Parsa explores the poetry of Michelangelo by analyzing the underlying messages expressed in his poems regarding faith, beauty, and love. Parsa engages in literary analysis, as well as an examination of the Neoplatonic philosophical underpinnings of Michelangelo’s poetry.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, better known simply as Michelangelo, has become a household name and icon of art history for his work as a sculptor and painter since achieving recognition with his 1499 Pietá for Cardinal Jean de Bilhères. However, what one may not immediately realize is the great breadth of Michelangelo’s work. Ranging from the architectural design of the Laurentian Library of the Basilica of San Lorenzo to philosophical studies at the Florentine Platonic Academy alongside Neoplatonic luminaries, Michelangelo’s prowess across a wide variety of artistic disciplines was well-established among his Italian contemporaries. As Giorgio Vasari writes, "the great Ruler of Heaven looked down and...resolved...to send to earth a genius universal in each art..so that the world should marvel at the singular eminence of his life and works and all his actions, seeming rather divine than earthy” (Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects). Though Michelangelo, alongside his contemporary Leonardo da Vinci, is the paradigm of the “Renaissance Man,” few have taken note of the synergy between Michelangelo’s different forms of art, particularly the synchronized dance between his visual and literary art. In this article, I’ll analyze a few pieces of Michelangelo's poetry and show how one can use the ideas reflected in his poetry to better understand the artistic philosophy behind his sculptures and paintings.
Some of Michelangelo’s best known works of sculpture and painting are works of sacred art; thus, an analysis of Michelangelo’s poetry on faith, specifically “Poem 46” and “Poem 285,” could help inform his particular concerns in his religious art. Michelangelo’s “Poem 46” is composed of four stanzas that come together to reveal Michelangelo’s thought process in creating works of statuary, a process seemingly inextricably tied to a theological and philosophical framework.
The first stanza opens with a discussion of the artistic process and connects the man-made movement of wielding an instrument of art to an analogous movement of God wielding his instruments of creation to both create man and allow man to create on Earth. This stanza centers on a rumination on the true Aristotelian Efficient Cause, or the entity that creates something, in the case of a work of statuary. While the answer seems like it would be the sculptor, Michelangelo states that the sculptor “deriv[es] its motion from the master [the hand of God] who guides it, / watches and holds it” (3-4). Michelangelo thus attributes the Efficient Cause of sculpture to the immortal divine artist and further explains this point in stating that the sculptor makes statues at “another's pace,” the pace the Lord decrees is appropriate. In the first stanza, Michelangelo also contemplates the mystery of the artistic process and how a mere artist can take a “crude” and primitive “hammer” and use it to shape a slab of “hard stone” into the similitude of a “human.” Michelangelo seems to be making a subtle biblical allusion and comparing the act of a sculptor to the act of God in the Book of Genesis in making man out of dust from the ground since both fashioned complex creations from primitive and primordial materials.
The second stanza explains how the Lord’s “action[s]” in Heaven, namely the creation of the universe, have allowed for the existence of art because God’s holy instruments of creation created every tool of human artistic creation, including the pencil, paintbrush, and chisel. This stanza further delves into the true Efficient Cause, the Lord, from the first stanza and explains how man’s creation of art could never come close to the majesty of the Lord’s creation. The second stanza states that “no hammer can be made without a hammer, by that living one every other one is made” (7-8). The idea that “no hammer can be made without a hammer” refers to the idea that man’s mortal mallet ceases to exist if the original heavenly hammer did not mold man into creation. Like the last stanza, Michelangelo builds on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, a late medieval philosopher and canonized Italian saint; the phrase “no hammer can be made without a hammer” references one of Aquinas’s cosmological arguments, the Argument from Causation. Aquinas’s Argument from Causation entails that all things that are caused must have been caused by something, and that there must be an Uncaused Causer who originally began the chain of causation. Michelangelo builds on Aquinas’s argument by appealing to a “living” hammer or a divine mallet that has allowed for the creation of “every other” mallet with the idea that God’s mallet was the original beetle to cause the creation of all other hammers.
The third stanza further develops the idea of God’s “living” or divine mallet by detailing the overwhelming power of the living hammer. Michelangelo acknowledges the far superior power of God’s hammer to his own by recognizing the power of God’s mallet, when he says, “a blow becomes more powerful the higher it's raised up over the forge” and “that one's [the living, divine hammer] flown up to heaven above my own” (9-11). Michelangelo reasons that since a hammer’s blow becomes more powerful the higher it is, God’s mallet which comes down from “heaven above” must be far more powerful than his “own” hammer.
The fourth stanza begins with a reflection on the importance of God to Michelangelo’s own work, as Michelangelo reflects on how his work would be futile and vain without the aid of the Lord. This is best seen when Michelangelo states that “my own [hammer] will fail to be completed unless the divine smithy…gives it that aid which was unique on earth” (12-14). Michelangelo concludes by acknowledging his need for God’s “aid” in granting his hammer the ability to succeed in creating a work of art out of a mere block of stone.
Michelangelo’s “Poem 285,” which was written in 1554, echoes a similar religious sentiment to “Poem 46,” but “Poem 285” substitutes the philosophical framework of the earlier poem with a profoundly intimate personal spiritual devotion. “Poem 285” is a Petrarchan sonnet composed of four stanzas and reveals a great deal about Michelangelo’s art, especially his fresco of the Last Judgement on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel and his marble statue of the Deposition.
In his first stanza, Michelangelo compares the “voyage” of his life to riding across a “stormy sea” in a “fragile boat.” It is worth noting that Michelangelo’s characterization of life evokes quite a universal sentiment that is expressed in many paintings, such as Thomas Cole’s Romantic painting of Manhood from Cole’s Voyage of Life painting series, as well as Rembrandt’s Baroque painting of The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. Michelangelo then discusses how his boat has at last arrived at the “common port all must pass through” to account for “every evil and pious deed” (3-4). Michelangelo’s “common port” refers to the particular judgement faced by each person at the end of their lives, when he is judged for both his sins and good deeds and either achieves eternal life by entering Purgatory or Heaven or has attained damnation in Hell. An important stylistic convention to take note of is that Petrarchan sonnets are written in iambic pentameter with alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. The alternation in the stress of the syllables conjures images of a tumultuous, undulating sea that surges high into the sky and frightfully crashes down. Michelangelo’s description of the voyage of life calls to mind the prayers of Jonah from inside the belly of the whale from chapter two of the Book of Jonah, when Jonah calls out, “The waters compassed me about even to the soul: the deep hath closed me round about, the sea hath covered my head…They that are vain observe vanities forsake their own mercy. But I with the voice of praise will sacrifice to thee: I will pay whatever I have vowed for my salvation to the Lord” (Jonah, 2:6-10). In fact, the rest of Michelangelo’s poem follows a similar pattern to Jonah’s turmoil within the belly of the whale progressing from consternation by being overwhelmed and surrounded by vast expanses and stretches of water to a rumination on the vanities of the world to a realization that salvation arrives from fulfilling one’s obligations to the Lord. From Jonah to Rembrandt, there appears to be a fascinating universality to the analogy of life as a storm-tossed sea awaiting and bracing for the final anchorage, and through poetic metrics, such as iambic pentameter, Michelangelo builds a similar tension in his poem as it rises up with the stress of one syllable and comes right back down with the next.
Michelangelo’s second stanza reflects on his own sins in recognition of his impending death and need to account for his vices and virtues at the “common port.” In the second stanza, Michelangelo reflects a concern for violating both the First and Second Commandments, which include not having any other Gods before the one God and not committing idolatry. Michelangelo explains how his affection for art made art into his “idol” and “sovereign,” violating the Commandments against false Gods and idolatry. Michelangelo’s concerns about committing sins of idolatry were especially germane in the Post-Reformation period, when Protestant leaders, such as John Calvin, were proclaiming religious art to be improper in worship. In his 1536 magnum opus Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin spends two chapters denouncing religious art, claiming that “images are unfit to represent the mysteries of God” (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Chapter 11). Given the rising concerns about idolatry in the 16th century, it may be possible that Michelangelo was influenced by the cultural milieu of rising apprehension towards religious art, especially as an artist whose corpus included a substantial amount of religious art. Aside from potential influence from the Post-Reformation background of his poem, Michelangelo’s concern about making art his “idol” and “sovereign” also reflects an intimate personal concern as well. The common interpretation of the Second Commandment’s decree against idolatry entails not only the creation and worship of physical idols but also holding man-made, tangible objects in higher regard than the Lord. The fact that Michelangelo claims that art has become his “sovereign,” a term often applied to a monarch or lord with ultimate authority over someone, seems to reflect Michelangelo’s personal concern that he has come to value art before God and in his quest to capture the beauty of art has lost sight of the beauty of the Lord. Though frequently called a Renaissance ‘master,’ Michelangelo’s poem reveals his anguish about having become a slave to his own master—the Arts. After reflecting on his misplacement of his priorities, Michelangelo concludes the second stanza with a rumination on how men prioritize “all” sorts of “things” “in spite of their best interests,” which are best served contemplating God.
Michelangelo’s third stanza holds a similar function as his second stanza, as Michelangelo continues to reflect on his sins in anticipation of his death and particular judgment; however, stanza three reflects on Michelangelo's concerns over his aimless notions of love. The stanza opens with a rhetorical question, “What will become of all my thoughts of love, once gay and foolish, now that I'm nearing two deaths?” (9-10). In this question, Michelangelo compares the meaninglessness of his “foolish” thoughts of love as he approaches death. Michelangelo’s “two deaths” refer to the Particular Judgement and Last Judgement. The Particular Judgment refers to the ‘particular’ fate of a person’s soul after his death, whereas the Last Judgement refers to the apocalyptic scene as described in the Book of Revelation, whereupon Jesus Christ will return to the Earth, the dead will be resurrected, reunited with their corporeal bodies and judged to go to either Heaven or Hell, with the souls in Purgatory being released into Heaven. While Michelangelo is “certain” of his Particular Judgement, the Last Judgement “looms over” him in anticipation of the end of days. Michelangelo’s use of the word “looms over” reflects a threatening and paranoid diction that is at odds with the statement about the Last Judgement in the Nicene Creed recited at the Mass, when the congregation utters “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” When we compare Michelangelo’s description of the Last Judgement “loom[ing] over” him with the description in the Nicene Creed that instructs the faithful to “look forward” to the Last Judgement, we come to better understand Michelangelo’s concerns about the fate of his own soul after death.
Michelangelo’s fourth stanza, his final stanza, concludes with repentance and contrition, where Michelangelo recognizes that art is not his ultimate purpose in life and a new effort to turn his love away from art and towards the love of Christ. Michelangelo’s fourth stanza contains the famous line that “Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to calm my soul, now turned toward that divine love that opened his arms on the cross to take us in” (12-14). This line provides a contrast and shift from the earlier parts of the poem. In the former stanzas, Michelangelo’s tone reflects a clear preoccupation and concern with the fate of his soul, as he reflects on his idolatry and aimless thoughts of love. However, in the last stanza, Michelangelo comes to realize that art can no longer “calm” his anxiety and can no longer bring him to peace. Instead of turning outward and attempting to reconcile his mortality with art, Michelangelo chooses to turn inward to a devotional and requited love of God.
At the age of 17, Michelangelo was struck on the nose by fellow artist Pietro Torrigiano, breaking Michelangelo’s nose and forever disfiguring him, leading to the famous quote from one of his poems to the Renaissance noblewoman and bluestocking Vittoria Colonna, where he says, “son dresser bruto” (I know I am ugly). In spite of his own unsightly appearance or perhaps as a consequence of it, Michelangelo spent his life in pursuit of beauty, specifically an immortal and incorruptible beauty. For Michelangelo, there appear to be three primary loci of eternal beauty: the divine beauty of God, the immortal beauty of the soul, and the enduring beauty of art. Michelangelo’s search for eternal beauty and ostensible triune organization of beauty aligns with Neoplatonic conceptions of beauty in Renaissance Italy. For instance, Marsilio Ficino also categorized beauty into three types: beauty of the soul, beauty of the body, and beauty of music (Ficino, De Amore). Given that we have already discussed Michelangelo’s poetry on faith and divine beauty in depth in the previous section, the next two paragraphs will be devoted to Michelangelo’s poems on the beauty of the soul and the beauty of art.
Michelangelo’s discussion on the beauty of the soul, beauty of art, and the interactions between those two types of beauty can best be seen in his series of four-line epigrams composed for the mourning uncle of his deceased pupil, Cecchino Bracci, who passed away at the tender age of fifteen. Michelangelo’s discussion of the beauty of the soul can best be seen in “Poem 182,” where he writes,
Death didn’t wish to lay Cecchino low
the usual way, with weight of year on year,
but so, though here interred, he’d reappear
in heaven, his youthful glamor still aglow.
Michelangelo personifies the force of Death to explain how Death did not want Cecchino to grow old and have to bear the increasingly heavy burden of the “weight of year on year.” Thus, despite the fact that Ceccino’s body is “interred” in the tomb Michelangelo constructed, Ceccino’s soul will “reappear in heaven” with all of his “youthful glamor.” Michelangelo’s poem draws a comparison between the beauty of the body and beauty of the soul and seems to suggest that one’s corporeal beauty is reflected in the beauty of his soul.
Michelangelo’s epigrams for Cecchino also help one understand the tomb Michelangelo constructed for Ceccino in the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Altar in Heaven (Santa Maria in Ara Coeli), which lays upon the highest peak of the Capitoline Hill in Rome. The tomb itself is constructed in two levels with a segmented pediment on each level. Each of the segmented pediments is held up by corbels, and in between both pediments lies an empty square space with the bust of Ceccino placed in front of the empty space. Michelangelo’s “Poem 216” helps conceptualize the relationship between the beauty of the soul and the beauty of art. Michelangelo writes,
Within this tomb our handsome Braccio’s laid.
As body gets its form from soul alone,
so here his spirit glorifies cold stone.
A handsome scabbard for a handsome blade.
Michelangelo begins the poem by referring to the physical tomb itself, which now contains the corporeal beauty of Cecchino. Michelangelo then progresses from corporeal beauty to the beauty of the soul by explaining how the “body gets its form from soul alone” (2). In this verse, Michelangelo references the Aristotelian concept of the Four Causes, specifically the idea that the human body is composed of a Material Cause and a Formal Cause. The Material Cause of the body would be blood, tissues, and organs, whereas the Formal Cause of the body would be the ‘blueprint’ of the person and the specific organization of the blood, tissues, and organs into organ systems that interact with each other in a unified human body. Michelangelo attributes the Formal Cause of the body to the soul, explaining that the soul provides the order for the material components of the body. In the next verse, Michelangelo proceeds to explain how Cecchino’s soul “glorifies” the “cold stone” of his tomb (3). Michelangelo appears to be explaining that it's the soul of a person that elevates and exalts cold stone into something greater, in this case, a funerary monument. Finally, Michelangelo explains how the beauty of the work of art that Ceccino is encased in reflects his own beauty as a “handsome blade” needs a “handsome scabbard” (4). It is important to note that there is some debate as to whether Michelangelo himself or one of his assistants created the tomb because the bust of Ceccino appears quite standard and ordinary and pales in comparison to Ceccino’s extraordinary beauty and the beauty of the tomb that Michelangelo describes in his poems. That being said, the work is a funerary monument, so a modest and humble depiction of the beauty of Cecchino may have been more decorous and decent than an elaborately decorated tomb.
Ultimately, our analysis of Michelangelo’s poetry leads us down a “stormy sea” on a “fragile boat” where we are confronted with a microcosm of the world of the Late Medieval and Renaissance Era. As we ride through the sea of Michelangelo’s poetry, we navigate our way through the natural theology of Aquinas and the ideas of Neoplatonic philosophers as we grapple with the mystery of the artistic process that, as Alberti claims in his De Pictura, seems to contain a “divine force” within it. While Michelangelo’s statuary, whether it be Moses or Bacchus, shows us the supreme majesty of art by invoking a sense of terribilità, his poetry invites us to look beyond “Il Divino” and confront the man behind the marble with all his concerns about the fate of his soul, hopeless thoughts of love, and seemingly endless pursuit of beauty in all its forms.
Michelangelo’s “Poem 46”
“If my crude hammer shapes the hard stones
into one human appearance or another,
deriving its motion from the master who guides it,
watches and holds it, it moves at another's pace.
But that divine one, which lodges and dwells in heaven,
beautifies self and others by its own action;
and if no hammer can be made without a hammer,
by that living one every other one is made.
And since a blow becomes more powerful
the higher it's raised up over the forge,
that one's flown up to heaven above my own.
So now my own will fail to be completed
unless the divine smithy, to help make it,
gives it that aid which was unique on earth.”
Michelangelo’s “Poem 285”
The voyage of my life at last has reached,
across a stormy sea, in a fragile boat,
the common port all must pass through, to give
an accounting for every evil and pious deed.
So now I recognize how laden with error
was the affectionate fantasy
that made art an idol and sovereign to me,
like all things men want in spite of their best interests.
What will become of all my thoughts of love,
once gay and foolish, now that I'm nearing two deaths?
I'm certain of one, and the other looms over me.
Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer
to calm my soul, now turned toward that divine love
that opened his arms on the cross to take us in.
(Cover Image: Michelangelo’s marble statue of the Pietá, depicting the scene of the Lamentation of Christ, via the Basilica di San Pietro (St. Peter’s Basilica) in Rome)
Parsa explores the poetry of Michelangelo by analyzing the underlying messages expressed in his poems regarding faith, beauty, and love. Parsa engages in literary analysis, as well as an examination of the Neoplatonic philosophical underpinnings of Michelangelo’s poetry.
Exploring a still life artist’s connection between virality, classic artistry, and love for his craft.
