Angel with Candlestick
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Michelangelo made two small free-standing figures (St. Proculus and St. Petronius) for the shrine of St. Dominic in San Domenico, and one angel candelabra for the altar of the chapel. Clearly, he had been looking at San Petronio’s major masterpiece, the great portal carved by Jacopo della Quercia nearly sixty years before. He adapted the older master’s directness of characterization, his admirable economy of gesture which concentrates the impact of the figure, and also the use of bulky draperies to give mass and weight.
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Madonna
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In this tondo Michelangelo placed, next to the stern Madonna, a Child whose pose recalls that of ancient funeral genii. Thus the overall effect, despite the apparently playful attitude of the Child, is deeply serious, and the Madonna has an almost prophetic force, because of her size, which bursts out from the frame of the relief.
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Model for a River God
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The torso of Michelangelo’s River God (c. 1526– 27), once bright white but long since mellowed to the silvery grey of driftwood, is an almost talismanic presence at the beginning of this exhibition, the third and final part of the Palazzo Strozzi’s reassessment of Mannerism. Made not from marble, but from clay mixed with plant and vegetable fibres, earth and sand, this preliminary model lies capsized somewhat, its position dictated by its precarious physical condition, all in disconcerting contrast to the exalted name of its maker.
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Moses
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This magnificent sculpture was executed as one of six that were to adorn the tomb of Pope Julius II, a project Michelangelo never completed. The marble sculpture appears to depict Moses with horns on his head, though some modern artists and historians claim that there were never intended to be horns. The depiction of a horned Moses was the normal medieval Western depiction of Moses, based on the description of Moses’ face as “cornuta” (“horned”) in the Latin Vulgate translation of Exodus.
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Pietà
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In the Pietà, Michelangelo approached a subject which until then had been given form mostly north of the Alps, where the portrayal of pain had always been connected with the idea of redemption: it was called the “Vesperbild” and represented the seated Madonna holding Christ’s body in her arms. But now the twenty-three-year-old artist presents us with an image of the Madonna with Christ’s body never attempted before. Her face is youthful, yet beyond time; her head leans only slightly over the lifeless body of her son lying in her lap.
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The Deposition
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Michelangelo’s last sculptures were two pietàs (or three assuming the Palestrina Pietà is his work). This one — known variously as “The Deposition,” “the Florence Pietà,” “the Bandini Pietà” and “The Lamentation over the Dead Christ” — depicts four figures: the dead body of Jesus Christ, newly taken down from the Cross, Nicodemus (or possibly Joseph of Arimathea), Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary. According to Vasari, Michelangelo made it to decorate his tomb in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.
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