First published as an article in Rome in The Italian Insider Newspaper November 18, 2016, Lecture in Gloucester, MA, December 3, 2016.
Atlas Slave,
Michelangelo, 8' high, Academia, Florence
In Michelangelo’s unfinished carvings there are some completed parts alongside
parts still waiting to be found in the block. This can create in the viewer a
sense of anticipation, that one is involved with the sculptor in the process of
discovery. It is as if you are looking over Michelangelo’s shoulder as he
carves.
As a young artist, I picked up a marble boulder from the side of the road and
tried to carve it with a screw driver. It was near the Vermont Marble Company
quarries in Proctor, Vermont. After a while I was able to find some better
tools. But still, there was no teacher. Michelangelo became my only teacher as I
studied his unfinished carvings. They presented, like an archeological artifact,
a physical record of his carving process.
The point chisel left deep parallel grooves. I imagined the sculptor wielding a
heavy hammer sending sizable marble chips flying as the marble began to yield
its hidden beauty. After this, and overlaying this, were fine cross hatched
lines left by a toothed chisel. It traveling around the form and was less
penetrating and more caressing than the point.
Michelangelo’s carving method was one of seeing and then finding what was hidden
in the block of marble. There was a Neo-Platonic element in this that was
consonant with his theology and his philosophy of life.
The process can be called subtractive sculpture, taking away what is not
essential. The more usual procedure in sculpture is to build up, often adding on
with clay.
Not all sculptors can carve because carving presupposes the ability to see
inside the block of marble. I learned that the great Florentine sculptor was
able to aid his vision of what the block contained by finishing some parts of
the sculpture prematurely, rather than employing the more normal practice of
roughing it out all over. He was then able to measure from finished parts using
his eyes and then proceed to find more shapes hidden within the block.
Captives;
Atlas, Bearded, Young, and Awakening, Galleria del Academia, Florence.
There are particular works where the uncovering, discovering process is very
evident. Form emerges from the marble block in a most dramatic way in his
Captives, sometimes called Slaves, that are in the Academia in Florence. And the
block is still very much a reality, vying with the figures. Indeed, the figures
struggle to free themselves from the block. Hence the designation Captives.
The Captive title also alludes to the fact that the figures were meant to
symbolize those who were set freed from foreign rule by the warrior liberator
Pope, Pope Julius II. The eight- foot high figures were intended to grace
Julius’ massive marble tomb that Michelangelo designed for inside Saint Peter’s
Basilica.
With the Captives, he dived into the depth of the block to find the energy of
the torso and only then, determined where limbs would be and how big they would
be. Everything was measured from the dynamic center.
Some believe that he intended to finished the captives. I am pleased that he did
not because of what we can learn from them. There are two finished figures in
the Muse de Louvre, one is called the Rebellious Slave and the other the Dying
Slave.
Further study reveals that Michelangelo’s method of carving was a method of
uncovering. Indeed, of uncovering something in the block, something not yet
visible, but, seen in the artist’s mind.
There are other works left unfinished where we can surmise that he left them
that way because of the way they looked. He made an aesthetic judgment.
The two large round Madonnas with Child, the two tondi, are examples of this.
They have tool marks from the roughing out point chisel, the subia, as well as
extensive modeling with the tooth chisel, the gradina. Often, I have polished
marble because I wanted to see its color and to see how it would take a shine.
And there are times that I have regretted the absence of the tool marks because
of the fact that the marks take the light and describe form with clarity.
Madonna and Child with the Infant Baptist (Taddei
Tondo), Royal Academy of Arts, London.
On the bottom of the relief of
The Madonna and Child with the Infant
Baptist we can see the point chisel gouges. The point was also used to
shape the hair of The Baptist. A smaller point made the parallel lines next to
the Virgin’s upper arm. Similar marks are on the Christ Child’s hair. The
gradina, the toothed chisel, followed the point in rounding the forms. Then a
flat chisel would remove tool marks and prepare the surface for abrasion and
then a polish. The most finished parts of the sculpture are the Christ Child’s
body and the drapery.
Pitti Tondo, Museo
Nationale del Bargello, Florence.
This
Pitti Tondo clearly shows the
progression from point marks in parallel lines, called the mason’s stroke, to
the refined tooth chisel and delicate modelling. The finishing of high points in
the relief is also evident.
After centuries of sculptors not carving themselves, there appeared in modern
times a movement called “ Direct Carvers”. Sculptors wanted contact with the
stone themselves and they wanted the finished piece to look like stone. I was
influenced by that seemingly honest and direct idea. On one of my first
carvings, I made a rough shape of a face on a boulder. Then after a month of
looking at what I had done in the modern way, leaving a general shape, my study
of Michelangelo asserted itself and prompted me to see inside the block. I
peeled back the marble to reveal a face inside, and I left evidence of the
process of uncovering. I uncovered it as if breaking through an egg shell. It is
called Egg Head Muse.
Egg Head Muse, detail.
Sullivan, marble, life size.
Michelangelo's last Pieta,
Pieta Rondanini, the marble that he was working on six days before he
died, presents a dramatic picture of how the sculptor continued to change his
marble compositions.
Pieta Rondanini, Sforza
Castle in Milan.
There is a tragic and heroic element in the fact that at his advanced age the
struggle with marble continued. Gone was the ease and grace of the twenty four
year old man who carved the Rome Pieta. As if the Pieta Rondanini were a drawing
that could be erased and corrected, he made major changes with the hammer and
chisel. It is touching that he ran out of marble and was carving the head of
Christ out of the Virgin’s shoulder. It is a very flat unfinished face. There is
the remnant on the top of the veil of the Virgin of her face looking in a
completely different direction that reveals an earlier version of the work.
These elements show us how he thinks, he continues to draw, he trusts his eyes.
This separates him from other sculptors, even Gian Lorenzo Bernini the master of
flying marble drapery. It was necessary for Bernini to follow his models
exactly. For Michelangelo, it is a
dialogue, it becomes like combat, about discovery and change. It is interesting
that Raphael painted a portrait of Michelangelo in his School of Athens,
in
the Papal Apartment of Pope Julius II, as Heraclitus, the
Greek philosopher who said, “The only thing constant is change.
Pieta Rondanini, detail.
On the
Rondanini there has always been a
mystery about the large arm separated from the figures. It is connected with a
small tab of marble. Its scale is much bigger. It must have been part of an
earlier, larger Christ figure. Many bizarre speculations have been written about
why the arm is there. I wanted to know why. I knew that I had to see the back of
the sculpture. When I taught some drawing classes at Harvard University, I used
to have long conversations with one of the most renowned Michelangelo scholars
in the world, Professor John Shearman. He told me that he also had to see the
back of a marble, the Moses in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli,
in Rome. He went over the ropes and was grabbed by the guards. They let John go
because he was a suave British gentleman and he spoke perfect Italian. I told
him I was going over the ropes to see what was behind Michelangelo's last Pieta.
When I went to Milan in 2005 to see the Rondanini, there was no need to
go over the ropes. The sculpture was in the middle of the room, not in a niche
as it had been for so long.
Behind the big arm was a copy of it, smaller and attached to the new thin body
of the Christ figure. When he was done copying the large arm, the old sculptor
would knock it off with one blow of the hammer. This never occurred because of
his death.
Michelangelo’s “Non-Finito” refers to leaving his many marble carvings
unfinished. There still exists, among experts, considerable debate on the
subject. Traditional art historians with their extensive knowledge of peripheral
events in the artist's life will maintain that he was pulled from job to job by
patrons, princes, and popes. On the contrary, romantic Modernists insist that he
left works unfinished purely for reasons of self- expression.
Renaissance artists were only paid when works were finished. This did not stop
Michelangelo from leaving some works unfinished. Contemporary scholar, Professor
William Wallace has pointed out that Michelangelo had a sense of his own place
in history and that he would always leave one job to go to a better one, to a
better opportunity. His sense of himself allowed him to resist external
pressures to finish works. Therefore, we can conclude that Michelangelo acted
intentionally with regard to the non finito.
Michelangelo's carvings are dynamic because carving is not just a means to
reproduce something conceived by modeling in clay. Carving is a way of thinking,
a way of seeing what is not yet there. Each tool leaves a surface rich in
suggesting forms. When I carve even the point chisel breaking off large chunks
of stone can leave a surface that will suggest, for example, drapery folds. It
is similar to Leonardo's advice to artists to study stains on a wall or on paper
and envision a landscape. There is room for inspiration, not like in conceptual
art which is a one-way process.
The masters worked with materials and believed in inspiration, a breathing in.
Descartes’ disembodied philosophy, I
think therefore I am, led to Conceptual art, art that is just an idea
disconnected from matter. Carving marble is very collaborative as opposed to an
imposition of will upon the material. In fact, if you are determined to impose
your will on marble and not work with it and respect it, it will have the last
word.
Michelangelo’s unfinished sculptures can tell us a great deal about how he
thinks as an artist.
