The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance: With An Index To Their Works — John Shaqi
The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance: With An Index To Their WorksBerenson, Bernard
History
The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance: With An Index To Their Works
Berenson, Bernard
Art, Renaissance; Painters -- Italy -- Florence
[Page heading: MICHELANGELO]
First, his successes. Nowhere outside of the best Greek art shall we
find, as in Michelangelo's works, forms whose tactile values so increase
our sense of capacity, whose movements are so directly communicated and
inspiring. Other artists have had quite as much feeling for tactile
values alone,--Masaccio, for instance; others still have had at least as
much sense of movement and power of rendering it,--Leonardo, for
example; but no other artist of modern times, having at all his control
over the materially significant, has employed it as Michelangelo did, on
the one subject where its full value can be manifested--the nude. Hence
of all the achievements of modern art, his are the most invigorating.
Surely not often is our imagination of touch roused as by his Adam in
the "Creation," by his Eve in the "Temptation," or by his many nudes in
the same ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel,--there for no other purpose, be
it noted, than their direct tonic effect! Nor is it less rare to quaff
such draughts of unadulterated energy as we receive from the "God
Creating Adam," the "Boy Angel" standing by Isaiah, or--to choose one or
two instances from his drawings (in their own kind the greatest in
existence)--the "Gods Shooting at a Mark" or the "Hercules and the
Lion."
And to this feeling for the materially significant and all this power of
conveying it, to all this more narrowly artistic capacity, Michelangelo
joined an ideal of beauty and force, a vision of a glorious but possible
humanity, which, again, has never had its like in modern times.
Manliness, robustness, effectiveness, the fulfilment of our dream of a
great soul inhabiting a beautiful body, we shall encounter nowhere else
so frequently as among the figures in the Sixtine Chapel. Michelangelo
completed what Masaccio had begun, the creation of the type of man best
fitted to subdue and control the earth, and, who knows! perhaps more
than the earth.
[Page heading: LAST WORKS OF MICHELANGELO]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account