.

Michelangelo was optimistic in completing The Tomb of Pope Julius II

and persevered through it's many revisions trying to complete his

vision. Sculpture was Michelangelo's main goal and the love of his

life. Since his art portrayed both optimism and pessimism,

Michelangelo was in touch with his positive and negative sides,

showing that he had a great and stable personality.

Michelangelo's artwork consisted of paintings and sculptures that

showed humanity in it's natural state. Michelangelo Buonarroti was

called to Rome in 1505 by Pope Julius II to create for him a

monumental tomb. We have no clear sense of what the tomb was to look

like, since over the years it went through at least five conceptual

revisions. The tomb was to have three levels; the bottom level was to

have sculpted figures representing Victory and bond slaves. The second

level was to have statues of Moses and Saint Paul as well as symbolic

figures of the active and contemplative life- representative of the

human striving for, and reception of, knowledge. The third level, it

is assumed, was to have an effigy of the deceased pope. The tomb of

Pope Julius II was never finished. What was finished of the tomb

represents a twenty-year span of frustrating delays and revised

schemes. Michelangelo had hardly begun work on the pope's tomb when

Julius commanded him to fresco the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to

complete the work done in the previous century under Sixtus IV. The

overall organization consists of four large triangles at the corner; a

series of eight triangular spaces on the outer border; an intermediate

series of figures; and nine central panels, all bound together with

architectural motifs and nude male figures. The corner triangles

depict heroic action in the Old Testament, while the other eight

triangles depict the biblical ancestors of Jesus Christ. Michelangelo

conceived and executed this huge work as a single unit. It's overall

meaning is a problem. The issue has engaged historians of art for

generations without satisfactory resolution. The paintings that were

done by Michelangelo had been painted with the brightest colors that

just bloomed the whole ceiling as one entered to look. The ceiling had

been completed just a little after the Pope had died. The Sistine

Chapel is the best fresco ever done.

Michelangelo embodied many characteristic qualities of the

Renaissance. An individualistic, highly competitive genius (sometimes

to the point of eccentricity). Michelangelo was not afraid to show

humanity in it's natural state - nakedness; even in front of the Pope

and the other religious leaders. Michelangelo portrayed life as it is,

even with it's troubles. Michelangelo wanted to express his own

artistic ideas. The most puzzling thing about Michelangelo's ceiling

design is the great number of seemingly irrelevant nude figures that

he included in his gigantic fresco. Four youths frame most of the

Genesis scenes. We know from historical records that various church

officials objected to the many nudes, but Pope Julius gave

Michelangelo artistic freedom, and eventually ruled the chapel off

limits to anyone save himself, until the painting was completed. The

many nude figures are referred to as Ignudi. They are naked humans,

perhaps representing the naked truth. More likely, I think they

represent Michelangelo's concept of the human potential for

perfection. Michelangelo himself said, "Whoever strives for perfection

is striving for something divine." In painting nude humans, he is

suggesting the unfinished human; each of us is born nude with a mind

and a body, in Neoplatonic thought, with the power to be our own

shapers. Michelangelo has a very great personality for his time. In

Rome, in 1536, Michelangelo was at work on the Last Judgment for the

altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, which he finished in 1541. The

largest fresco of the Renaissance, it depicts Judgment Day. Christ,

with a clap of thunder, puts into motion the inevitable separation,

with the saved ascending on the left side of the painting and the

...