Michelangelo Buonarroti | Sculpture

Michelangelo's (1475-1564) earliest sculpture was made in the Medici garden near the church of San Lorenzo; his Bacchus and Sleeping Cupid both show the results of careful observation of the classical sculptures located in the garden.

His later Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs and Madonna of the Stairs reflect his growing interest in his contemporaries.

Throughout Michelangelo's sculpted work one finds both a sensitivity to mass and a command of unmanageable chunks of marble.

His Pietà places the body of Jesus in the lap of the Virgin Mother; the artist's force and majestic style are balanced by the sadness and humility in Mary's gaze.

Galileo Galilei about Michelangelo

• "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?"

Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632) as quoted in the Salusbury translation, The Systeme of the World: in Four Dialogues (1661) pp. 85-86.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about Michelangelo

• "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"!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1786.