Analysis Of Michelangelo And The Pope's Ceiling By Ross King

None of Michelangelo's other works ever won him quite the same renown as his fresco in the Sistine Chapel, a building now virtually synonymous with his name. Almost immediately after Michelangelo unveiled it in 1512, the fresco became like an academy for artists, who had since long been using the Sistine Chapel as storehouse of ideas. They treated works of Michelangelo as some kind of a portfolio through which they concocted new ideas. The prestigious style of buon fresco generated intense interest, in particular, among a new generation of painters that pioneered a movement later known as mannerism. Ross King's purpose in writing this book is to detail Michelangelo's magnificent struggle with personal, political, and artistic difficulties during the painting of the Sistine ceiling. He also gives an engaging portrait of society and politics during the early sixteenth century.
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling recounts the beguiling, fascinating story of the four extraordinary years Michelangelo Buonarroti spent laboring over the 12,000 square feet of the vast ceiling made up of concave vaults, spandrels, and lunettes. The works marked an entirely new direction in which he had brought the power, vitality, and sheer magnitude of
works of sculpture into the realm of painting.
The commission, however, did not commence on an auspicious note, as Michelangelo had meager experience as a painter, let alone working in the delicate medium of fresco and painting bent-back the concave and curved surfaces of vaults.
Having been a masterful sculptor who had unveiled the statue "David" four years prior to the pope's summon, his rival Bramante took advantage of his lack of experience to thwart Michelangelo's ambitions and so to destroy his reputation. Such alleged conspiracy as perceived by Michelangelo made the dreadful commission all the more invidious. He would either refuse the Sistine project, and in doing so incurred the ire of Pope Julius II, or else failed miserably in his attempt through lack of
experience.
The outcome of Michelangelo's works had proudly (and vindictively) served as a triumphant reply to the sneer of his insidious rival, who had once stated that he would be unable to paint overhead surfaces because he understood nothing of foreshortening. What Michelangelo had achieved was exactly the sheer opposite: he demonstrated how vastly more daring and successful his foreshortening technique had become following four years on a special scaffold he designed for the purpose. It was through the power, arm-raced politics, vicious personal rivalries, and a constant paranoia over the possible hiatus of the commission that Michelangelo achieved a virtuoso performance at the summit of his powers.
Battling against illness, financial difficulties, consistent changes of assistantships, domestic problems, family drama, predatory rival of the commission, and the pope's impatience and petulance, Michelangelo created his masterful scenes - The Creation, The Temptation, The Flood, The Crucifixion of Haman, The Brazen Serpent, David and Goliath - so beautiful that the telling movements lent the figures their verisimilitude and intense drama.
The book is not a critique of Michelangelo's art works, but to a small extent it does make comparison to works of Raphel, a brilliant young painter who was working in fresco on the neighboring Stanza del Segnatura, the papal apartments. Michelangelo's ability to generate, in a short space of time, so many of hundreds of postures for the Sistine's ceiling stunned the young artist. Raphael's works after 1512, the unveiling of Michelangelo's fresco at Sistine, manifested absorption of Michelangelo's style: the tumult of bodies, throngs of figures in dramatic, muscle-straining poses showing gradations of tone along anatomically accurate knots of muscles.
King also highlights the political importance of art during this time in history. Most of the population was poor middle class citizens who could not read or write. Art was used in churches and public buildings to educate the masses on important biblical and historical events. It was also used as political propaganda to show a person who was really in charge. For example in the Sistine one of the ten medallions, painted beside the creation of Eve, depicts Alexander the Great kneeling before the high priest of Jerusalem. Similar to this was a stained glass window made for the Vatican, showing Louis XII bowing before Julius. The point here is that kings and rulers must submit to the will of religious leaders. These images of kings bowing before popes send extremely powerful messages to the common man who considers his king to be second only to God. Ross King, in my opinion, does a sensational job of detailing Michelangelo and his work. He gives incredible detail into the artist's personal life and relationships, as well as his views on everything from politics and war to love and family. In the book King takes a narrative approach that produces a beautifully written story with a magnitude of historical information. He really takes his readers into the life of Michelangelo and into the sixteenth century.