أنت هنا
قراءة كتاب Michelangelo
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
Lionardo Buonarroti-Simoni, was then Podesta of Caprese and Chiusi. His mother, Francesca di Neri di Miniato del Sera, died when he was only six years old, and some years later his father married Lucrezia Ubaldini. Michelangelo had four brothers: Lionardo, who was two years his senior; Buonarroto, born in 1477; Giovan Simoni, born in 1479; and Sigismondo, born in 1481. His foster-mother was the wife of a stone-cutter of Settignano and in later years he used to jokingly attribute{2} his vocation to the milk upon which he had been nourished. He was sent to school in Florence under Francesco da Urbino, but he busied himself only in drawing and neglected everything else. "Because of this he greatly irritated his father and his uncles, and they often beat him cruelly, for they hated the profession of an artist, and, in their ignorance of the nobility of art, it seemed a disgrace to have one in the house."[1]
The elder Buonarroti, however, was, like his son, more violent than obstinate, and he soon allowed the boy to follow his vocation. In April, 1488, Michelangelo, by the advice of Francesco Granacci, entered the studio of Domenico and David Ghirlandajo.
That was the most famous studio in Florence. Domenico was an indefatigable worker who "longed to cover with stories the entire circuit of the walls of Florence" and possessed of a calm, simple and serene spirit, satisfied merely to exist without tormenting itself over subtleties. This fortunate being, who died at forty-four, leaving an immense mass of completed work in which the magnificence and the moral force of Florence still live, was the best guide that could have been given to the young Michelangelo. Domenico was then, from 1486 to 1490, in the fulness of his power, and at work on his masterpiece,{3} the paintings in the Tornabuoni Chapel in S. Maria Novella.
It has been said that his influence on Michelangelo amounted to nothing, and it is true that we find no direct trace of it except in two drawings in the Louvre and the Albertina. Still, exact imitation is very rare with Michelangelo. He was made of too stubborn stuff ever to be much affected by masters or surroundings. He felt contempt for Raphael because he was impressionable, "and drew his superiority not from nature, but from study." I do not believe, however, that the time he spent in the school of Ghirlandajo had no effect upon him. Even if it did not influence his style or his method of working, he must have gained from the master of S. Maria Novella and from his wholesome work a healthy point of view and a physical and moral vigour which could have been given him by no other artist in Florence—not even the two great sculptors, Pollajuolo and Verrocchio, who were indeed not there at that time—and which acted as a powerful balance to the neuroticism of the Botticellian school. I do not doubt that Ghirlandajo helped to lay the foundations from which arose the art of the young Michelangelo devoted to the expression of force and so contemptuous of morbid sentiment.
Ghirlandajo's school was enthusiastically {4}open-minded toward everything interesting in art. It was eclectic and encouraged intellectual curiosity. Michelangelo while he was there studied passionately both the old and the new Florentine painters and sculptors: Giotto,[2] Masaccio,[3] Donatello, Ghiberti, Benedetto da Majano, Mino da Fiesole, Antonio Rossellino and possibly, even at that time, Jacopo della Quercia and also the Flemish and the German artists, then very much in vogue in Italy, especially at the court of the Medici.[4] He made a copy in colour of Martin Schongauer's Temptation of St. Anthony and went to the Florentine fish-market to take notes for it. Later on he contemptuously disowned Flemish realism, but a trace of it was left in him always and in many of his drawings there appears a certain taste, extraordinary in an idealist, for types of marked naturalism which are sometimes trivial or almost caricature. Condivi asserts that these first attempts of Michelangelo{5} met with such success that Ghirlandajo grew jealous.
"To take from him the credit of this copy (of the Schongauer) Ghirlandajo used to say that it came out of his atelier, as if he had had a part in it. This jealousy showed very clearly when Michelangelo asked him for the book of drawings wherein he had sketched shepherds with their flocks and dogs, landscapes, monuments, ruins, etc., and he refused to lend it to him. As a matter of fact, he always had the reputation of being rather jealous, because of his disagreeable treatment not only of Michelangelo, but also of his own brother, for when he saw the latter making good progress and showing great promise, he sent him to France, not so much for his benefit, as has been alleged, as that he himself might remain first in his art at Florence. I have mentioned this," adds Condivi, "because it has been said to me that Domenico's son was in the habit of attributing the divine excellence of Michelangelo to the training given by his father, who really did not help him in any way. It is true that Michelangelo never complained of him, but on the contrary praised him as much for his art as for his conduct."
It is very difficult to say how much is true in this story. I am reluctant to ascribe so contemptible{6} a jealousy to Ghirlandajo, and repeat it only because of the last line where Condivi is constrained to remark on the esteem which Michelangelo, when he was an old man, expressed for his former master. Such admiration for other artists is too rare with him not to have especial weight in this case.
There is no doubt that a disagreement did arise between the master and the scholar, for though Michelangelo had in 1488 signed a contract of apprenticeship which stipulated that he should remain three years with Ghirlandajo,[5] the very next year he went with his friend Granacci into the school of Bertoldo.
Bertoldo, a pupil of Donatello, was director of the School of Sculpture and of the Museum of Antiquities maintained by Lorenzo de' Medici in the gardens of S. Marco. I think that the real reason why Michelangelo separated himself from Ghirlandajo was that after a year of feeling his way he had just discovered the essence of his genius and was drawn toward sculpture with irresistible force. It was really from painting that he was separating himself and never afterward did he consider it as his art. We might almost say that if painting has immortalised him it is in spite of himself. He{7} never wished to be considered as anything but a sculptor.[6]
Two things drew him to Bertoldo: the hope of finding the tradition of Donatello and the fascination of the antique. He found something