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Example research essay topic: Michelangelo Buonarroti Life And Attitude - 1,145 words

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... of the despair of his soul through the statues which he named Dawn, Dusk, Day, and Night. He used these to symbolize the suffering of mankind. He says, It is because they are crying that they are alive; their suffering gives them all their beauty (Mid Years 5). In a famous verse regarding his work, Michelangelo refers to the despair of his soul: It is my pleasure to sleep and even more to be stone: As long as shame and dishonor may last, My sole desire if to see and to feel no more.

Speak softly, I beg you, do not awaken me (Mid Years 5). The four Florentine Slaves also described Michelangelo's work around that time. They were carved from deeper blocks that allowed more exploration of movement in depth and were less dependent on silhouette. These techniques revealed an emphasized focus on internal modeling (Hibbard 172). Michelangelo seemed to be further engrossed in the challenge of developing a certain idea. Perhaps too he eventually did fall in love with the mere process of revealing, of gradually uncovering his figures, and he may slowly have begun to feel the attraction of the potential and unrealized- of Becoming as opposed to Being.

But in 1520, when he was beginning to work these Prisoners, he would not have dreamed that the half-begun blocks were in any sense finished (Hibbard 175). When Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Clement VII in Rome to create a painting depicting The Last Judgment, he was not afraid of others criticisms. When Biagio da Cesena degraded his work and criticized the nudity in it, Michelangelo painted Biagio himself into the painting. Biagio was in Hell, shown with a great serpent curled around his legs, among a heap of devils (Final Days 1). As a pious Catholic rooted from his family, Michelangelo was spiritually tormented with the question of salvation versus the weight of his sins (Bull 330).

Michelangelo had painted The Last Judgment, intending to strike terror into those who looked upon it. His powerful illustration of the events in that day testified his belief in the significance of faith and the powerful fate of divine will. This reflected basic thoughts of the Catholic Reformation (Bull 295). The project was completed in 1541 as the largest fresco of the Renaissance (Final Days 1). A more sensitive influence on Michelangelo was his relationship with Vittoria Colonna. Between Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna a deep friendship developed out of which were to emerge some of Michelangelo's finest lyric poems, overflowing with admiration and devotion (Final Days 2).

Between 1538 and 1547, Michelangelo wrote poems for Colonna carrying the attitude of Platonism, or the attainment of bliss through admiration of a superior woman. More passionate poems that he wrote reflected the style of his contemporaries, referring to the unattainable desire for a cruel and beautiful woman (Final Days 3). For Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna symbolized tyranny of the senses. His long struggle with physical passion was almost over, and as with many other great sensualists, its place had been taken by an obsession with death (Hibbard 255).

As Michelangelo neared his final days, he became more and more engulfed in the idea of death. The body must perish. As the soul would be judged, he suffered increasingly with consciousness of sin. He shows in the expressions of art the struggle between the bodys craving for material satisfactions and the souls warning of the spiritual world (Plumb 205). His despondency seeped into his painting and erupted in his unconstrained poetry in grim and grotesque images and words, whose self-mockery and humour proved a kind of secular saving grace (Bull 330). The mood becomes graver; the confidence in physical beauty diminishes, and is at last rejected with a kind of horror (Plumb 205).

Some of Michelangelo's later works include the Crucified Christ and Madonna. They were examples of his old-age style. They showed signs of shaky fragileness in his aging. Panofsky has said, The dualism between the Christian and the classical was solved. But it was solution by way of surrender (Hibbard 287). Michelangelo was working on rough fragments of the figure of Christ in the Rondanini Piet six days before his death.

Commentators have tried to define a medieval tendency in Michelangelo's work and thought during later years (Hibbard 288). Certainly his attitude toward art had changed drastically- no longer was he the God-like creator of divine forms. But this is the result of old-age debility, and although it is strangely moving, its interest is chiefly autobiographical. Unlike Michelangelo's other unfinished works, this is hardly even a potential work of art.

It is a record of the old mans solitary need to express something more in stone, his beloved enemy. More and more isolated-in 1556 he wrote all my friends are dead- beleaguered at St. Peters, almost unable to write or draw, he was still obsessed with his original passion to create from stone. The Gothic, formless, anti-physicality of this wreck is unbearably pathetic (Hibbard 288 - 9). Utter despair befalls Michelangelo in his dying days.

He concludes his desolation and anguish saying: This is the state where art has led me, after granting my glory. Poor, old, beaten, I will be reduced to nothing, if death does not come swiftly to my rescue. Pains have quartered me, torn me, broken me and death is the only inn awaiting me (Final Days 6). Michelangelo Buonarroti is considered an individual without parallel, playing the roles of painter sculptor, architect, and poet simultaneously. Even in his own lifetime, he was regarded as divine. He was famous and respected for his versatility in the Renaissance period (Beck xiii).

The great figures of the Renaissance portray extraordinary versatility. Michelangelo was determinedly focused on sculpture, but did well when he conceded to paint the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel for Pope Julius II. He also excelled equally in architecture and could express profoundly in poetry when he was in the mood (Plumb 48). There are two essential ingredients that are brought out in unity in his artwork: passion for anatomy and consciousness of sin (Plumb 196). But fundamentally there is an unvarying aim: to use the human body as an instrument with which to reveal the ascent of the human soul (Plumb 205). Michelangelo lived a life of unique experiences among great men of the Renaissance.

He underwent an immense transformation during his lifetime, contributing different moods and styles to the development of his creations. WORKS CITED Beck, James. Three Worlds of Michelangelo. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Bull, George. Michelangelo: A Biography. New York: St. Martins Press, 1995. Hibbard, Howard.

Michelangelo: Second Edition. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1974. Michelangelo Buonarroti- Biography. Online. Internet. 18 October, 2000. Available: http: //www.

Michelangelo. com / buon /bio. html. Plumb, John H. The Italian Renaissance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961.


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