THE DAVID AND THE CARTOON OF PISA
Family affairs recalled Michael Angelo to Florence in the spring of 1501.
He returned full of honours gained in Rome, and took up his position as
the first sculptor of the day. His next commission came from Cardinal
Francesco Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius III. A contract was signed on
June 5, 1501, by which Michael Angelo agreed to complete some fifteen
statues of male saints within the time of three years, for the Piccolomini
Chapel, in the Duomo of Siena. A Saint Francis was begun by Piero
Torrigiano, and may have been finished by Michael Angelo. The rest of the
four works that were the outcome of this commission can have had nothing
to do with the chisel of the sculptor of the Madonna della Febbre and the
David. Michael Angelo must have merely contracted to supply them, as the
master sculptor of a sculptor's yard, possibly furnishing the designs
himself. There is a drawing at the British Museum of a bearded saint,
cowled and holding a book in his left hand, which may be a design for one
of these inferior works.
[Image #5]
DAVID
THE ACADEMY, FLORENCE
(_By permission of the Fratelli Alinari Florence_)
[Image #6]
DAVID
IN THE PIAZZA
(_By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence_)
[Image #7]
SAINT MATTHEW
THE COURT OF THE ACADEMY, FLORENCE
(_By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence_)
In August of the same year, 1501, Michael Angelo began the colossal statue
of David, that used to stand in the Piazza and is now in the Academy at
Florence. The first contract for this work, signed between Michael Angelo,
the Arte della Lana, and the Opera del Duomo, is dated August 16, 1501. It
states "That the worthy master, Michael Angelo, son of Lodovico Bonarroti,
citizen of Florence, has been chosen to fashion, complete, and perfectly
finish the male statue, already rough hewn and called the giant, of nine
cubits in height,(77) now existing in the workshop of the Cathedral, badly
blocked out afore-time by Master Agostino,(78) of Florence. The work shall
be completed within the term of the next ensuing two years, dating from
September, at a salary of six golden florins(79) per month; and whatever
is needful for the accomplishment of this task, as workmen, wood, &c.,
which he may require, shall be supplied him by the said Operai; and when
the said statue is finished, the Consuls and Operai, who shall be in
office, shall estimate whether he deserve a larger recompense, and this
shall be left to their consciences." Michael Angelo began to work in a
wooden shed, erected for that purpose near the Cathedral, on Monday
morning, September 13, 1501, and the "David" is said to be almost entirely
finished in a note, dated January 25, 1503,(80) when a solemn council of
the most important artists, then resident in Florence, met at the Opera
del Duomo to consider where the statue should be placed. What an original
way of deciding aesthetic questions! They came to the admirable conclusion
that the choice of the site should be left to Michael Angelo. Amongst
those who spoke at the meeting were Francesco Monciatto, a wood carver,
who suggested that the statue should be erected in front of the Duomo,
where the block was originally meant to be set up; he was supported by the
painters Cosimo Rosselli and Sandro Botticelli. Giuliano da San Gallo
proposed to place it under the Loggia dei Lanzi, because "the imperfection
of the marble, which is softened by exposure to the air, renders the
durability of the statue doubtful." Messer Angelo de Lorenzo Manfidi
(second herald) objected because it would break the order of certain
ceremonies held in the Loggia. Leonardo da Vinci followed San Gallo; he
did not think it would injure the ceremonies. Salvestro, a jeweller, and
Filippino Lippi supported Piero di Cosimo, who proposed that the precise
spot should be left to the sculptor who made it, "as he will know better
how it should be." Michael Angelo elected to have his David set up on the
steps of the Palazzo Vecchio, on the right side of the entrance. Its
effect in that position may be well seen, appropriately enough, in a
picture by the same Piero di Cosimo (No. 895), in the National Gallery,
where the Piazza della Signoria forms the background to a portrait of a
man in armour. Il Cronaca, Antonio da San Gallo, Baccio d'Agnolo, Bernardo
della Cecca, and Michael Angelo were associated in the task of
transporting the giant from the workshop near the Duomo to the Piazza
della Signoria. It was encased in planks and suspended upright from great
beams. "On May 14, 1504, the marble giant was dragged from the Opera. It
came out at twenty-four o'clock, and they broke the wall above the door
enough to let it pass. That night some stones were thrown at the Colossus
with intent to injure it; a watch had to be set over it at night, and it
made way very slowly, bound as it was upright, suspended so that the feet
were off the ground by enormous beams with much ingenuity. It took four
days to reach the Piazza, arriving on the 18th at the hour of twelve. More
than forty men were employed to make it go, and there were fourteen logs
to go beneath it, which were changed from hand to hand. Afterwards they
worked until June 8, 1504, to place it on a pedestal where the Judith used
to stand. The Judith was removed and set upon the ground within the
palace. The said giant was the work of Michael Angelo Buonarroti."(81) The
great marble David stood in the Piazza three hundred and sixty-nine years;
it was removed to the hall of the Accademia delle Belle Arti in 1873 for
its better preservation. It has suffered very little from its exposure in
the fine air of Florence, but the left arm was broken by a huge stone
thrown during the tumults of 1527. Giorgio Vasari and his friend Cecchino
Salviati collected the broken pieces and brought them to the house of
Michael Angelo Salviati, father of Cecchino. They were carefully put
together and restored to the statue in 1543. The David was the first work
by Michael Angelo that displayed the awe-inspiring quality known as his
_Terribilita_; from the fierce frown of the brow to the sharp, strained
forms of the feet and toes there is an expression of strenuous force
struggling against an almost overwhelming power. The force of the David
may succeed against Goliath; but in Michael Angelo's later works the
struggle always appears to be a hopeless one, nobly as his Titans fight
against fate and omnipotence. The face of the David is a development of
the Saint George of Or San Michele, by Donatello, and the figure is of the
same type, only this triumphant boy of Michael Angelo's shows a more exact
study of the antique than the naturalistic work of his master. In
Donatello the planes are given as flat, and their junctions are sharp and
hard; in Michael Angelo they are carefully rounded and finished with the
grace of the antique and of life. The details of the head, although so
high up, are so absolutely perfect that the separate features have been,
and are still, the models set before all students of art when they first
begin to study the human figure, and they are known as _the_ nose, _the_
eye, _the_ ear, and _the_ mouth. We have noticed that the young student is
more interested in his work when he is told that they are the features of
_the_ David. Michael Angelo carved his giant without modelling a full-size
clay figure first, but with the guidance of drawings and small wax models
about eighteen inches high only, carving the figure out of the block in
the way that is so well seen in the unfinished Saint Matthew in the court
of the Accademia delle Belle Arti, in Florence. There are two small wax
models of the David in the Casa Buonarroti at Florence, said to be Michael
Angelo's designs for this figure, but they are of very doubtful authority.
Later in his life he is said to have worked from full-sized models, as
Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his _Trattati dell' Oreficeria_, &c.(82)
Vasari tells the story of how Michael Angelo contented the Gonfaloniere
and silenced his criticism of the David: "While still surrounded by the
scaffolding Pier Soderini inspected the statue, which pleased him
immensely, and when Michael Angelo was re-touching it in parts, Soderini
said to him that the nose appeared to him too big. Michael Angelo, knowing
that the Gonfaloniere was close under the statue and that from this point
of view the truth was not to be discerned, mounted the scaffolding, which
was as high as the shoulder of the giant, and quickly took a chisel in his
left hand with a little of the marble dust from the platform and began to
let fall a little of it at each touch of the tool, but he did not alter
the nose from what it was before; then he looked down to the Gonfaloniere,
who stood watching below: 'Look at it now,' said Michael Angelo. 'I like
it better. You have given it life,' said the Gonfaloniere," rubbing the
dust out of his eyes.
On August 12, 1502, Michael Angelo undertook another commission for the
Republic--another giant David. This time it was to be in bronze, two cubits
and a quarter in height; in the casting he was to be assisted by Benedetto
da Rovezzano. It has been suggested that the pen and ink drawing in the
Louvre is a design for this second David, but the drawing of an arm on the
same sheet is so like the right arm of the first David that it is more
probably an early idea for the first David, in which we see that Michael
Angelo's design needed more room than the cramped block of marble allowed;
it makes us wonder the more at the marvellous freedom of action that he
managed to get out of the cramped stone. The bronze David was intended for
the French statesman, Pierre de Rohan, Marechal de Gie, as a present from
the Florentine Republic, but before it was finished the Marechal fell into
disgrace and could be of no further use to the Florentines. The Signory
therefore determined to send the bronze to Florimond Robertet, Secretary
of Finance to the French King. A minute of the Signory dated November 6,
1508, informs us that the bronze David, weighing about 800 pounds, had
been "packed in the name of God," and sent to Signa on its way to Leghorn.
Florimond Robertet placed it in the courtyard of his chateau of Bury, near
Blois. It remained there for more than a hundred years, then it was
removed to the chateau of Villeroy, and disappeared no one knows whither.
On April 24, 1503, the Consuls of the Arte della Lana and the Operai of
the Duomo ordered Michael Angelo to carve out of Carrara marble twelve
Apostles, each four and a quarter cubits high, to be placed inside the
church. One was to be finished each year, the Operai paying all expenses,
including the cost of living for the sculptor and his assistants, and
paying him two golden florins a month. They built a house and workshops
for him in the Borgo Pinti; it was designed by Il Cronaca. Michael Angelo
lived there rent free until it was evident that the contract could not be
carried out. He then hired it on a lease, but on June 15, 1508, the lease
of the house was transferred to Sigismondo Martelli. The St. Matthew, now
in the courtyard of the Accademia delle Belle Arti, in Florence, is the
only work we know of resulting from this commission. The apostle is just
emerging from the marble, and shows us Michael Angelo's method of work.
Vasari says: "At this time he also began a statue in marble of San Matteo
in the works of Santa Maria del Fiore, which, though but roughly hewn,
shows his perfections, and teaches sculptors how to carve figures from the
stone without maiming them, always gaining ground by cutting away the
waste stone, and being able to draw back or alter in case of need." The
deep chisel marks in the stone are sometimes as much as four inches long,
and their directions indicate that Michael Angelo worked equally well with
either hand, a fact confirmed by Raffaello de Montelupo in his
"Autobiographie."(83) "Here I may mention that I am in the habit of
drawing with my left hand, and that once, at Rome, while I was sketching
the arch of Trajan from the Colosseum, Michael Angelo and Sebastiano del
Piombo, both of whom were naturally left-handed (although they did not
work with the left hand excepting when they wished to use great strength),
stopped to see me, and expressed great wonder."
[Image #8]
THE MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH THE CHILD SAINT JOHN
THE BARGELLO, FLORENCE
(_By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence_)
The Florentine love of bas-relief explains to some extent their extreme
devotion to the tondo, or circular shape, in paintings and in sculptures.
According to Vasari, it was at this time that Michael Angelo carved two
tondi: one for Bartolommeo Pitti, now in the Bargello at Florence, and the
other for Taddeo Taddei, now at Burlington House, in the Diploma Gallery
of the Royal Academy, London. It was acquired by Sir George Beaumont, and
is the most valuable work the Academy possesses. If it were in an
out-of-the-way palace in Florence many of us would see it more frequently
than we do now, although we have only to climb a few steps to visit this
glorious work any day we are in Piccadilly. Both of these reliefs
represent the Madonna and Child, with the child St. John. The one in the
Bargello appears to be the earlier; the composition is very beautiful and
simple, and fills the circular space admirably. The Madonna is seated
facing the spectator, and looks out full towards him with an enigmatical
expression on her proud features; the Child stands beside her, His elbow
on her knee, as in the Bruges Madonna. The St. John is only roughly cut,
but the movement and forms are so well realised under the marble that one
does not wish for any further finish. In the Royal Academy tondo the
Madonna is seated more to the side of the circle, and is in profile; the
Child reclines upon her knee, clinging to her arm, startled but interested
by the little bird St. John has brought to show Him (a favourite motive
with Italian artists). The head and shoulders of the Madonna and the torso
of the Child Jesus are the only parts that are near completion, yet the
whole group is so much there that we do not ask for another touch; in
fact, the works of Michael Angelo were finished from the very first
strokes. The rough charcoal drawing upon the block of marble, could we see
it, would have been complete to us, only Michael Angelo could add anything
to it; and so it is with every fragment of stone or other piece of work by
his hand, from the lightest charcoal drawing to the great marble fragments
in the grotto of the Boboli Gardens. They are complete to us; the thing he
thought is there, and the art is there, and we are satisfied.
[Image #9]
THE HOLY FAMILY
THE UFFIZI, FLORENCE
(_Reproduced by permission from a photograph by Sig. D. Anderson, Rome_)
Another tondo executed about this time is the painting now in the Uffizi,
the only easel picture known with certainty to be by the hand of Michael
Angelo. This Holy Family, with naked shepherds in the background, was
painted for Angelo Doni, the same man whose portrait was painted by
Raphael. Vasari says that Michael Angelo asked seventy ducats for the
work, but that Doni only offered forty when the picture was delivered.
Michael Angelo sent word that he must pay a hundred or send back the
picture. Doni offered the original seventy; but Michael Angelo replied
that if he was bent on bargaining, he should not pay less than one hundred
and forty. In this composition the Madonna is seated upon the ground,
forming a pyramid, of which the heads of Joseph and the Child form the
apex; her lithe and strong form has a Greek loveliness as she turns
quickly and receives the beautiful Child on to her shoulder from the arms
of Joseph. Never in any painting have the drawing and modelling of the
human figure been so perfectly executed as in the figure of this Child and
the arms of the Madonna; the hands and feet are modelled with the delicacy
of a Flemish miniature, and at the same time have a beauty and suavity of
modelling and a magnificent choice of line altogether Italian. On either
side of the central triangle the spaces between it and the circumference
of the tondo are filled by the introduction of the infant St. John and
some nude shepherds; the landscape background is austere as the mountain
tops of some primeval world where such titanic beings as these of Michael
Angelo's alone could dwell. The old painters loved to decorate their
Madonna pictures with all the most beautiful things they could think of,
or most loved. The Florentines with fair and pleasant gardens; the
Umbrians with spacious colonnades, distant landscapes, and rare skies; the
Venetians with fruits and garlands of foliage and fruit, and even
vegetables, if they had a particular regard for them, as Crivelli had for
the cucumber. One painter only before this time decorated his pictures
with nude human figures, Luca Signorelli. Michael Angelo may have seen a
Madonna of his, with two nude figures in the background, executed for
Lorenzo de' Medici, and now hung in the Gallery of the Uffizi. Michael
Angelo, who knew the beauty of the human form better than any one, would
never be content to decorate his tondo with any less beautiful offering
after seeing this picture by Signorelli. The tondo form was a favourite
one with Signorelli. His two pictures of this shape in Florence perhaps
helped Michael Angelo in the three compositions we have been considering;
and this is the only debt Michael Angelo owes to the Umbrian painter.
Their way of looking at the nude and their ideals of its beauty are so
absolutely different, the one from the other, that possibly the Florentine
could hardly bear to look at the work of the Umbrian.
[Image #10]
THE CARTOON OF PISA
FROM THE MONOCHROME AT HOLKHAM HALL
(_By permission of the Earl of Leicester_)
In August 1504, Michael Angelo was commissioned to prepare cartoons for
the decoration of a wall in the Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Palazzo
Vecchio, opposite the wall for which Leonardo da Vinci was already
preparing designs. Michael Angelo had a workshop given him in the Hospital
of the Dyers at San Onofrio, under the date October 31, 1504; a minute of
expenditure shows that paper for the cartoon was provided. Leonardo's
design was the famous "Fight for the Standard." Michael Angelo chose an
episode from the war with Pisa, when, on July 28, 1364, a band of four
hundred Florentines were surprised bathing in the Arno by Sir John
Hawkwood (Giovanni Acuto) and his cavalry, then in the service of the
Pisans, a subject that enabled Michael Angelo to express his delight in
the beauty of the human form, and his power of drawing and foreshortening
the naked limbs of the bathers as they hurry out of the river and don
their armour at the sound of the alarm. This great central work of Michael
Angelo's prime has disappeared, and we must be very careful in studying it
to allow for the weakness of the work of the copyists and engravers who
preserved what little record of it is left for us, especially in the
drawing of the nude. If we compare the vault of the Sistine Chapel with
the contemporary engravings we shall be able to estimate the enormous
difference between the cartoon, which may have been the greatest work of
art produced in Italy, and the copies of it that exist. The most complete
copy of the cartoon is the monochrome painting belonging to the Earl of
Leicester, at Holkham Hall. There is a sketch of the whole composition in
the Albertina Gallery at Vienna, and the line engraving by Marc Antonio
Raimondi of three principal figures with a foolish Italian rendering of a
German engraved landscape in the background, utterly destroying what
little Michael Angelesque dignity the engraver was able to get into the
figures, with his poor knowledge of the nude. The best remnants we have
are some few of Michael Angelo's own studies from the nude, done
especially for this composition; they are full of the power, vigour, and
naturalism peculiar to this period, rude forms hacked out of the paper
with a broad pen, altered with charcoal, chalk, white paint, or anything
handy and effective; from them we must try and imagine the power, breadth
and dignity of the great composition. The work was done upon ordinary
paper, stretched over canvas or linen fixed on a wooden frame, like the
few cartoons by the great masters that have come down to us. The outlines
were usually pricked, and when finished the cartoon was cut into
convenient sizes for pouncing on the wall or other foundation upon which
the picture was to be painted, unless the artist took the precaution of
putting a plain piece of paper under the original drawing and pricking
both together and transferring the outlines by the aid of the second
sheet. These cut-up cartoons became the property of the whole workshop,
and were used by the pupils when they wished. No doubt the roughness of
this treatment soon destroyed many of them. Vasari, who cannot have seen
the Cartoon of Pisa, gives us a long, enthusiastic description of it,
ending with some helpful notes as to the materials with which it was
drawn, and an account of its effect upon contemporary artists. He
continues: "In addition, you discovered groups of figures sketched in
various methods, some outlined with charcoal, some shaded with lines, some
rubbed in, some heightened with white-lead, the master having sought to
prove his empire over all materials of draughtsmanship.(84) The craftsmen
of design remained therewith astonished and dumbfounded, recognising the
fullest reaches of their art revealed to them by this unrivalled
masterpiece. Those who examined the forms I have described, painters who
inspected and compared them with works hardly less divine, affirm that
never in the history of human achievement was any product of man's brain
seen like to them in mere supremacy. And certainly we have the right to
believe this; for when the cartoon was finished and carried to the hall of
the Pope, amid the acclamation of all artists and to the exceeding fame of
Michael Angelo, the students who made drawings from it, as happened with
foreigners and natives through many years in Florence, became men of mark
in several branches. This is obvious, for Aristotele da San Gallo worked
there, as did Ridolfo Grillandaio, Rafael Santio da Urbino, Francesco
Granaccio, Baccio Bandinelli, and Alonso Berugetta, the Spaniard; they
were followed by Andrea del Sarto, il Franciabigio, Jacomo Sansovino, il
Rosso, Maturino, Lorenzetto, Tribolo (then a boy), Jacomo da Puntormo, and
Pierin del Vaga, all of them first-rate masters of the Florentine school."
Benvenuto Cellini's account is important, for he himself copied the
cartoon in 1513 just before it disappeared. He says: "Michael Angelo
portrayed a number of foot soldiers, who, the season being summer, had
gone to bathe in the Arno. He drew them at the moment the alarm is
sounded, and the men, all naked, rush to arms. So splendid is their
action, that nothing survives of ancient or of modern art which touches
the same lofty point of excellence; and, as I have already said, the
design of the great Leonardo was itself most admirably beautiful. These
two cartoons stood, one in the Palace of the Medici, the other in the hall
of the Pope. So long as they remained intact they were the school of the
world. Though the divine Michael Angelo in later life finished that great
chapel of Pope Julius, he never rose half-way to the same pitch of power;
his genius never afterwards attained to the force of those first studies."
These years spent under the shadow of the Duomo, away from which no
Florentine is happy, working at his sculptures and drawings, were probably
some of the happiest years of Michael Angelo's whole life.