Great Art Ep.6: David, Bandini Pietà and Rondanini Pietà (Michelangelo) | NTD Arts & Culture

Strength, determination and righteous faith, the image of Michelangelo's David has eclipsed all other Davids in its compelling depiction. It looms not just with power but with grace and revival as Professor Rosand explores. As the story goes, the very block of marble from which David was carved was a challenge, where others saw only a misshapen, difficult piece of stone to work with, Michelangelo could already see the figure residing within it. The monumental figure of David, and it is a colossal figure, was intended as a great symbol of the Florentine Republic for its relatively brief last flickering in the early 16th century, before the Medici come back and turn Florence back into a, well, basically a duchy. But the figure of David, an Old Testament figure, a young figure, favoured by God, that is the champion of his people, etc., this becomes a political figure for Florence, but for Michelangelo in particular it becomes a way for him to demonstrate the magnificence of his art, that is the control of the human body, the control of anatomy, the control also, however, of narrative and expression. Narrative in the sense that he holds the sling, and expression in the sense that the face itself is fraught with some interesting psychology. Namely, from the frontal view the figure is determined with a great shock of hair, weighs heavily to give the focus, but from the side, that is from the frontal view of the body, we see the profile, but the frontal view of the face shows a face filled with awe, and it is often assumed that, well, this is Michelangelo creating awe, because this is David looking at the giant Goliath that he has to face. Another possibility is that this is David seeing God, as Moses, another one of Michelangelo's figures, does see God. But it is the anatomy itself in which Michelangelo emerges as the unrivaled master. It's not just anatomy, it's the grace of it, it's the revival, very much the revival of the freestanding of the freestanding monument, colossal marble sculpture, that is part of the Renaissance, the revival, the rebirth of antiquity. And this is, these are the qualities that then will, actually this comes before, but these are the qualities that are transferred to Christ, that is in the perfection. And this was a challenge, because the block of marble itself had been quarried in the 15th century. It was intended to be for a group of figures in the Cathedral of Florence. An earlier sculptor had botched the job, so it was already carved in part, and nobody knew what to do with it, and Michelangelo came along and said, I'll take the challenge. And it's a fairly typical story in many ways, that is, of an artist taking up a challenge that nobody else could meet, and it set of other artists as well. But that's, I mean, this is the result of that, and it established his fame in his hometown. And right after this, he is set into competition with Leonardo, two of them painting on walls of the new town hall. Neither one of these has survived. I mean, neither one was finished either. Michelangelo was called away by the Pope before he could finish it. He has absolute control, as I say, of the anatomy. But, I mean, what's interesting, and what students will often point out, is that it seems like a rather awkward figure. The hands are much larger than they should be. The feet are larger. And, I mean, there are various ways of dealing with that. One of them, of course, is to simply say, well, this is supposedly an adolescent, and is not yet grown into his body. Another way, of course, is to realize that this is, I mean, this is the hand of, this is the right hand of God. I mean, this is the hand that would be favored. And the, it is, it is holding the rock. And it is, as you say, it is, it is filled with tension. And this, again, is something that is learned in part from, not so much from looking at cadavers on a slab, but from looking at ancient, surviving ancient works of art, works of sculpture. I mean, the, the, the veins that throb here, they are there quite literally as signs of vitality. They throb, and, and you, you find this, most, I suppose, most famously on the underbellies of horses on the Parthenon in Greece. Well, actually now, of course, in, in London. But, where, where, they're not there simply because of the, to demonstrate that the artist knew anatomy. But what they do is, as you yourself recognize, they throb. They, they add that very notion of, of vitality and, and tension. And that's, I mean, that's what, what runs through this entire figure. And as I said, it's, it's the contrast between the profile view and the frontal view of this face that is so telling. I mean, the, in the profile, he seems all determination. In the, the frontal view is filled with, let's just say, psycholo, psychological complexity. Whether awe or fear or whatever, but those eyes are, are, are fraught. Michelangelo worked on more than one Pietà in his lifetime. Later in life, grappling with questions of salvation and fate, he begins on a very different Pietà that is in part self-portrait. Professor Rosent explains what the great sculptor attempted before he abandoned the work and began yet another Pietà. He spends the last two decades of his life dedicated to the body of Christ. And perhaps here, in these last works, we can further understand what that faith meant to Michelangelo. The theme of the Pietà stays with Michelangelo. I mean, the first, late 1490s in Rome. Then the second one is a group still in Florence. And it shows, it shows more than just Mary and, and Jesus. It has the figure of Nicodemus, one of the attendants at the crucifix, well, at the deposition when he's taken down from the cross, lowering the body of Christ. And then on the other side, the figure of Mary Magdalene. And not the least, one of the most interesting parts of that is that the face of Nicodemus is a self-portrait. Michelangelo himself is there holding the body of his savior. And for a Christian, of course, the, and Michelangelo was very much a Christian. His poetry is, we're now in the 1540s and 50s, his poetry is increasingly involved with questions of salvation. Questions of, not so much questions, but descriptions of the, the shedding of blood by Christ for our salvation, etc. He's a profound Christian in that respect. And that profundity comes out in the, in the sculpture itself. And that, that is, is in part the setting for the sculpture itself. So that here we have the body of Christ being lowered by Michelangelo, that is, as Nicodemus, into the lap of the Virgin. So this is, it's a much more active, as, as you can see, there is a, something's missing, a leg. I mean, Christ has only one leg. There was a leg that came over the Virgin's leg. You can see where the marble would have been attached, came over the Virgin's leg and then came down. That is the figure of Mary Magdalene, who was favored by Christ in the sense that she was the one who anointed his body before burial. She was the one who was often, she is the one who is, is, as it were, given the privilege of being the professional mourner. She's the one who is, is histrionic, whereas the Virgin Mary herself swoons at the, at the crucifixion. She is a little bit out of proportion here because Michelangelo eventually gave it up, gave up the, the sculpture, gave it away to a, a disciple. Finished or not, that's, that's one of the interesting debates because going back to Leonardo, for example, what happens in the 16th century is that the very notion of finished becomes questioned. Not, not by everybody, but, but there is, for example, the, it's the beginning of the collection of drawings, rapid notations, unfinished, the kinds of things that Leonardo was talking about, but also doing. The idea of the unfinished work as giving us access to the creative process is, is, is important here. So that the question of finish is, I'll, I'll come back to that here. The question of finish is, is, has to do with, with the question of polish. Now in this particular case, Michelangelo's assistant to whom he gave the sculpture as a gift, recarved it, and so all of this is, is not, this is not Michelangelo. What is Michelangelo is, is the rough carving here, and, and probably because this is the way Michelangelo worked, the, the core of the body itself of Christ, because when he, when he started to polish, even when he started to carve, he would carve from the inside out, that is in the sense that the, the core, the torso of the body was the most important, important part of it, and then he would move out to the limbs and the head. But in this case, the unfinished is important, because what it does is to create a material continuity between the head of Christ and the torso of Christ, and they share the same stone. There's relatively little differentiation there. However, there is, this is, this is a period in which an audience existed, a public existed for the unfinished work, not the clergyman, not in church, but among the collectors, among those who appreciated, appreciated the creative process, which is, has been growing. Well, he gave this up, and at that point, he was mostly involved, and to the end of his life, will be involved as an architect of St. Peter's, again claiming that it wasn't his art, that he was not an architect. But in order to, as Vasari tells us, in order to keep his hand in it, he got another, he quickly carved another pieta, and that other pieta was there just for his own, it's too much to say, pleasure, but his own art, his own sense of engagement. And it's, it's, what's interesting is that he chose to do another pieta, that is the body that he was working on, and this is true in his drawings, of late drawings, and as I said, it's also true in the poetry. The last, let's just say the last, he dies in 1564, in the last decade and a half, at least, maybe two decades of his life, he is deeply committed to the body of Christ, that is to the body of his savior. So in the case of the Florentine pieta, or deposition, which is really what it is, he puts himself into direct contact, and that means in perpetual contact with the body of his savior. He's not the only one who does this, I mean, Titian does it in the painting for his own, his own tomb in the same way. He puts in a self-portrait of himself as a saint, reaching out and holding the body of Christ, which, and this is, this is the way painters, and rather artists, could give themselves special, how shall we put it, special theological access to, to God. But he does this, and he, he clearly finishes it, and polishes it. As you can see, it's, it's, that's an arm. It, yes, it's broken, because he then undoes it. It's, it's only for his own, he keeps, he keeps on with the hammer and the chisel. He clearly has finished it, and look at the power of that arm, and the detail of its surface, or even of these legs, which belong to an earlier version of, this is one known as the Rondonini pieta. He starts re-carving it. I mean, you can see aspects of the old face here. This is, this is again what Leonardo was talking about. When is a work of art finished? He finished it, he finished it, and then he started redoing it, and he was going to do it down almost to nothing. And this is not for any purpose other than the doing, and the body has been shrunk. I mean, he's taken it away, and it's five days before his death, saying that he found him at work, hammer and chisel at work on this. And as you can see, it's getting down to nothing. What is important for Michelangelo is this, the act of staying in touch, and the same is true of the drawings, his late, his late drawings of the, of Christ on the cross. I mean, he does them over, and over, and over, and over again, until they're almost obliterated. It's as though his hand is in touch. I mean, this would have been for anybody else a, well, for this artist, doing the body of Christ is really an act of salvation, for his own salvation.