Michelangelo’s labor pains.
I’ve grown a goiter by dwelling in this den—
As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy,
Or in what other land they hap to be—
Which drives the belly close beneath the chin:
My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in,
Fixed on my spine: my breastbone visibly
Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery
Bedews my face from brush drops thick and thin.
My loins into my paunch like levers grind:
My buttock like a crupper bears my weight;
My feet unguided wander to and fro;
In front my skin grows loose and long; behind,
By bending it becomes more taut and strait;
Crosswise I strain me like a Syrian bow:
Whence false and quaint, I know,
Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye;
For ill can aim the gun that bends awry.
Come then, Giovanni, try
To succor my dead pictures and my fame;
Since foul I fare and painting is my shame.
© 1963 by Thames and Hudson. Used with permission of Thames and Hudson.
From a poem. Michelangelo primarily considered himself to be a sculptor of marble, rising to prominence in his midtwenties for his Pieta of 1498 and his David of 1504. Our contemporary adoration of his Sistine Chapel frescoes is in part a result of the twentieth century’s veneration of painting over other art forms.
If today there is no longer any particular set of skills that must be learned in order for one to make art, how does... More
