Michelangelo: The love poet

Shivangi Singh “If I only love in you, my dearest lord, that which you love in yourself, do not scorn. Because one spirit has fallen in love with another.”- Michelangelo BuonarrotiThe poetic side of the strange Renaissance sculptor and painter, who was not just considered ugly but also bizarre as he would not refrain from dissecting dead bodies to know human anatomy, and madly hammer his sculpture screaming, “Why don’t you speak to me?”, is relatively unknown. The melancholic, taciturn artist, who was often detested for his rude temperament and homosexual leanings, was one of the greatest lyric poets of his age. Born in Caprise, west of Florence (March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564), the sculptor was the second oldest of six children. His mother died when he was just a child and Michelangelo was placed in the care of a wet-nurse from a stonemason`s family. Later in life, the great sculptor observed in one of his correspondences that he had absorbed the passion to do sculpting from her `milk`. The poetic sculptor Michelangelo the artist was arrogant, self-centred and supreme in his art while Michelangelo the poet was simple, humble and unsure of himself. His writings reflect the inner conflicts, paradoxes, and problems of the High Renaissance, when artists tried to achieve perfection but found themselves lacking. It is through his poems that we get a little insight into the mind of the genius. It is a pity that the poetic side of his mind has remained unexplored or else we would have a better view of the psyche of the man. A wayside stone boulder for him was not lifeless; he could see figures trapped in it just waiting to be liberated. Thus he says in one of his poems: "Lady, in hard and craggy stone the mere removal of the surface gives being to a figure, which ever grows the more the stone is hewn away." And again: “The best of artists hath no thought to show. Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell doth not include: to break the marble spell is all the hand that serves the brain can do.” That’s why the famous sculptures of Michelangelo like ‘David’, ‘Pietà’ seem to be throbbing with life. Michelangelo’s poems that we access now are the wreck of a vast multitude, and sadly, most of those accessible in manuscript and print belong to a later stage of his development. The peak of his poetic genius was between 1532 and 1548 – the time he was undergoing some significant personal experiences. He wrote poems while taking break from his labour – an excuse of his temporary inaction. Evidently, his best sculptures were created under intense pressure and rigorous activity, while his poems are a work of an inert, meditative and sluggish mind. Tired with the labours of the chisel or the brush, he would gladly give himself to the sweet luxury of creating melodious lyrics. He also had the habit of conversing with eminent writers, prophets of the time and of fashioning his own thoughts into rhyme. Struggle with homosexual love So far it’s not confirmed that the artist was gay but his sculpture and poems clearly indicate his homosexual leanings. He celebrated male beauty in his art. The majority of his love poems date from the years when he was in his fifties and sixties, and it is during this period that his struggle with his homosexuality is most pronounced. His numerous frustrated and intense poems written in the early 1530s are dedicated to the greatest love of his life - twenty-three year old Tommaso de` Cavalieri, whom he met when he was in Rome. He dedicated to Cavalieri over three hundred sonnets and madrigals, constituting the largest sequence of poems composed by him. The poems were ambiguously gendered (homosexuality was socially unacceptable at that time) and have been edited by his successors to protect his image but inspite of that the erotic and romantic passion he felt for Cavalieri is clearly revealed. In one of his works, Michelangelo declares: “Your lordship, only worldly light in this age of ours, you can never be pleased with another man`s work for there is no man who resembles you, nor one to equal you... It grieves me greatly that I cannot recapture my past, so as to longer be at your service. As it is, I can only offer you my future, which is short, for I am too old... That is all I have to say.” Cavalieri was heterosexual and later married and had children. The young man was not interested in the love of the middle-aged Michelangelo. They became close friends however, and Cavalieri was present when Michelangelo died. Apart from him, the sculptor loved a great many young men, many of whom posed for him. Some were men of royal lineage, like the sixteen year old Cecchino dei Bracci, a boy of exquisite features, whose death, only a year after their meeting in 1543, inspired the sculptor to write forty eight epigrams. Others were smart and took advantage of the artist. Vittoria Colonna: His muse Physically unpleasant and unattractive, Vittoria Colonna, the Marquess of Pescara became Michelangelo’s closest friend and he dedicated a huge chunk of love poetry to her. Her poetry, ideals, philosophy and persona greatly influenced Michelangelo and made him inclined towards Church reforms. In one of the poems dedicated to her, he writes: “How can that be, lady, which all men learn by long experience? Shapes that seem alive, wrought in hard mountain marble, will survive their maker, whom the years to dust return!” She was the only woman about whom the artist was serious and when she died in 1547, the artist was heartbroken and thus ended the period of his greatest love poetry. Gradually, several incidents and disillusionments made him averse to poetry. The death of his close friend and agent Luigi del Riccio, and his own illness, reduced his verve to compose poems. He wrote a total of twenty-three poems, which were sad laments and sonnets at the effects of aging. Later in life, the artist became obsessed with religion. He dedicated his poems to Christ, in which he begged forgiveness for his sins and sought salvation. `The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection,’ believed the genius. And it is divinity in his art that has kept him alive centuries after he is gone. As for his poems, they are the windows to the secret of this tormented Renaissance man.