Michelangelo And The Sistine Chapel Read Free Page B

in their midst. They too had learned to value different forms of learning, in particular to share that interest in the classical past proselytised by the men hired to educate them. Their teachers were drawn increasingly from the ranks of humanist scholars, followers of Petrarch, united by a fascination for what he had called ‘the pure radiance of the past’. The princely patrons of Renaissance Italy themselves became intrigued by the past and consumed by the ambition to rival the glory of antiquity.
    Michelangelo experienced this new world at first hand during his formative years, when he came into direct contact with the circle of the Medici, the principal family of Florence. At its head was Lorenzo de’ Medici, otherwise known as Il Magnifico, ‘The Magnificent One’, who gave much encouragement to the artist in his early years. Vasari tells the story behind their first meeting, which took place when Michelangelo was no more than fifteen years old, in convincingly circumstantial detail:
    At that time the Magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici kept the sculptor Bertoldo in his garden on the Piazza San Marco, not so much as custodian or guardian of the many beautiful antiques that he had collected and gathered together at great expense in that place, as because, desiring very earnestly to create a school of excellent painters and sculptors, he wished that these should have as their chief and guide the above-named Bertoldo, who was a disciple of Donato [Donatello] . Bertoldo, although he was so old that he was not able to work, was nevertheless a well-practised master and in much repute . . . Now Lorenzo, who bore a very great love to painting and to sculpture, was grieved that there were not to be found in his time sculptors noble and famous enough to equal the many painters of the highest merit and reputation, and he determined, as I have said, to found a school. To this end he besought Domenico Ghirlandaio that, if he had among the young men in his workshop any that were inclined to sculpture, he might send them to his garden, where he wished to train and form them in such a manner as might do honour to himself, to Domenico, and to the whole city. Whereupon there were given to him by Domenico as the best of his young men, among others, Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci . . . 6
    Some modern scholars have unaccountably chosen to regard Lorenzo’s sculpture garden as a fiction. But it certainly existed. It contained an avenue of cypresses and a loggia, as well as Lorenzo’s collection of classical statuary. Vasari goes so far as to call it an art academy, in which case it would have been one of the first such institutions, although his actual description makes it sound a little more informal than that — a place where young men could study sculpture in their own time and make their first attempts in the medium, sporadically supervised by Bertoldo, the ageing tutorcum-custodian. Lorenzo the Magnificent had a habit of turning up unannounced to inspect the progress of his young protégés. 7 According to both of Michelangelo’s biographers, he took to Michelangelo more or less instantly.
    Condivi tells the story of how Michelangelo decided to make his own copy of one of Lorenzo’s classical statues:
    One day, he was examining among these works the Head of a Faun , already old in appearance, with a long beard and laughing countenance, though the mouth, on account of its antiquity, could hardly be distinguished or recognised for what it was; and, as he liked it inordinately, he decided to copy it in marble . . . He set about copying the Faun with such care and study that in a few days he perfected it, supplying from his imagination all that was lacking in the ancient work, that is, the open mouth as of a man laughing, so that the cavity of the mouth and all the teeth could be seen. In the midst of this, the Magnificent, coming to see what point his works had reached, found the boy engaged in polishing the head and,