Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling
|
The agony and ecstasy of art
REVIEW BY ANNE BARTLETT It's easy to see why Michelangelo's best works were his writhing, striving human figures, both painted and sculpted. He was a man who approached life as a battle—and he always saw himself as the underdog, no matter how much public acclaim he received. The four-year period he spent painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome provides a microcosm of Michelangelo's psychological world. He didn't want the commission, complained endlessly as he completed it, fought with his family back in Florence and considered himself underappreciated and underpaid throughout. Of course, the fresco he produced is universally regarded as one of the greatest works of one of the greatest periods of western European art. Author of the bestseller Brunelleschi's Dome, Ross King gives us an entertaining, informative account of the fresco's creation in his new book, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling. King's well-wrought mixture of history, art appreciation and modern scientific analysis of Michelangelo's techniques makes this often-told story worth reading, even for those who are familiar with the basic background. King has more than enough material to work with. Sharing the book's canvas with Michelangelo are two other larger-than-life figures: Pope Julius II, who strong-armed him into the job, and Raphael, the rival master who was painting the pope's private rooms as Michelangelo was agonizing over the chapel ceiling. Martin Luther, Erasmus and Niccolo Macchiavelli are among those who swell the crowd in the background. King is particularly effective at explaining the technical side of the project, such as pigment production and the application of the layer of plaster known as the intonaco. When he started the ceiling, Michelangelo was primarily a sculptor, unfamiliar with large-scale fresco work. As King shows, some early missteps created both a fungus and efflorescence of salt on the fresco surface, and as a result, the architect Sangallo, Michelangelo's friend from Florence, had to bail him out. The first half of the ceiling also has its compositional rough patches. But Michelangelo learned as he continued. The culmination was such masterpieces as the iconic Creation of Adam, the 20 struggling figures of The Brazen Serpent and the fantastically foreshortened Jonah. We know these works so well that we need King to remind us how innovative they were. Raphael himself was so amazed that he made additions to his own work in homage. King does a masterful job of recounting the great artist's triumph, giving readers a fascinating history of the fresco as well as an intriguing glimpse of Michelangelo's ability to overcome adversity, both real and imagined. Anne Bartlett is a journalist who lives in South Florida.
|
Support your 