Michelangelo

"If one day, reasoning absurdly, Michelangelo's belonging to Freemasonry were to emerge, then should that wonder of the Last Judgment be hidden inside the Sistine Chapel? Or, in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, the Last Supper in Santa Maria delle Grazie?"

"Thus to the plain man there may be no metaphor in Aristotle's "substance", Descartes' "machine of nature," Newtonian "force" and "attraction," Thomas Young's "kinetic energy" and Michelangelo's figure of Leda. Placed in their customary contexts these present nothing to him but the face of literal truth. To the initiated, however, who are aware of the "gross original" senses as well as the now literal senses , they may become metaphors. There are no metaphors per se...."

"Enough, enough, enough! Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!"

"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. Read my heart for "the quill cannot express good will.""

"Beauty is the purgation of superfluities."

"I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop."

"As when, O lady mine, With chiseled touch The stone unhewn and cold Becomes a living mold, The more the marble wastes, The more the statue grows."

"A quel pietoso fonte, onde siam tutti, S'assembra ogni beltà che qua si vede, Più c'altra cosa alle persone accorte;"

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

"Recollect that trifles make perfection, and that perfection is no trifle."

"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."

"If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all."

"If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius."

"What do you despise? By this you are truly known."

"Ancora Imparo."

"Italians have such illustrious people they can celebrate, that everyone celebrates — Michelangelo, Vivaldi and, of course, for us on the left, Sacco and Vanzetti."

"Do we not say that the judicious discovering of a most lovely Statua in a piece of Marble, hath sublimated the wit of Buonarruotti far above the vulgar wits of other men? And yet this work is onely the imitation of a meer aptitude and disposition of exteriour and superficial mem­bers of an immoveable man; but what is it in comparison of a man made by nature, composed of as many exteriour and inte­riour members, of so many muscles, tendons, nerves, bones, which serve to so many and sundry motions? but what shall we say of the senses, and of the powers of the soul, and lastly, of the understanding? May we not say, and that with reason, that the structure of a Statue falls far short of the formation of a living man, yea more of a contemptible worm?"

"Interviewer: The examination of two emotional journeys, namely those concerning the artist's relationships with Tommaso de' Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna, proved to be very interesting. Graziella Magherini: Buonarroti dedicated some very beautiful sonnets to Tommaso, written in the Neoplatonic style, with a refined sensitivity that was an integral part of Florentine Humanism. However, psychoanalytic observation reveals clear homoerotic feelings, albeit disguised. The comparison with the drawings that the artist gave to the young man is extraordinary. I am referring to The Rape of Ganymede, The Punishment of Titus and The Bacchanalia of the Putti. These are truly eloquent works. There are two versions of ‘Ganymede’: in the first, Ganymede resists Zeus in an ambivalent mix of desire and fear, while in the second he offers himself in sweet abandon, in an attitude pervaded by ecstasy and bliss. In The Punishment of Titus, the protagonist, struck by the eagle, becomes a metaphor for Michelangelo's sense of guilt. But even more extraordinary is the drawing with the Bacchanalia of the Putti. Here we are faced with an expression of regressed levels. Naked children linger in bacchanalia, dragging a dead deer here, carrying a pig there; a child urinates in a wine jug; young people are lost, without dignity... In the lower part of the work, the contrast is striking. There is a naked man sleeping uncovered, in an atmosphere of profound sadness, in a pose that closely resembles, for example, the Drunken Moses in the istine Chapel; and there is a hideous female satyr with flaccid breasts. What emerges clearly is a depressed paternal role on the one hand, and a sense of emptied motherhood on the other, in an almost phallic mother figure that combines the male and female roles. In short, the drawings are direct, sensorial: unlike the sonnets, which, as I mentioned, also contain an underlying materiality of the flesh."

"No one who has not seen the Sistine Chapel can have a clear idea of what a human being can achieve. ... The master's inner security and strength, his greatness is beyond all description. ... At the moment I am so engrossed by Michelangelo that even Nature makes no appeal to me, for my vision is so small compared with his. If there were only some means of fixing such pictures in one's soul!"

"...he was a good man, but he did not know how to paint."

"To make something is to invent or discover it. Michelangelo cuts away the extra marble that hides the statue, right?"

"Who can measure the worth of a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo or Beethoven in dollars and cents?"

"Wenn Michelangelo heterosexuell gewesen wäre, hätte er die Sixtinische Kapelle mit einer Rolle Weiß angestrichen."

"Je vollkommener, desto mehr Schmerzen."