Leonardo, Michelangelo, and the Art of the Figure
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Leonardo, Michelangelo, and the Art of the Figure Details
Book Description This concise, thought-provoking book traces the roots of Leonardo’s and Michelangelo’s differing representations of the human figure. Read more About the Author Michael W. Cole is professor of art history and archaeology at Columbia University. Read more
Reviews
Michael W. Cole is Professor of Art History at Columbia University. On a recent trip to Boston, I had the good fortune of being able to see the exhibition he curated at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, "Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini: Sculptors' Drawings from Renaissance Italy," and I purchased the exhibition catalogue, which he edited (see my review on this website). I was so impressed by the authority and clarity of his writing in it, that I bought this volume also, the latest of his several books on Italian Renaissance art. It revolves around those few months in late 1504 and early 1505 when Leonardo and Michelangelo were working simultaneously on the commissions they had been awarded to paint murals for Florence's new Great Council Hall. It is the same moment that was treated by Jonathan Jones in his well-received "The Lost Battles" from 2010 (see the many reviews on this website), but this is a very different sort of book. Mr. Jones, the art critic for the "Guardian" and a scholarly and knowledgeable popularizer of art-related themes, was concerned to paint a broad and lively picture of Renaissance Florence and to put the competition between its two towering geniuses in the widest possible historical, social, and psychological context, i.e., to portray what the book's subtitle rather dramatically called "The Artistic Duel that Defined the Renaissance." Prof. Cole's book is more academic in the sense of being more narrowly focussed and more specifically directed toward technical matters. His major argument is that, as the representation of the human figure came to be the distinguishing characteristic of Italian Renaissance painting, Leonardo and Michelangelo developed very different conceptions of the figure that eventually represented two opposing alternatives. His project is to elucidate these two antithetical conceptions, to determine where they came from, and to examine how their differences influenced later artists and art theorists. He does this primarily through an analysis of the artists' use of "force" in the battle scenes they were commissioned to create. "Force" is used here in its contemporary meaning of the energy needed literally to "force" figures' arms, legs, or other body parts into twisted, bent or otherwise unnatural positions that they would not normally occupy--somewhat in the style of the later "Mannerism." "Force" in this sense was a major issue in discourses on art at the time, because a forced figure ("figura sforzata"), it was thought by some writers, necessarily called attention to itself at the expense of the composite and therefore detracted from the narrative effect of the whole.This debate, essentially one concerning the relationships between individual figures, the totality of the painted composition, and the position of the painter/observer is the subject of Prof. Cole's first chapter, "The Force of Art." A further chapter, "Circumscription," discusses Michelangelo's allegiance to contour, i.e., the various manners of outlining figures that had in one way or another been fundamental to the art of the quattrocento, as opposed to Leonardo's innovative "sfumato" technique; the author identifies these as simply "two competing pictorial systems, each with its own values" (58) and denies that Leonardo's technique, although newer, was in any way inherently more modern. This discussion includes an intriguing section entitled "Nine Ways of Looking at an Outline" (edge, intersection, silhouette, etc.) and mentions even things like the influence on graphic experimentation of the falling price of paper in the late fifteenth century. Another chapter, "Flexion," illuminates the way that century's infatuation with the design of mechanical novelties extended to the figure itself: Leonardo's sheets attest to his parallel thinking about the movements of machines and of human bodies, and there are even sheets that treat the body as a mechanical subject. As far as the battle paintings are concerned, there appear to be no mechanical exchanges in Michelangelo's composition, and nothing is explained by comparing his figures with the machine; in Leonardo's case, however, "the whole painting is a machine, or rather a set of interlocking machines, in which every movement has consequences for every other" (133).Prof. Cole's book is not as easy to read as "The Lost Battles," but that is not because his writing is unclear; in fact, it is quite as clear as his introduction to the Gardner catalogue, but he is dealing with far more abstract and technical matters, e.g., the ways of looking at an outline or contour. He's very good at describing his thoughts and finding examples to illustrate them, and although it is evident that his intended audience is more professional than popular, his book is fully accessible to a wide readership. I did have to reread some sections to follow his train of thought, but it was quite worth the extra effort: this is a very suggestive and thought-provoking study, and it is copiously illustrated with excellent reproductions of all the works discussed and very meticulous notes with suggestions for further reading. It has certainly refined my understanding of Leonardo and Michelangelo, and I recommend it to everyone interested in the art of the figure in the Italian Renaissance.
