The 19th-century art historian Heinrich Wölfflin memorably compared Michelangelo’s progress through Italian Renaissance art to the rush of a mighty mountain torrent. Relentlessly carrying all before him, Michelangelo’s influence was at once fertilising and destructive: he proved an inspiration to many artists but could ruinously overwhelm those who sought to copy or rival him.
His patrons also found him virtually impossible to control, and this is saying something, as Michelangelo spent his exceptionally long career largely in harness to a succession of popes. These included the Medici godfathers Leo X and Clement VII and two of the most belligerent clerics to have ascended to the throne of St Peter, Julius II and Paul III. To paraphrase the satirist Pietro Aretino, rulers may come and go, but there was only one Michelangelo.
As Martin Gayford's engaging biography illustrates, however, there were several Michelangelos. The heroic, insurgent genius who, as Giorgio Vasari claimed, "shattered the bonds and chains" of artistic tradition is only one figure to emerge. There is also the miserly curmudgeon beholden to no one and maddeningly wary of anyone's generosity; the prickly control freak, jealous of rivals' success; the delusional dynastic snob eager to "restore" his family to the socially lofty position it had never actually enjoyed; the taskmaster who was softened to the tenderest generosity when an assistant fell ill. And, in further contrast to the cliche of the artist's terribilità, there is Michelangelo the lovestruck mooncalf: the writer of sonnets that suggest a heart so delicate it was in constant danger of being overwhelmed by ardent crushes on pretty young men.
Most contradictory of all is Michelangelo the uncouth ascetic, accustomed to the disgusting habit of gluing strips of dog skin to his legs during the winter but who also has such an eye for haute couture that he is capable of picking out a fancy frock for a teenage niece. Finally, in old age, writing to his long-suffering yet devoted nephew, Leonardo, Michelangelo comes across as a po-faced Polonius by way of Ebenezer Scrooge. But it is in this late correspondence that Michelangelo is also at his most affecting and sympathetic, railing against a failing body that has left him “lumbagoed, ruptured, knackered” and with a painful inability to pee. (Michelangelo died at the almost unheard-of age of 88, his demise hastened by kidney stones.)
Deep-seated insecurity
Gayford's insightful and perceptive portrait of his subject's character is such that, despite the fact that Michelangelo was clearly never easy company, he always commands the reader's sympathy. This is due to the author's sensitivity to one surprising element among the many contradictory facets of Michelangelo's character: a deep-seated insecurity inversely proportionate to the scale of his achievements.
Here it is necessary to refer to the one major failure of Michelangelo’s incredible career, the “tragedy” of the tomb of Pope Julius II: a never-ending and never properly realised project that was a constant albatross around Michelangelo’s neck. It publicly played on the artist’s acute fear that he could never properly finish things or fulfil his potential (a charge that Michelangelo also, tellingly, hurled at his hated rival Leonardo da Vinci in the most public and vituperative fashion).
Another interminable concern was Michelangelo’s avowed mission to restore the honour of his family name, since the Buonarottis had fallen on hard times. Yet this came from a man whose father made no secret of how he deplored his son’s career choice as unbefitting a man of his station.
Also indicative of Michelangelo’s anxious concern with what the world thought of him was his sensitivity to his own ugliness. It is poignant and ironic that, as a youth, this “supreme connoisseur of male beauty” had his face smashed in and nose broken by a handsome, hot-headed rival, Pietro Torrigiano. Michelangelo sported a squashed boxer’s face for the rest of his life.
This was perhaps grist to Michelangelo’s mill in pursuit of an artistic conceptualisation of the human form that sought its restoration to an ideal, divine state, transcendent of the accidents of physical existence and happenstance. But what, Gayford asks, did it do to his own self-esteem? A huge falling out with one close and trusted associate, Luigi del Riccio, was seemingly provoked by an argument about Giulio Bonasone’s unflatteringly accurate 1546 portrait of Michelangelo in profile (an unfortunate angle if ever there was one).
Despite the grandstanding "epic" aspect of its title, the book is at its strongest with such smaller, personal issues – which is not to say that Herculean set-piece narratives involving the creation of David and the Sistine Chapel ceiling aren't well handled.
The turbulent political events that formed the backdrop to Michelangelo’s career, such as the Sack of Rome and the Siege of Florence, are also excitingly relayed. The geographic sweep may not be especially large, as the action is necessarily focused on these cities, but, as with Michelangelo’s figurative compositions, an ample amount takes place within relatively compressed space.
Easily spooked
Michelangelo was careful of his person, and easily spooked. He had little of the bravado of his younger follower Benvenuto Cellini (whose braggardly autobiography is often mined by Gayford), and it is during the episodes that deal with the most turbulent events of Michelangelo's lifetime that the artist himself appears at his most craven and disempowered.
Also indicative of how well the book functions in terms of its intimate handling of Michelangelo’s life is the deftness with which it responds to its subject in epistolary or poetic mode. In fact, the literary Michelangelo (particularly his later Rabelaisian tendencies as a poet and correspondent) is at times far more vividly represented here than in the passages that seek to sum up his artistic personality.
This also has a bearing on the book’s one notable failing as far as a wholly rounded view of the artist is concerned: a relieving art-historical context is often wanting. Potentially memorable standoffs with rivals such as Leonardo and Titian come over a little flat: the exhilarating clash of Neoplatonic versus Aristotelian conceptions of the artist’s mission, as represented by the designs for Michelangelo and Leonardo’s Florentine battle frescoes, is not satisfactorily conveyed.
Gayford also fails to extract dramatic nuance from the meeting between Titian and Michelangelo in Rome in 1546. The two heavyweights met in front of Titian's Danaë, and the atmosphere must have crackled with tension. Yet Gayford seems to accept at face value Vasari's account of Michelangelo's uptight and obtuse response to Titian's painting. The latter mischievously borrowed the pose of Michelangelo's sculpture of Night for what was one of his most assured performances in that most un-Michelangesque of subjects: the erotic female nude. Titian possibly intended his work as a presumptuous tutorial in how to paint figures that have a real living presence, seeming to breathe, perspire and radiate heat. All that Gayford sees is what Michelangelo apparently saw: a left leg badly drawn.
Despite this occasional lack of art-historical fizzle, one could argue that, even at 600 pages, this well-illustrated book has more than enough to do in skilfully organising the wealth of source material that reveals so much about Michelangelo’s life and work. In this it provides a rich, satisfying overview of the personal and professional progress of this most Promethean of artists.
Philip Cottrell is a lecturer at University College Dublin.
