La seconda scultura che Michelangelo eseguì per l’Arca di San Domenico a Bologna è il SAN PROCOLO, alto poco meno di 60 centimetri.
Lo rappresentò per quello che era, cioè un forte soldato romano cristiano martirizzato a Bologna dai Romani al tempo di Diocleziano: la tunica corta dei soldati chiusa in vita dalla cintura, il mantello, alti calzari e molto probabilmente una lancia nella mano destra che è andata persa.

Anche in quest’opera è chiaro lo stile michelangiolesco, figura solida, volto accigliato, atteggiamento teso e sicuro evidenziato dal modo di tenere il mantello sulla spalla sinistra, non più delicata e femminea come le figure del Rinascimento.

Nel 1572 fra Ludovico da Prelormo custode dell’ Arca scrive:

“La vigilia del padre San Domenico il povero sventurato fra’ Pelegrino converso roppe la statua di San Procolo, la gettò a terra in più di cinquanta pezzi. Io né ho mai avuto in ottanta anni il più intenso dolore al cuore di questo. Mi credeva certo di morire; vennero i Padri tutti a confortarmi, e molti maestri periti ne l’arte, e così la portarono via e fu aconzia [aggiustata] alla foggia al presente si vede.”

E infatti la figura presenta una serie di rotture più o meno restaurate; chiara quella della testa riattaccata grossolanamente.

La terza delle sculture che Michelangelo eseguì per l’Arca di San Domenico è quella di SAN PETRONIO, vescovo e patrono di Bologna, posto al centro dell’Arca tra gli altri due santi precedentemente eseguiti da Niccolò dell’Arca

Il Santo guarda davanti a se, porta la tiara e un lungo mantello dalla caotiche ma studiatissime pieghe chiuso da un fermaglio davanti al petto, più complesse dei mantelli degli altri due Santi.
Il volto è riconoscibilissimo come opera di Michelangelo.

La caratteristica particolare è la città di Bologna che tiene in alto tra le mani, sostenendone il peso a fatica sbilanciando l’anca e tendendo i tendini dei polsi; Michelangelo si è ispirato alla statua dello stesso Santo eseguita da Jacopo della Quercia e posta sulla porta centrale della basilica di San Petronio di Bologna, ma in controparte.

Vasari in the Lives, referring to Michelangelo, writes of:

…un Dio d’amore, d’età di sei anni in sette, à iacere in guisa d’huom che dorma…

[…a God of love, aged from six years to seven, lying in the guise of a sleeping man…]

alluding to the marble statuette that Michelangelo had sculpted in 1496 upon his return to Florence, when he was once again hosted by Lorenzo dei Medici the Popolano, cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent.

We also know about it thanks to a letter from Antonio Maria Pico della Mirandola dated 1496 to Isabella d’Este, where he writes:

… Un Cupido che giace e dorme posato su una mano: è integro ed è lungo circa 4 spanne, ed è bellissimo; c’è chi lo ritiene antico e chi moderno; comunque sia, è ritenuto ed è perfettissimo.

[… A Cupid lying and sleeping resting on one hand: it is intact and is about 4 spans long, and it is beautiful; there are those who consider it ancient and those who consider it modern; in any case, it is considered and is very perfect.]

The statue was “four spans” long, i.e. about 80 cm, but has been lost, and the proposed identification with the Sleeping Cupid preserved in the Museum of Palazzo San Sebastiano in Mantua is much discussed and unlikely.

It was commissioned by the Medici. It was 1496, the year in which Savonarola and his followers censored every work of art considered licentious; so it was that the Putto was brought to Rome and buried in a vineyard to make it “antique” and sell it as a Roman artefact. Michelangelo was probably unaware of it.
The trick was successful, so much so that it was purchased by Raffaele Riario, Cardinal of San Giorgio, a famous art collector, through the intermediary Baldassare del Milanese for 200 ducats. But the Milanese only brought Michelangelo an advance of 20 ducats.

Riario realized he had been cheated, but the work was so perfect that instead of wanting his money back he wanted to meet the artist who had sculpted it. He then sent his banker friend Jacopo Galli to Florence to bring the author of the Putto to Rome. Galli convinced Michelangelo, unaware of the scam, that having arrived in Rome in the presence of the cardinal with a letter of introduction from Lorenzo dei Medici the Popolano, having only had 20 scudi in Florence, he wanted his sculpture back.
Riario became furiously angry with Michelangelo, saying that he had paid for it and it belonged to him.
It was with this event that Michelangelo saw a new world of work open up in Rome largely through Galli, a very important and influential banker, who hosted him in his palace.

And in fact a few days things began to go better: on 4 July 1496 Cardinal Riario asked him to sculpt a pagan work for him, the BACCHUS. He completed it in a year, delivering it in 1497.
The mythological divinity is represented in a naturalistical way with the insecure gait of a young god drunk on wine, the contrapposto pose is slightly unbalanced, the head bent and the eyes distorted by the liquor, the body is soft and slightly feminine also highlighted by the belly slightly swollen also due to drinking. He holds the cup of wine in his hand, and two bunches of grapes hang between his curls. With his other hand he holds the leopard skin, an animal dear to the god.

Hidden behind him, a young satyr leaning on his left leg in a seductive pose eats grapes sitting on a cut tree trunk. The beautiful satyr also has a function of support and reinforcement of the work whose weight falls on the leg on which the satyr rests.

Cardinal Riario rejected the work, which was too little similar to the Roman depictions of Dionysus and therefore too lascivious for a member of the Church.
The banker Galli collected it with great pleasure and placed it in the center of his garden. The Dutch painter Maarten Van Heemserck saw the work in the Riario garden in 1532 and drew it. The cup and the right hand appear missing and the penis also appears to have been broken: the hand and cup seen today are an ancient addition.

Bacchus is preserved and exhibited at the Bargello Museum.

Posthumous statuary bronze casting from a cast made on the original by the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry of Florence

More information on this bronze sculpture, here.

Lorenzo the Magnificent had hosted Michelangelo for 4 years in his palace in Via Larga, having him at the table with him and with various guests every day, including the humanists of the Platonic Academy.
In 1492, upon the death of Lorenzo, Michelangelo was exiled from the Medici palace. He was forced to return to his father’s house.

Vasari in his “Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects” of 1568:

…Era da poco morto Lorenzo il Magnifico quando il giovane Michelagnolo non ancora ventenne si accinse a scolpire un Crocifisso di legno, che si posa sopra il mezzo tondo dell’ altare maggiore, a compiacenza del priore il quale gli diede comodità di stanze…

[…Lorenzo the Magnificent had recently died when the young Michelagnolo, not yet twenty years old, set about sculpting a wooden Crucifix, which rests above the half round of the main altar, at the pleasure of the prior who gave him comfort of rooms…]

It was in this period that Michelangelo dedicated himself to the study of human anatomy through the dissection of corpses. Thanks to the intercession of Piero dei Medici the Fatuous, who succeeded Lorenzo the Magnificent, he obtained permission from the prior of the convent of Santo Spirito, Lapo Bicchiellini, to dissect the bodies of the male cadavers that arrived from the convent hospital.
He performed them at night so as not to risk being accused of necromancy by the inquisition, also performing anatomical drawings.

It was out of thanks that Michelangelo sculpted and donated a wooden crucifix to the prior of the convent, now kept in the New Sacristy of the church of Santo Spirito, a masterpiece of elegance and sweetness.

At the end of the 1400s the political situation in Florence was changing dramatically, Savonarola’s sermons were increasingly listened to, and there was a sense of the fall of the Medici wanted by Charles VIII, King of France.

Michelangelo preferred to leave the city and, together with his friends Granacci and the Flemish Johannes Cordier, known as the Cordiere, lyre player at Palazzo Medici, went to Venice, where he remained for a short period, then heading to Bologna. Here he was welcomed by Giovan Francesco Aldrovandi, a trusted man of the lord of Bologna Giovanni Bentivoglio, and through him he received the commission to create three sculptures for the fourteenth-century Ark of San Domenico created by Nicola Pisano and Niccolò dell’Arca, which was not yet completed.

He executed the missing ANGEL CANDLE HOLDER in the right corner of the Ark, matching the one existing in the left corner executed by Niccolò dell’Arca.

Both angels are kneeling; Niccolò dell’Arca had sculpted an elegant and refined angel, in Renaissance style, with almost feminine characteristics.

Vasari, regarding the Pietà, writes in his “Vite”:
…Alla quale opera non pensi mai scultore né artefice raro potere aggiugnere di disegno né di grazia, né con fatica poter mai di finitezza, pulitezza e di straforare il marmo tanto con arte quanto Michelagnolo vi fece, perché si scorge in quella tutto il valore et il potere dell’arte. Fra le cose belle [che] vi sono, oltra i panni divini suoi, si scorge il morto Cristo: e non si pensi alcuno di bellezza di membra e d’artificio di corpo vedere uno ignudo tanto ben ricerco di muscoli, vene, nerbi sopra l’ossatura di quel corpo, né ancora un morto più simile al morto di quello. Quivi è dolcissima aria di testa, et una concordanza nelle appiccature e congiunture delle braccia e in quelle del corpo e delle gambe, i polsi e le vene lavorate, che in vero si maraviglia lo stupore che mano d’artefice abbia potuto sì divinamente e propriamente fare in pochissimo tempo cosa sì mirabile: che certo è un miracolo che un sasso, da principio senza forma nessuna, si sia mai ridotto a quella perfezzione che la natura affatica suol formar nella carne…

[…To which work no sculptor or craftsman should ever think of the rare ability to achieve in design or grace, nor with effort ever be able to finish, clean and pierce the marble with as much art as Michelagnolo did, because in it one can see all the value and the power of art. Among the beautiful things [that] are there, beyond his divine clothes, the dead Christ is seen: and let no one think of the beauty of the limbs and the artifice of the body to see a naked man so well refined with muscles, veins and nerves above the skeleton of that body, nor yet a dead man more similar to the dead than that. Here there is a very sweet air of the head, and a concordance in the joints and joints of the arms and in those of the body and legs, the wrists and the veins worked, that in truth one marvels in amazement that the hand of an artisan could have been able to so divinely and properly to do something so wonderful in a very short time: that it is certainly a miracle that a stone, from the beginning without any form, has ever been reduced to that perfection that nature usually works hard to form in the flesh…]

At the age of 24, in 1499, Michelangelo executed his masterpiece, the VATICAN PIETA. The banker Jacopo Galli had become a great admirer and close friend of him, so much so that he had hosted him in his palace in Rome. He had also become his guarantor and intermediary, and it was thanks to Galli that in 1496 Michelangelo had the commission of the Pietà for Jean de Bilhères, abbot of San Dionigi, ambassador to Rome of Charles VIII of France to Pope Alexander VI.

Having received a deposit of 150 ducats out of the agreed upon 450 ducats in 1497, he went on horseback to the Carrara marble quarries to find the right marble. Having returned to Rome, on 27 August 1497 he signed the official contract in the presence of Galli, with the commitment to complete the work in one year, a contract which stated:

Et io Jacopo Galli prometto al reverendissimo Monsignore che lo dicto Michelangelo farà la dicta opera in fra un anno e sarà la più bella opera di marmo che sia oge in Roma, e che maestro niuno la farìa megliore oge.
Nel contratto di allogazione era stato specificato che sarebbe stata Una Pietà di marmo, cioè una Vergine Maria vestita con un Cristo morto nudo in braccio.

[And I, Jacopo Galli, promise the most reverend Monsignor that the said Michelangelo will do the said work in a year’s time and it will be the most beautiful marble work of any time in Rome, and that no master will do it better than any other.
In the contract it was specified that it would be a marble Pietà, that is, a dressed Virgin Mary with a naked dead Christ in her arms.]

He kept his commitment by delivering the masterpiece in 1499, which was taken to Santa Petronilla where the ambassador wanted to be buried.

In 1517 the Pietà was moved to St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, where it changed places several times, until in 1749 it was placed in the first chapel on the right of the nave of the basilica where it still resides today.

The beautiful face of the Madonna portrayed as a young woman (Virgin Mother, Daughter of your Son, Dante, first verse of canto XXIII of Paradise) at the age in which she conceived him, maintains a composed pose in pain as she looks at the body of her Son.
Christ is completely released on the knees of the Mother who does not directly touch the sacred body of her son, an edge of the shroud is placed between her right hand and his body. The Madonna’s left hand has a gesture of desperate question.
The rock on which she sits is Mount Golgotha, as the biographer Condivi says in the “Life of Michelagnolo Buonarroti” published in Rome in 1553:

…A sedere sul sasso, dove fu fitta la Croce, col figliuol morto in grembo, di tanta e così rara bellezza, che nessun la vede che dentro a pietà non si commuova…

[…Sitting on the stone, where the Cross was placed, with her dead son in her lap, of such and such rare beauty, that no one sees it who is not moved by pity…]

The perfection of the anatomies reproduced in an exceptional way favors the beauty that the work emanates together with the tenderness and torment for the death of Christ.
Even the folds of the dress and the shroud are reproduced in a masterly manner, almost like fabric transformed into marble, or marble transformed into fabric.
Unlike most of his other works, in this one Michelangelo wanted to smooth and polish the surfaces, making the skin translucent like alabaster.

Michelangelo wrote his name on this single work, that is, he signed it in Roman characters on the band that crosses the Madonna’s chest: MICHAEL AGELVS BONAROTUS FLOREN FACIEBAT.

The Pietà has suffered various damages over time and has therefore also undergone various repairs and restorations. The last one was in 1972 when a madman shouting “I am Jesus Christ” took a hammer to the work, damaging it in various parts.

More information on this bronze sculpture, here.

Vasari, in the 1568 edition of the “Vite” continues:

…Dove in questo tempo consigliato dal Poliziano, uomo nelle lettere singulare, Michelagnolo fece in un pezzo di marmo datogli da quel signore [Lorenzo il Magnifico] la battaglia di Ercole coi centauri, che fu tanto bella che talvolta per chi ora la considera non par di mano di giovane, ma di maestro pregiato e consumato negli studii e pratico in quell’arte. Ella è oggi in casa sua tenuta per memoria di Lionardo suo nipote come cosa rara che ell’è…

…Where at this time advised by Poliziano, a singular man in letters, Michelagnolo painted on a piece of marble given to him by that lord [Lorenzo the Magnificent] the battle of Hercules with the centaurs, which was so beautiful that sometimes for those who now consider it it does not seem by the hand of a young man, but of a esteemed master, consummate in his studies and practiced in that art. She is today kept in his house in memory of his nephew Lionardo as a rare thing that she is…

The first written mention of this high relief is in a letter sent by the Gonzaga agent in Florence, Giovanni Borromeo, to the Marquis of Mantua Federico. The agent writes that he wants a certain painting of “figure jude, che combattono, di marmore, quale havea principiato ad istantia di un gran signore [Lorenzo il Magnifico] ma non è finito. E’ braccia uno e mezzo a ogni mane, et così a vedere è cosa bellissima e vi sono più di 25 teste e 20 corpi varii, et varie attitudine fanno.”

“Naked figures, fighting, in marble, which was begun at the request of a great lord [Lorenzo the Magnificent] but was not finished. It is one and a half arm lengths on each hand, and thus it is a very beautiful thing to look at and there are more of 25 heads and 20 various bodies, and various attitudes they make.”

This high relief, as well as the Madonna della Scala, were executed by Michelangelo for his personal taste, incited by Lorenzo the Magnificent, but without any real client. He began it after finishing the bas-relief of the Madonna della Scala, but was unable to finish it: in 1492 Lorenzo the Magnificent, with whom he had a filial relationship, died; Michelangelo was shocked.

According to Vasari the subject would have been the battle of Hercules against the Centaurs, while Condivi, in his Life of Michelagnolo Buonarroti writes that it was the rape of Deianira and the fight of the Centaurs, probably due to the presence of some female figures: a behind the central figure above and another on the far right strangling a man.

After his experience in the Donatellian-inspired Madonna della Scala, Michelangelo wanted to try his hand at a high relief in which he could sculpt human bodies in various poses and attitudes. The realization of the plans is certainly less successful than the bas-relief of the Madonna, perhaps also because the relief was not finished.

It is not clear whether the surfaces of the few figures that appear to have been finished would have received subsequent processing with rasps and abrasives to make the marble skin smooth and shiny; it is more likely, however, that Michelangelo wanted to leave the surface with the light marks of the steps, as he then did in other subsequent works by him.

The work is composed of a mass of tangled figures that are difficult to distinguish, fighting with each other and moving around the central one who has his arm raised above his head and who represents the central apex of the ideal triangle that all the characters make up. On the left a man depicted entirely while, twisting to the right, is about to throw a large stone and an old man on the left edge is preparing to throw a boulder.

On the left a group of characters fighting in an inextricable knot of bodies and arms, below the wounded lying and sitting among which is the body of a Centaur.

Michelangelo was probably inspired both by the Roman sarcophagi and probably by the high reliefs of the Pulpit of the Cathedral by Giovanni Pisano; However, he certainly must have been inspired by the lost wax cast bronze bas-relief created in 1480 by Bertoldo di Giovanni, director and teacher in the Garden of San Marco where the young Michelangelo studied for some years.

More information on this bronze sculpture, here.

In 1501 Michelangelo had returned to Florence from Rome, and was working on the execution of the great David. Through the banker Jacopo Galli, his friend and guarantor, the two Mouscron brothers, Flemish fabric merchants, clients of Galli’s bank, commissioned Michelangelo to create the sculpture of a Madonna and Child for their chapel in the church of Our Lady of Bruges.

The agreed fee was 4,000 florins, a very high sum promised to Michelangelo probably to convince him to find the time to carry it out even though he was working on other works; they were given to him in two payments between 1503 and 1505.

This would also be confirmed by the fact that Michelangelo sculpted it, keeping it hidden until he embarked in Viareggio towards Flanders around 1506. Giovanni Balducci in Rome on 14 August 1506 wrote to Michelangelo:

…Michelagnolo carissimo, resto avisato chome Francesco del Puglese avrebbe chomodità al mandarla a Vioreggio, e da Vioreggio in Fiandra…

[…My dearest Michelagnolo, I am advised that Francesco del Puglese would be happy to send you to Viareggio, and from Viareggio to Flanders…]

Not even his biographers knew exactly what it was: Condivi thought it was a bronze sculpture, Vasari thought it was a round one.
Michelangelo wrote to his father in this sense:

…Prego voi che duriate un pocho di fatica in qusta due cose, cio è in fare. Riporre quella cassa [contenente la Madonna] al coperto in luogo sicuro; l’altra è quella nostra Donna di marmo, similmente vorrei la faciessi portare costì in casa e non la lasciassi vedere a persona…

[…I ask you to make a little effort in these two things, that is, in doing. Place that crate [containing the Madonna] indoors in a safe place; the other is that Marble Woman of ours, similarly I would like to have her brought into the house and not let anyone see her…]

While he was sculpting it, he still had his previous Vatican Pietà in mind: this can be understood in a particular way from the similarity of the faces of the two Madonnas, both with their gaze turned downwards, and the veil on their heads. The Child’s body presents a twist that seems to be due to his sliding on the Mother’s dress while he holds on to his left hand and leans with his feet on the edge of her dress, as if he wanted to get off her lap.
The Madonna, on the other hand, is perfectly still and absorbed in the thought of the terrible end that her Son will meet.

The Madonna was taken and transported to Paris by Napoleon, and was returned in 1815. In 1944 it was stolen by the Nazis and taken to Germany, it was discovered in 1946 hidden in a mine in Altaussee in Austria and was brought back to Bruges.

More information on this bronze sculpture, here.

Michelangelo was born in 1475 in Caprese in the province of Arezzo by pure chance: his father Ludovico Buonarroti, a Florentine, was temporarily mayor of the castle of Chiusi and Caprese. After his birth the family returned to live in Settignano, a town of stonemasons and sculptors, where they had a modest villa.

In 1487, when he was just twelve years old, he abandoned his studies to go to Ghirlandaio’s workshop, but shortly afterwards he left the workshop to go and study in the Garden of San Marco created for this purpose by Lorenzo the Magnificent.

Vasari, in the 1568 edition of the “Lives” tells us:

Lorenzo vedendo sì bello spirito lo tenne sempre in molta aspettazione, et egli inanimito dopo alcuni giorni si misse a contrafare con un pezzo di marmo una testa che v’era d’un fauno vecchio antico e grinzo, che era guasta nel naso e nella bocca rideva. Dove a Michelagnolo, che non aveva mai più tocco marmo né scarpegli, successe il contrafarla così bene, che il Magnifico ne stupì, e visto che fuor della antica testa di sua fantasia gli aveva trapanato la bocca e fattogli la lingua e vedere tutti i denti, burlando quel signore con piacevolezza, come era suo solito, gli disse: “Tu doveresti pur sapere che i vecchi non hanno mai tutti i denti e sempre qualcuno ne manca loro”. Parve a Michelagnolo in quella semplicità, temendo et amando quel signore, che gli dicesse il vero; né prima si fu partito, che subito gli roppe un dente e trapanò la gengìa di maniera, che pareva che gli fussi caduto; et aspettando con desiderio il ritorno del Magnifico, che venuto e veduto la semplicità e bontà di Michelagnolo, se ne rise più d’una volta contandola per miracolo a’ suoi amici; e fatto proposito di aiutare e favorire Michelagnolo, mandò per Lodovico suo padre e gliene chiese, dicendogli che lo voleva tenere come un de’ suoi figliuoli, et egli volentieri lo concesse; dove il Magnifico gli ordinò in casa sua [Palazzo Medici di via Larga] una camera, e lo faceva attendere, dove del continuo mangiò alla tavola sua co’ suoi figliuoli et altre persone degne e di nobiltà, che stavano col Magnifico, dal quale fu onorato. E questo fu l’anno seguente che si era acconcio con Domenico, che aveva Michelagnolo da quindici anni o sedici; e stette in quella casa quattro anni…

[Lorenzo, seeing such a beautiful spirit, always kept him in great anticipation, and after a few days he, courageously, began to imitate with a piece of marble a head that there was of an ancient and wrinkled old faun, which was damaged in the nose and mouth. laughed. Where Michelagnolo, who had never touched marble or shoes again, succeeded in forging it so well that the Magnificent was amazed, and seeing that out of the ancient head of his imagination he had drilled his mouth and made his tongue and seen all his teeth , mocking that gentleman pleasantly, as was his wont, said to him: “You should know that old people never have all their teeth and are always missing some.” He seemed to Michelagnolo in that simplicity, fearing and loving that gentleman, who told him the truth; no sooner had he left than he immediately broke one of his teeth and drilled his jaw in such a way that it looked as if it had fallen out; and waiting with longing for the return of the Magnificent, who having come and seen the simplicity and goodness of Michelagnolo, laughed at it more than once, counting it as a miracle to his friends; and having resolved to help and favor Michelagnolo, he sent for Lodovico, his father, and asked him, telling him that he wanted to keep him as one of his sons, and he willingly granted him; where the Magnificent arranged a room for him in his house [Palazzo Medici in via Larga], and made him wait, where he continually ate at his table with his children and other worthy and noble people who were staying with the Magnificent, by whom he was honored. And this was the following year that he had settled down with Domenico, who had had Michelagnolo for fifteen or sixteen years; and he stayed in that house for four years…]

The story of the faun’s head is also confirmed by Condivi in his Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti published in 1553.

The head is lost; it is unlikely that it was the one taken away by the Nazis during the war, attributed by some to Michelangelo and of which a mould remains in the Casa Buonarroti.

Vasari tells us that Michelangelo’s first known sculptural work is the Madonna of the Stairs, which Buonarroti executed at the age of 16, in 1491:

… il quale Lionardo [Buonarroti nipote di Michelangelo] non è molti anni che aveva in casa per memoria di suo zio una Nostra Donna di basso rilievo di mano di Michelagnolo di marmo alta poco più d’un braccio, nella quale sendo giovanetto in questo tempo medesimo, volendo contrafare la maniera di Donatello si portò sì bene che par di man sua, eccetto che vi si vede più grazia e più disegno. Questa donò Lionardo poi al duca Cosimo Medici, il quale la tiene per cosa singularissima, non essendoci di sua mano altro basso rilievo che questo di scultura.

[… which Lionardo [Buonarroti, Michelangelo’s nephew] had in his house not many years ago, in memory of his uncle, a low-relief Our Lady in marble by the hand of Michelagnolo, little more than an arm’s length high, in which he was a young man at this time himself, wishing to imitate Donatello’s manner, he acquitted himself so well that it seems to be his own hand, except that there is more grace and more design. Lionardo then donated this to Duke Cosimo Medici, who considers it to be a very singular thing, as there is no other low relief by his hand other than this one in sculpture.]

The bas-relief measures approximately 56cm x 40cm, carved on a very thin marble slab.
The exceptional perspective rendering of multiple planes in a few millimeters of thickness is inspired by Donatello’s “stiacciato” bas-reliefs, as Vasari also states. Particularly fascinating is the staircase which has 5 steps, and therefore 5 different floors, obtained with millimetric relief; staircase that alludes to Christ’s descent to earth and man’s ascent to heaven through the Madonna.

The Madonna is sitting on a cubic block, completely wrapped in a delicate drapery, with her left she embraces the Child sitting on her lap, with her right she uncovers her breast to breastfeed him.
She occupies almost the entire bas-relief, thus obtaining a monumental appearance, and both due to the opposing pose of her arms, the crossing of her feet and the twisting of the child, she assumes a spiral movement.

The study of the drapery which rests with great skill and elegance on the cubic seat and follows its shape, recalls Donatello’s Madonna of Dudley.

The Virgin does not look at the Child but her eyes are lost in space, foreseeing the cruel fate that her son will have, as already appears in the fifteenth-century Madonnas by Luca della Robbia.

Particularly strong is the Child’s musculature which, also due to the position of the arm bent backwards, an abandoned arm prefiguring future death and reminiscent of that of the Farnese Hercules, makes him assume an original position from behind, with his face hidden.

At the top of the staircase, two barely visible putti are fighting or dancing while a third leans over the balustrade of the stairs to hold a cloth held on the opposite side by another barely visible putto, perhaps the shroud of Jesus. It is in these details of the putti that Michelangelo already in this first sculpture of his he makes use of the so-called “unfinished” to highlight and shade the figures placed on different planes.

As Vasari tells us, the Madonna della Scala was inherited by his nephew Leonardo who subsequently donated it to Cosimo I dei Medici in 1568. But in 1616 Cosimo II returned it to Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger who kept it in the family palace in Via Ghibellina, which later became the Museum of the Casa Buonarroti.

More information on the sculpture

Pietro Bernini was born in Sesto Fiorentino in 1562.

He learned to sculpt in the workshop of the Florentine Ridolfo Sirigatti, and to paint in the one in Rome of the Cavalier d’Arpino, a well-known mannerist.

In 1596 he was called by the viceroy of Naples to sculpt figures for the Certosa di San Martino. And it was in Naples that in 1598 his wife Angelica Galante gave birth to Gian Lorenzo.

But in 1606 Pietro was called by Pope Paul V to work on the construction site of the Pauline Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, where he moved with his wife and son Gian Lorenzo, who already at a young age was acting as his father’s shop boy.

In those first decades of the 17th century, Rome was a point of reference in painting and sculpture for the nascent Baroque art, an art in which Caravaggio had opened a new narrative and figurative style by creating lively and realistic characters inspired by the common people, playing in an exceptional and new with light and darkness.

But soon, already in 1609, Gian Lorenzo Bernini began working on the marbles that his father Pietro sculpted, which increasingly became works made by four hands, demonstrating an unlikely talent for his age; the group of the Faun with Cupids which remained in Gian Lorenzo’s house for many years after his death is famous. In this work the sixteenth-century mannerist imprint due to Pietro’s hand is still visible, as is the inspiration taken by looking at Michelangelo in the composition and softness of the shapes and surfaces, but with new poses and new movements of the bodies.

His father Pietro introduced Gian Lorenzo Bernini to the Florentine cardinal Maffeo Barberini, Pope Urban VIII, for whom Gian Lorenzo executed some figures for the family chapel in Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome between 1617 and 1618.

But it is with his cardinal nephew Scipione Borghese that Gian Lorenzo Bernini had the opportunity to express all his power and ability; not yet twenty years old he set about sculpting the large group of Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius fleeing from Troy.

And in 1621, again for Cardinal Borghese, he performed the well-known group of the Rape of Proserpina, which the cardinal donated shortly afterwards to Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of the new Pope Gregory XV. With this group Bernini highlights his great skill in sculpting groups of figures in movement and in complex poses.

Cardinal Montalto, nephew of Sixtus V, enthusiastic about Bernini’s works in 1623, commissioned him to paint his own portrait and at the same time the famous statue of David; but he didn’t get to see it finished because before it was completed he died. Scipione Borghese immediately intervened and took over the order, thus managing to have another Bernini work for his villa.

For this masterpiece, Bernini chose the moment of very high tension in which David is about to throw the stone on the head of the giant Goliath and not in the moment of triumph after Goliath has been beheaded, as happens in the two bronzes by Donatello and of Verrocchio; nor before the clash, as in Michelangelo, where David is concentrated before the launch. For all three of these earlier Renaissance figures a static and hieratic pose was chosen.
Instead, Bernini was able to highlight all the tension and effort of the shot in the twisting of his hero’s torso, which is also expressed with his frowning eyebrows and his forcefully squeezing his lips. On the ground is the armor that was hindering him and which he took off before the launch.

With his David, Bernini manages for the first time to make the spectator feel surprise and fear, to involve him as if he were present in the challenge and action of overthrowing the giant Goliath, to make the biblical hero dramatically alive.

At the request of Benito Mussolini for his private collection, the Louvre Museum turned to the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry to have the bronze replica of the sketch that Bernini made in 1678 for the equestrian monument of Louis XIV; the sketch was taken to the foundry where the negative mould and a posthumous lost wax bronze casting were made. After the war the casting returned to the Louvre.

It was in 1504 with Michelangelo‘s gigantic marble David placed outside the door of Palazzo della Signoria, now Palazzo Vecchio, that the government of Florence allowed the taboo of nudity seen from the front to be completely overcome, so much so that it was exhibited in such a public important place.

And in fact in 1534 the naked David was flanked by Baccio Bandinelli’s Hercules subduing Cacus. Duke Cosimo I of the Medici had in fact chosen as his symbol no longer David, as had been done first by the Medici of the Cafaggiolo branch, then by the Florentine republic, but precisely by Hercules.

In 1554, the bronze of Perseus with the head of the Medusa by Benvenuto Cellini, also naked and with his genitals visible, was placed in the Loggia dei Lanzi; it had been chosen as a pendant of Donatello’s group of Judith and Holofernes previously seized from the garden of the Palazzo Medici in via Larga (now via Cavour) in 1494 as a trophy of the republican victory.
With the Medici’s return to power, the group was not removed, because the new rulers wanted them to be identified with the ancient Jewish heroine Judith and their republican adversaries identified with Israel’s enemy Holofernes.

Only in August 1583 was the bronze of Judith and Holofernes moved to make room for Giambologna’s colossal marble statue with three naked figures of both sexes entwined with violent sensuality. However, the positioning under the arch of the Loggia dei Lanzi, in the same point as the Judith, created limitations on the possibility of walking around the work, which was created to be seen at 360°.

Giambologna, after having created the life-size model, now kept in the Museum of the Academy of Florence, called in a series of assistants for the rough-hewing of the marble, first of all the French sculptor from Cambrai Pierre de Francqueville, whose name was Italianized as Pietro Francavilla.

Giambologna, actually the Frenchman Jean Boulogne born in Douai in Flanders in 1529, already renowned in his homeland as a skilled sculptor, probably came to Rome during the Jubilee of 1550 to learn about classical and Renaissance sculpture. He remained there to study for two years, creating a large quantity of sketches and models, most of which, in clay or wax, have come down to us. So much so that when Federico Zuccari painted his portrait in the 1570s, he put one of his sketches in his hand.

Shortly after arriving in Rome, Giambologna went to the almost eighty-year-old Michelangelo to show him a wax model of his that he had worked on with great passion and attention. Michelangelo, leaving him astonished, took him, crushed him, quickly reshaping him into a completely different figure, telling him “Now go first and learn to draft, and then to finish”.

Giambologna developed the idea for a sculpture of a man kidnapping a woman in 1579, and when the Grand Duke commissioned him to create a monumental marble group, the sculptor envisaged a third figure placed at the bottom to ensure stability for the two characters. In fact, he realized that the ankles of the standing man holding the suspended woman were too thin to support himself; he had had the same problem when he had created the Flying Mercury for the Farnese and in fact he was forced to have it cast in bronze, sturdier than marble, to allow the single foot resting on the base to support the sculpture.

He then inserted a third elderly man kneeling as support: we can see from the wax model of the Rape of the Sabine Women how the third kneeling character was modeled and added later.

Giambologna’s monumental work was a huge success, so much so that in 1583 the printer Bartolomeo Sermantelli published a volume with laudatory sonnets and engravings of the sculpture, followed in 1584 by a pamphlet by Grazio Grazi published by Giorgio Marescotti, entitled Rime e versi latini di Gratiamaria Gratii, on the rape of the Sabine women. Sculpted in marble by the excellent Giambologna.
In 1584 Raffaello Borghini, in his Il Riposo, narrates the story of the sculpture from its origin to the success of the work, saying that he himself suggested to Giambologna to title the gigantic group Rape of the Sabines as the most suitable subject for the work.

With the death in 1560 of Baccio Bandinelli, sculptor of the Medici court, a competition was announced for the execution of a large marble Neptune for the fountain to be created at the Palazzo della Signoria. Giambologna participated with a life-size clay model, but the winner was Ammannati.
Giambologna re-used his model, with modifications to transform it into the figure of the Ocean, for a fountain in the Boboli Gardens (now in the Bargello).
When a Flemish painter painted the portrait of Giambologna, he wanted the model of the Ocean to be seen from a window in the painting.

To please his protégé sculptor who had not won the competition for the Neptune fountain, Grand Duke Francesco I dei Medici commissioned him to create a colossal monument of Samson defeating the Philistine, sculpted in marble (kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum). Michelangelo had already set himself in motion when the Florentine Republic asked him for a group of two wrestlers to be positioned symmetrically to the David; the model that Michelangelo created on earth has fortunately come down to us preserved by the Casa Buonarroti.

Interesting is what Filippo Baldinucci writes in the “Notizie de’ professori del disegno” regarding the model that Giambologna had found for his great Roman of the Rape of the Sabine Women: Bartolomeo di Lionardo Ginori lived in Florence, a gigantic man “four whole arms tall” (2 .30 meters), warrior of fortune but pious and kind. Giambologna saw it in the church of San Giovannino dei Gesuiti and began to look at it without stopping. Lionardo kindly asked him what he wanted and Giambologna replied: “I seek nothing more from you than to observe the beautiful, or rather the marvelous, proportion of your figure; and since you so kindly invite me, I will go on to tell you about my need, and it is that since I, who am Gio. I could make some studies from your limbs… Ginori… immediately offered himself to his need; so the Sculptor was then able to personally make the studies and models he made for the figure of that robust young man.”
Giambologna, to thank him, gave him a bronze crucifix made by the well-known foundryman Alberghetti.

The figure of the biblical David has fascinated the Florentines in a particular way since the Middle Ages. In the Old Testament he is described very well, better than most other prophets have been. Among the peculiar characteristics of him at the moment in which he kills the giant Goliath six cubits and a palm tall is his young age, so much so that he cannot yet be part of the army, his lack of physical prowess, his intelligence that wins over brute force. He is not a saint, on the contrary he has the vices of men when he takes Bathsheba as wife of Uriah whom he then kills, he has corrupt and delinquent illegitimate children, except the wise Solomon. He defeats the Philistines allowing the birth of the Kingdom of Israel.

In the miniatures that decorate the medieval Bibles he is represented precisely as a young man with a slingshot that attacks and kills Goliath.

In the fourteenth century, in the bell tower of the Florence Cathedral, Andrea Pisano represented him as a prophet and king, not young but bearded, without slingshot or sword and without allusions to Goliath and his killing.
Even at the beginning of the Renaissance he is represented as an old bearded man who plays the zither, associating him with music.

But around 1330 in Florence in the fresco by Taddeo Gaddi, David appears for the first time young and beardless, in a short tunic, with the decapitated body of Goliath at his feet, and in his hand he holds the severed head of the slain Giant; in his other hand he has the sword with which he cut off his head and from his belt dangles the sling with a stone. This iconography in Florence will no longer be abandoned in Renaissance sculptures.

When Donatello sculpted the Marble David in 1409, a young man with the head of Goliath and a slingshot at his feet, he wanted to represent a clear response to the attacks on Florentine freedom: the Milanese tyrant Giangaleazzo Visconti was about to conquer Florence when he suddenly died.
In 1416 the statue was purchased by the Signoria of the Republic of Florence which brought it to Palazzo Vecchio. David becomes the defender of freedom and a symbol of divine help against enemies.
It was a very important step: David leaves the ecclesiastical sphere for the first time to become a civil hero. And when in 1390 the interior of Orsanmichele was frescoed at the expense of the Arts, David was again with his head uncovered, wearing a short tunic and a short cloak.

Donatello created a second David for the Medici cast in lost wax bronze, wanted to underline their great patriotism against any form of dictatorship. This time Donatello modeled him completely naked except for the shoes and the hat, a highly sensual figure, a sensuality that in a few years had been accepted and admired so much as to become a symbol, even if only civil, of youth and heroism.

However, especially in the religious sphere, David’s total nudity was partially censored, as in a miniature by Mariano del Buono from the late 1460s in a manuscript with psalms for Piero dei Medici: “he has a short dress that covers nudity but leaves his sensual legs visible, a belt hanging in front of his genitals, a sling in his left hand, a sword in his right, at his feet the bleeding head of Goliath”.

In the David panel of Ghiberti’s Gate of Paradise finished in 1452, in the center of the scene, below, David appears beheading the giant Goliath who was killed on the ground. He is also this young man and without a hat, he has the same shoes, but he is dressed.

From the second half of the 15th century the scene of David killing Goliath appears on chests, birth trays and other artefacts, in some cases he is fully clothed, in others he has only his legs uncovered. On a desco da parto (c. 1480) he is kneeling as he is about to decapitate the giant; on the first wedding chest (c. 1460) three moments are described: David with bare legs, short dress, shoes and cloak collects stones to throw with a slingshot; then David who is about to throw the stone with a sling against the giant Goliath; and in the center of the chest David beheads Goliath with the sword.
On the second chest David is triumphant in a chariot holding Goliath’s head by the hair.

In a parade shield painted by Andrea del Castagno around 1455. David is haired, dressed but with bare legs and holds the sling, and between his legs has the head of Goliath.

David’s images on artifacts of this type also tend to take on different meanings, such as courage and the valor of youth

Around 1475 Andrea del Verrocchio models and casts one of his Davids in lost wax bronze. It is natural that he looks at the elegant and admired bronze David created by Donatello. And he resumes the pose: the left arm bent and resting at his side, with the sword in the right hand, the weight of the body resting on the right leg and the left leg slightly bent. The novelty of the sculpture is the dynamism and the sense of life that Verrocchio manages to give to his David also using the sword that is kept filling the space away from the body.
His David is very young, his bare head has allowed the sculptor to give him a thick mane of hair, his mouth hints at a very slight smile of satisfaction, satisfaction also present in his gaze. Compared to Donatello’s hero, Verrocchio’s David is sunny, shrewd, more direct and certain.

He is not naked, but is clad in a thin (leather?) armor that perfectly follows his features and leaves his legs bare; he is no longer a shepherd in fact he wears a military-style robe and

the shoes are lower and less rich than those of Donatello.

Verrocchio modeled the head of Goliath so that it could be cast separately from the statue of David. In fact, it is probable that initially he had wanted to place it not between David’s legs but laterally to his right. In some manuscript miniatures, deriving from this David having the same type of armor that covers him, the head of the Goliath is placed to the side, something never happened before; in particular in the miniature of Mariano del Buono of 1465-1470 and that of Attavante of 1470-1480.

And again in the wedding chest of the Master of Stratonice from around 1470 the sculpture of David on the high base has the head of Goliath on the left side.

In the only drawing by Verrocchio’s workshop for the project, David is naked and there is no Goliath’s head.

E’ plausibile pensare che quando nel 10 maggio del 1476 la statua venne ceduta per 150 fiorini da Lorenzo e Giuliano dei Medici alla Signoria di Firenze, prezzo politico di grande favore (come ci dice il Gaye nel suo Carteggio inedito d’ artisti dei secoli XIV, XV, XVI) il Verrocchio abbia spostato la testa del David dal lato al centro delle gambe.

Piero dei Medici the Gouty on the death of his father Cosimo the Elder in 1464 took over the family business; it was then that his political enemies led by the Pitti family prepared a conspiracy to kill him in 1466, which Piero thwarted, capturing and exiling the organizers.
Very probably the figure of David by Verrocchio who kills the enemy by placing him in his own palace in via Larga where Donatello’s David was already on display in the courtyard was chosen as a symbol of Medici power.