History of Art 351-001 The Art and Poetry of Michelangelo

The life and art of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) offers an exciting context for intensive study of verbal and visual creativity in early modern Europe. For his contemporaries, and for many later generations, Michelangelo exemplified the ideal modern artist postulated in the art literature and cultural theory of the Italian Renaissance. The seminar will examine Renaissance theories of style and invention in order to grasp the rhetorical strategies and poetic "figures" that inform both his rough-hewn sonnets and his eloquent marble sculptures. Hence we will attend closely to certain drawings that show the artist thinking on paper, in both line sketches and fragments of verse. Other main topics include Michelangelo's verbal and visual self-fashioning as a grouchy genius, his Neoplatonic theories of artistic inspiration, his preoccupation with the body as the primary source of visual and verbal metaphor, and the religious anxiety that accompanied his intense devotion to craft and physical beauty. We will analyze both the language and the genres of his poetry--notably the sonnet, the madrigal and the epitaph--as well as the language employed by contemporary critics of his art, such as Giorgio Vasari, Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Pietro Aretino, and Ludovico Dolce. Close inspection will be made of Michelangelo's drawing techniques, as well as his use of color and treatment of stone surfaces, in order to observe the figurative effects of his working of materials. We will study a considerable portion of his production in sculpture, painting and architecture while examining his prodigious reputation and influence, particularly in the court settings of Medici Florence and Papal Rome. (Willette)