Fyne Times Gay and Lesbian Magazine, UK

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Birth: 6th March, 1475
Place of Birth: Caprese, Tuscany, Italy
Nationality: Italian
Job Title: Sculptor, Painter, Architect, Writer
Partners: Gherardo Perini, Cecchino dei Bracci, Thommaso de’Cavalieri, Vittoria Colonna many unknown
Died: 18th February, 1564, Rome, Italy

Computers and modern technology have completely changed the face of art over the past twenty years. Artists can summon up any image they want and within a matter of hours, email it around the world. The distance from creative thought to reality is growing shorter by the day. Very few significant pieces of art take more than a year to produce and creativity has adopted a very instantaneous feel.

For this month’s Gay Great, however, art was anything but instantaneous. A man who toiled day and night for many years on one project, often sacrificing cleanliness and health along the way, he forged from marble and paint some of the most breathtaking pieces of art in the world with little more than his own two hands.

Michelangelo Buonarroti was born to a family of very minor nobility in Caprese, Tuscany. From the very outset, his family was ripped apart by his mother’s bad health. Unable to care for her brood, all of the Buonarroti children found themselves living with other families and the siblings were scattered far and wide. Michelangelo was sent to a modest family of stonecutters, a placement that created the unlikely beginnings of a great career. Before he was ten, Michelangelo knew exactly what constituted a good cut of marble as well as knowing how to dress it in preparation for an artist’s chisel. From that small age, he already had a good ‘hands on’ experience of the very material that would come to make him a renaissance superstar.

His father, still keeping a commanding hand on his children from afar, was keen to see Michelangelo become a man of letters and like many noblemen of the time, considered art little more than a trade. He was insistent that Michelangelo learnt Latin, mathematics and the classics with a view to forwarding the dwindling nobility of the Buonarroti family name. But the headstrong boy had other ideas. He refused lessons and instead turned to a local student of art, six years his senior, for some tuition. By the age of 13, he had outgrown his tutor and moved onto a professional apprenticeship with Domenico Ghirlandaio, with whom he spent a year, learning the fine art of fresco painting.

With word of the young boy’s talents spreading, it wasn’t long before he was invited to join the court of Lorenzo de Medici, the current ruler of the Florentine Republic and a notorious patron of the arts. Lorenzo had a school especially for promising young artists to learn, experiment and flourish. There, Michelangelo received instruction from leading artists and theorists of Florence who helped guide his thoughts towards modern theories of piety and platonic idealism. Sadly his education under the Medici family abruptly ended with the death of Lorenzo and a period of unrest in Florence. The Medici court, including the school, was disbanded.

Michelangelo was sent instead to the Gardens of San Marco to continuehis studies. Now a young man, his mind started to turn to thepracticalities of his art, especially that of the human form. He wantedto know how he could create images of the human body that were as closeto real life as possible and he knew from his contemporaries thatlooking at the outside was not enough. He needed to delve deeper. Inexchange for carving a Jesus for their new cross, the monks at a localmonastery allowed him access to corpses in the hospital. Withdissection very much frowned upon, it was a risky deal, but one whichwas Michelangelo felt was essential for his future work.

Michelangelo took his first trip to Rome, the centre of the art world,in 1496. There, he gained a valuable chance to extensively studyclassical sculpture as well as the current work of his contemporaries.Michelangelo also found the trip a chance to gain his first majorcommission and within a month of his arrival, he had been asked by aRoman nobleman to produce a full-sized statue of Bacchus, the Roman Godof Wine. Impressed with his work, the French Ambassador to the Holy Seecommissioned him to produce a dramatic statue for his own funeralmonument.

The result was the Pietà, a hunting representation of the Virgin Mary cradling a frighteningly realistic Jesus in her arms. So accomplished was his Pietà that few could believe it was the work of a man in his early twenties. When Michelangelo overheard two members of the public citing it as a work of another artist, he was outraged. In the middle of the night, he broke into the chapel and boldly carved his name across Mary’s chest, clear for the world to see. The incident was a typical of Michelangelo’s character. Ever since a young age, he had been labelled ‘difficult’, ‘stubborn’ and ‘fanatical’. As a grown man, his whole life revolved around his work to such a degree, he often went months without washing and days without eating.

However, other passions were also stirring beneath the surface. The concept of being ‘homosexual’ was not one Michelangelo would have understood. Had the term been in common use during his time though, he would almost certainly have privately admitted to being one. From the adoring affections for his tutors, he had grown into a man obsessed by the masculine form, both in his work and in the bedroom! In the city of Florence, he was well known as a ‘Sodomite’ and would often ‘take comfort’ in the arms of his models. His work, filled with idealistic images of male beauty, encapsulated perfectly his personal desires.

In Florence, a semblance of peace had been established with the return of the Medici family to power. The local Wool Traders guild decided to commission a series of statues to symbolise the strength of Florence, one of which had already been started and abandoned by a local artist. The block of marble was already twenty years old when the original attempt was made, and then it had lain for yet another twenty years afterwards. Only Michelangelo could turn this poor grade forty year old stone into a masterpiece. He was called upon and he gratefully accepted the commission.

The result was better than anybody in the Florence could have reasonably expected. Standing five metres tall, the statue was a pure ode to the male form, perfect in every way. Rumours were rife that the statue was in fact the image of one of Michelangelo’s models, called David, and that the biblical reference was added to hide the true origins of the beautiful figure. However, this has never been proved.

But the statue was set for a cool reception, despite its genius. For most of his professional life, Michelangelo had been surrounded by enemies, most of who were intimidated by the precocious talent of the young artist. One such enemy was the eminent scientist and artist Leonardo de Vinci. Sadly for Michelangelo, he was on the panel deciding where the statue should be placed. Due to the ‘low grade of the marble’, he suggested that David be placed outside the town hall and not in the cathedral as planned. The decision did little to mend the rift between the two artists.

Michelangelo had little time to argue. Pope Julius II summoned him to Rome to create sculptures to adorn his tomb. However, funding for the project soon ran out. Julius II thought that whilst the young sculptor was ‘in town’ he could be assigned the job of painting the Sistine Chapel. Knowing Michelangelo specialised in sculpture and not painting, his rivals in Rome pushed the Pope into commissioning him right away, hoping that his reputation would be ruined by a terrible job. Michelangelo initially refused the commission, but Julius II was adamant he was the man for the job. Knowing his enemies were behind him, knives at the ready, Michelangelo took a risk and asked for carte blanche from the Pope. Julius II agreed and Michelangelo set about planning the most elaborate interior design job ever in history!

He made a start right away, aided by a group of artists. However, things did not run smoothly. The plaster was going mouldy in days and the team of artists were just not up to the standard Michelangelo wanted. Before long, he had sacked his ‘team’ and started working alone with only his assistant for support. For five years, he lay on his back twenty metres above the ground, night and day, painting the frescos only a few inches from his face. The task stretched him to the limit artistically, emotionally and physically. Knowing the final result would stun the world, he fiercely guarded his work from view, allowing only the Pope to inspect it. When the ceiling was eventually revealed, nobody could believe one man had completed it. Many thought the hand of God himself was the actual creator. Today, 50 million visitors a month flock to the chapel. Few can argue with its place as one of the wonders of the artistic world.

'David' by Michelangelo

Romantically, things were taking a dramatic turn as well. In 1532, he met a young nobleman called Tommaso de Cavalieri. Michelangelo was struck by a romantic feeling that simply would not go away. He wrote sonnet after sonnet for the man as well as producing some rather ‘personal’ sketches for his eyes only. For thirty odd years, the two were constant companions, but Michelangelo’s passions did not end there. During his relationship with Cavalieri, he also wrote about some deep feelings for other men in his life, including the sixteen year old Cecchino dei Bracci for whom he wrote forty eight funeral epigrams after his untimely death. Later, as he approached sixty, he would also befriend a widow called Vittoria Colonna. Many historians aiming to disprove his homosexuality cite Colonna as his lover, although she was probably little more than his ‘fag hag’.

In his working life, Michelangelo had added architecture to his list of talents. He first designed the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo and later designed and oversaw the building of St Peter's Basilica in Rome. Now verging on elderly, he was nonetheless also called back to Rome to produce yet another fresco for the Sistine Chapel, that of the Last Judgement. The resulting fresco was by far the biggest ever created and caused quite a stir, especially for its excessive use of nudity (many of the figures in his frescos had underwear painted on them a few years after his death).

As the years rolled by, Michelangelo proved to be fitter and stronger than most men his age. However, his longevity was both a blessing and a curse. Although it afforded him the time to produce even more stunning artworks, he far outlived all of his friends and soon became an extremely lonely man. A further frustration was his slowing hand and failing eyesight, although onlookers claimed he could still chisel at twice the speed of a younger man even late into his eighties. By 1564, his age had caught up with him and in February of that year he died of a ‘slow fever’. Although his body was initially interred in Rome, his thoughtful nephew stole it days later and brought it back to Florence, the place Michelangelo always felt he belonged.

Although computers have made images more realistic, music note perfect and architecture technically brilliant, there are few modern pieces of art that make us stop in our tracks and gasp. When a visitor first looks up to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, it is not just the clarity of the work, the accuracy of human form or even just the sheer beauty that strikes hardest; it is the fact that it is the work of one man, lying on his back for five years. This is more than artistic genius; he achieved the apparently impossible. Michelangelo defied human capabilities and stretched himself to achieve something so great that many thought the hand of God himself was the actual creator.