Tag: Michelangelo

Sometimes the way into a person’s story is circuitous and sometimes it is more direct. I take both tacks when researching the narrative of Michelangelo.

Reading the artist’s letters is more like observing a laundry list of pressure-laden responsibilities, familial crises and financial liabilities. I enjoyed much more the image of Michelangelo that Dr. Abigail Brundin painted when exploring his stature through the relationship he had with a woman poet in her book Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation. In it, the professor at St. Catherine’s College Cambridge, wrote, “Michelangelo’s acknowledged position as the foremost visual artist of his generation, patronized by popes and rulers, lent him a ‘star quality’ and a celebrity status that caused many of the most powerful individuals of his generation to seek him out, despite his relatively lowly beginnings. Colonna herself also enjoyed some celebrity status (although at all times, of course, carefully qualified by the limitations appropriate to her sex), as testified to by the frequency and popularity of printed editions of her works.”

Colonna was titled, her rank as the Marchesa di Pescara placing her above Michelangelo in stature but only in terms of birth. They met in Rome sometime between 1536 and 1538 while he was working on the Tomb of Julius II and The Last Judgment. In The Letters of Michelangelo, editor E.F. Ramsden notes three meetings that took place at the church of San Silvestro di Monte Cavallo at Capite during which Michelangelo, Vittoria and Francisco de Holanda—a Portuguese artist—among others discussed cultural topics. The latter left a written account of how Michelangelo and Colonna engaged in serious conversations about the status of art and the role of the artist in society. I present several literary adventures exploring how their relationship might have played out in modern times if you’d like to read more about their bond.