Michelangelo Buonarroti
Encyclopaedia Britannica
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The last decades
In his late years Michelangelo was less involved with sculpture and,
along with painting and poetry, more with architecture, an area in which
he did not have to do physical labour. He was sought after to design
imposing monuments for the new and modern Rome that were to enunciate
architecturally the city's position as a world centre. Two of these
monuments, the Capitoline Square and the dome
of St. Peter's, are still among the city's most notable visual images.
He did not finish either, but after his death both were continued in
ways that probably did not depart much from his plans.
The small Capitoline Hill had been the civic centre in ancient Roman
times and was in the 16th century the centre of the lay municipal
government, a minor factor in a city ruled by popes, yet one to which
they wished to show respect. Michelangelo remodeled the old city hall on
one side of the square and designed twin buildings for the two sides
adjacent to it. He gave them rich and powerful fronts, using as his main
device the juxtaposition of colossal columns, which rise through two
stories to the top, with much smaller one-story columns crowded next to
them. This invention creates a forcefully dynamic rhythm while also
articulating in a rational way the structure behind the facades. He also
produced a special floor design for the square between these two new
buildings—an oval pattern that frames a statue at its centre (the
ancient Roman monument of the emperor Marcus Aurelius) and gives the
whole area the effect of a monumental room. Because of the hilly site,
the square is not rectangular but wider on the city hall side and
narrower on the opposite side, which was left open. This open side is
the entrance for the public, reached by climbing a long flight of
stairs. The visitor finds the two facades to his left and right inclined
away from each other as they recede from the entrance; this counteracts
the tendency of perspective to make walls seem to move nearer each other
as they are farther off and so reinforces the effect of a grand expanse.
The dome of St. Peter's functions chiefly as a visual focus for the
observer at a distance, representing a physical goal as well as
expressing the dominant meaning of the city. It has been copied for this
dual purpose many times, as, for instance, in the Capitol at Washington,
D.C. It derives from the dome of the cathedral of Florence, which is 100
years older, perhaps the first great dome to be oriented chiefly outward
in its effect rather than being meant chiefly to coverthe interior. But
it was Michelangelo's dome that gave this shift its universal
acceptance. The dome, however, was not built until after Michelangelo's
death, and the extent to which it follows his intentions has been much
debated. As built by his successor, the dome is more pointed than the
pure hemisphere seen in Michelangelo's best known project. But
Michelangelo changed his ideas and may well have moved in that direction
too.
During his life Michelangelo's major energy in working at St. Peter's
was given to the lower part. He discarded the ideas of the architects
who had been working on it just before him, approving only those of the
original designer, Bramante. He reverted to the earlier plan for a
church with four equal cross arms instead of the more conventional
Latincross plan of the more recent altered scheme. He also disliked the
quantity of repeated smaller decorative elements added by the most
recent architect, which diminished the effect of great size. He modified
Bramante's interior in specifics, making it still more nearly a unified
space. This is enclosed by huge semicircular sections of wall on the
four sides, creating spaces comparable to the hemispherical space inside
the dome. Most of his actual construction work was on the curving wall
behind the altar, and there he carried still further the contrast
between colossal and smaller supports next to each other, seen already
on the Capitoline Hill. This time they are not load-carrying columns but
thin pilasters that fit against the continuously curving walls on the
exterior. They thus impart both a strong upward thrust and an equally
strong horizontal rhythm as the direction of the wall continuously
changes, producing an architecture of pulsing dynamism on a gigantic
scale. One still can see the approach of the sculptor, who uses the
projections and recessions of stone as his vehicle.
Around the base of the dome Michelangelo placed a columned walkway. The
tops of the columns are tied to the dome by beams, but there is no
roofing of the intervals between columns. Thus, the columns have the
effect of flying buttresses on Gothic buildings, supporting the dome's
heavy downward thrust. Yet the design is formally classical, and its
horizontal aspect as a colonnade solves the problem of a visual
transition between the dome and the horizontal lower structure of the
building.
While remaining head architect of St. Peter's until his death,
Michelangelo worked on many smaller building projects in Rome. He
completed the main unit of the Palazzo Farnese, the residence of Pope
Paul III's family. The top story wall of its courtyard is a rare example
of an architectural unit fully finished under his eye. Some very
imaginative and distinctive late designs, such as those for a city gate,
the Porta Pia, and for the church of the Florentine community in Rome,
were either much reworked later or never went beyond the plan stage in
the form Michelangelo had proposed.
His last paintings were the frescoes of the Pauline Chapel in the
Vatican, which still is little accessible to the public. Unlike his
other frescoes, they are in the position normal for narrative painting,
on a wall and not exceptionally high up. They consistently treat spatial
depth and narrative drama in a way that brings them closer to other
paintings of the age than to the artist's previous paintings. Among the
artists Michelangelo came to know and admire was Titian, who visited
Rome during the period of this project (1542–50), and the frescoes seem
to betray his influence in colour. The poetry of his last years also
took on new qualities. The poems, chiefly sonnets, are very direct
religious statements suggesting prayers. They are no longer very
intricate in syntax and ideas.
There are only two late sculptures, which Michelangelo did for himself,
both presenting the dead Christ being mourned, neither one finished. The
first and larger one was meant for his tomb, and the figure of the
mourning Joseph of Arimathea (or, possibly, Nicodemus) is a
self-portrait. (Michelangelo had introduced himself earlier in his works
in the role of a sinner or penitent, notably in the “Last Judgment” in
the face on the flayed skin of the martyred St. Bartholomew.) Becoming
dissatisfied with this sculpture, Michelangelo broke one of the figures
and abandoned the work. This constitutes still another variation on the
theme of incompletion running through the artist's work. His last
sculpture also went through several revisions on the same block of stone
and in its current state is an almost dematerialized sketch of two
figures leaning together. Michelangelo certainly had a powerful sense of
his own imperfection, yet he was also aware of the quality of his work and angry at patrons for not meeting what he judged to be their
obligations.
Assessment and influence
For posterity Michelangelo has always remained one of the small group of
the most exalted artists, who have been felt to express, like
Shakespeare or Beethoven, the tragic experience of humanity with the
greatest depth and universal scope.
In contrast to the great fame of the artist's works, their
visual influence on later art is relatively limited. This cannot be
explained by hesitation to imitate an art simply because it appeared so
great, for artists like Raphael were considered equally great but were
used as sources to a much greater degree. It may be instead that the
particular type of expression associated with Michelangelo, of an almost
cosmic grandeur, was inhibiting. The limited influence of his work
includes a few cases of almost total dependence, the most talented
artist who worked in this way being Daniele da Volterra. Otherwise,
Michelangelo was treated as a model for specific limited aspects of his
work. In the 17th century he was regarded as supreme in anatomical
drawing but less praised for broader elements of his art. While the
Mannerists utilized the spatial compression seen in a few of his
frescoes, and later the serpentine poses of his sculpture of “Victory,”
the 19th-century master Auguste Rodin exploited the effect of unfinished
marble blocks. Certain 17th-century masters of the baroque perhaps show
the fullest reference to him, but in ways that have been transformed to
exclude any literal similarity. Besides Bernini, the painter Rubens may
best show the usability of Michelangelo's creations for a later great
artist.
Creighton E. Gilbert
Encyclopadia Britannica
