Battle of the Centaurs (Michelangelo)

Last updated
Battle of the Centaurs
Michelangelo, centauromachia, 1492 ca. 01.JPG
Artist Michelangelo
Yearc. 1492
TypeMarble
Dimensions84.5 cm× 90.5 cm(33.3 in× 35.6 in)
Location Casa Buonarroti
Preceded by Madonna of the Stairs
Followed by Crucifix (Michelangelo)

Battle of the Centaurs is a relief sculpture by the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo, created around 1492. It was the last work Michelangelo created while under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, who died shortly after its completion. Inspired by a classical relief created by Bertoldo di Giovanni, the marble sculpture represents the mythic battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs. A popular subject of art in ancient Greece, the story was suggested to Michelangelo by the classical scholar and poet Poliziano. The sculpture is exhibited in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, Italy.

Contents

Battle of the Centaurs was a remarkable sculpture in several ways, presaging Michelangelo's future sculptural direction. Michelangelo had departed from the then current practices of working on a discrete plane to work multidimensionally. It was also the first sculpture Michelangelo created without the use of a bow drill and the first sculpture to reach such a state of completion with the marks of the subbia chisel left to stand as a final surface. Whether intentionally left unfinished or not, the work is significant in the tradition of "non finito" sculpting technique for that reason. Michelangelo regarded it as the best of his early works, and a visual reminder of why he should have focused his efforts on sculpture.

Background

Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Battle of the Nudes (c. 1470) Clevelandart 1967.127.jpg
Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Battle of the Nudes (c. 1470)

Michelangelo, at 16, was working under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici when he sculpted the Battle of the Centaurs, although the work was not commissioned but created for himself. [1] [2] [3] The work reflected what was then a current fashion for reproducing ancient themes. [4] Specifically, Michelangelo was inspired by a relief that had been produced for Lorenzo by Bertoldo di Giovanni, a work in bronze that hung in the Medici palace. [4] [5] Michelangelo chose to work in marble rather than the more expensive medium of bronze so as to keep down costs. [4] Bertoldo's work, The Equestrian Battle in the Ancient Manner—also known as Battle (with Hercules)—was a recreation of a damaged Roman battle sarcophagus and required liberal imagination to fill in the gaps left by the damaged original. [6] Bertoldo took other liberties with his source material and seems to have himself been inspired by the Antonio del Pollaiuolo engraving Battle of the Nudes . [4]

The young sculptor never finished the work. [7] While a number of biographies have attributed this to the loss of power of the Medici family, Eric Scigliano, a biographer of the sculptor, argues that Michelangelo had plenty of time to finish the sculpture if he had chosen to and points out that this was only the first of several "non finito" sculptures, preceding the Taddei Tondo and Pitti Tondo . [8] He also notes that Michelangelo expressed no dissatisfaction with the work.

Whether or not the sculpture was intentionally left incomplete, Michelangelo regarded this sculpture as the best of his early works. [1] He kept it for the rest of his life, [9] though he destroyed or abandoned many of his other pieces. He remarked to his biographer Ascanio Condivi that looking at it made him regret the time he had spent in pursuits other than sculpture. [10]

Subject and theme

According to Condivi, the poet Poliziano suggested the specific subject to Michelangelo, and recounted the story to him. [4] The battle depicted takes place between the Lapiths and the Centaurs at the wedding feast of Pirithous. [1] Pirithous, king of the Lapiths, had long clashed with the neighboring Centaurs. To mark his good intentions Pirithous invited the Centaurs to his wedding to Hippodamia (part of whose name, "Hippo," Ιππο, literally translates as "horse", which may suggest some connection to them). [11] Some of the Centaurs over-imbibed at the event, and when the bride was presented to greet the guests, she so aroused the intoxicated centaur Eurytion that he leapt up and attempted to carry her away. [12] This led not only to an immediate clash, but to a year-long war, before the defeated Centaurs were expelled from Thessaly to the northwest.

The myth was a popular subject for Greek sculpture and painting. [13] The Greek sculptors of the school of Pheidias perceived the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs as symbolic of the great conflict between order and chaos and, more specifically, between the civilized Greeks and Persian "barbarians". [14] Battles between Lapiths and Centaurs were depicted in the sculptured friezes on the Parthenon and on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. [15] [16]

Scigliano suggests that Michelangelo's Battle of the Centaurs also reflects the themes of "Greeks over barbarians" and "civilization over savagery", but in Michelangelo's work he sees, in addition, the triumph of "stone over flesh". [10] He notes that in the work itself, Michelangelo depicts his combatants using rocks against one another, and suggests that the sculptor could not have missed the coincidence that the name of the human fighters—Lapith—reflects the Latin word for stone (lapis) and the Italian word for stone plaque (lapide).

Composition and technique

Battle of the Centaurs, detail. The fluidity of the twisting figure's limbs is a departure from the careful articulation of earlier Italian Renaissance sculpture. Michelangelo, centauromachia, 1492 ca. 07.JPG
Battle of the Centaurs, detail.
The fluidity of the twisting figure's limbs is a departure from the careful articulation of earlier Italian Renaissance sculpture.

The relief consists of a mass of nude figures writhing in combat, placed underneath a roughed-out strip in which the artist's chisel marks remain visible. Art historian Howard Hibbard says that Michelangelo has obscured the centaurs, as most of the figures are represented from the waist up. Part of one of the few identifiable centaurs is visible in the bottom center, his leg extending between the legs of the twisting figure above him and his rump pinning another to the ground.

Hippodamia is depicted as one of two central figures in the sculpture, to the right, balancing the twisted figure on the left. Michelangelo, centauromachia, 1492 ca., 14.JPG
Hippodamia is depicted as one of two central figures in the sculpture, to the right, balancing the twisted figure on the left.

According to Hibbard, Michelangelo has obscured a lone female figure in the work. [17] The attempt to abduct Hippodamia had been the provocation for the brawl, however, and she is given a central location in the sculpture by Michelangelo. Her position balances the composition by placement similar to that of the twisted figure on the left. Her body also is twisting. They are equidistant from the edges of the composition. She is one of only two figures whose full body is displayed in the work. They both are displayed from head to toe. She can be seen among the figures in the center right, grasping the arm of one of her assailants, who has grabbed her hair. Her head, arms, back, hip, left leg, and left foot are displayed prominently. Another assailant, placed behind her, has his arm around her torso.

Battle of the Centaurs was an early turning point and a harbinger of Michelangelo's future sculptural technique. [2] The Michelangelo biographers, Antonio Forcellino and Allan Cameron, say that Michelangelo's relief, while created in a classical tradition, departed significantly from the techniques established by such masters as Lorenzo Ghiberti and Donatello. [18] Rather than working on discrete, parallel planes as his predecessors had done, Michelangelo carved his figures dynamically, within "infinite" planes. Forcellino and Cameron describe this break with modern practice as Michelangelo's "own personal revolution", and they point specifically to the left of the relief where a twisting figure becomes "something of an artistic manifesto." [19] Particularly striking is the composition of the figure's upper limbs, which deviate from the carefully articulated norms. Also remarkable, according to them, is the manner in which Michelangelo sculpted independently of his preparatory drawings, freeing him from the constraints of two-dimensional vision and allowing him to merge the figures fluidly and multi-dimensionally. [7]

Battle of the Centaurs was also the first sculpture for which Michelangelo eschewed the use of the bow drill. [1] Finer details of the relief were probably achieved with the use of a toothed chisel called a gradina. [8] The smooth figures of the foreground contrast strongly with the roughly hewn background, created with a subbia chisel. [1] A traditional sculptor's tool, the subbia produced punched marks that had never before been left as a final surface in a work completed to this degree. [8] Georgia Illetschko insisted in 2004, these unfinished surfaces are "a conscious compositional element", and not due to a lack of time. [20] According to Scigliano, it was an important development in the non finito sculpting technique. [8]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Centaur</span> Greek mythological creature

A centaur, occasionally hippocentaur, also called Ixionidae, is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse that was said to live in the mountains of Thessaly. In one version of the myth, the centaurs were named after Centaurus, and, through his brother Lapithes, were kin to the legendary tribe of the Lapiths.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michelangelo</span> Italian artist, architect and poet (1475–1564)

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.

<i>David</i> (Michelangelo) Renaissance statue in Florence, Italy

David is a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance sculpture, created from 1501 to 1504 by Michelangelo. With a height of 5.17 metres, the David was the first colossal marble statue made in the early modern period following classical antiquity, a precedent for the 16th century and beyond. David was originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of twelve prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, but was instead placed in the public square in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504. In 1873, the statue was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, and in 1910 replaced at the original location by a replica.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donatello</span> Italian Renaissance sculptor

Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, better known as Donatello, was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance period. Born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used his knowledge to develop an Early Renaissance style of sculpture. He spent time in other cities, where he worked on commissions and taught others; his periods in Rome, Padua, and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy the techniques he had developed in the course of a long and productive career. His David was the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity; like much of his work it was commissioned by the Medici family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pirithous</span> In Greek mythology, the King of the Lapiths

Pirithous, in Greek mythology, was the King of the Lapiths of Larissa in Thessaly, as well as best friend to Theseus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lapiths</span> Legendary people in Greek mythology

The Lapiths were a group of legendary people in Greek mythology, who lived in Thessaly in the valley of the Peneus and on the mountain Pelion. They were believed to have descended from the mythical Lapithes, brother of Centaurus, with the two heroes giving their names to the races of the Lapiths and the Centaurs respectively. The Lapiths are best known for their involvement in the Centauromachy, a mythical fight that broke out between them and the Centaurs during Pirithous and Hippodamia's wedding.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giambologna</span> 16th–17th century Flemish-born sculptor in Italy

Giambologna, also known as Jean de Boulogne (French), Jehan Boulongne (Flemish) and Giovanni da Bologna (Italian), was the last significant Italian Renaissance sculptor, with a large workshop producing large and small works in bronze and marble in a late Mannerist style.

<i>The Thinker</i> Sculpture by Auguste Rodin

The Thinker is a bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin, usually placed on a stone pedestal. The work depicts a nude male figure of heroic size sitting on a rock. He is seen leaning over, his right elbow placed on his left thigh, holding the weight of his chin on the back of his right hand. The pose is one of deep thought and contemplation, and the statue is often used as an image to represent philosophy.

<i>Madonna of the Stairs</i> Sculpture by Michelangelo

The Madonna of the Stairs is a relief sculpture by Michelangelo in the Casa Buonarroti, Florence. It was sculpted around 1490, when Michelangelo was about fifteen. This and the Battle of the Centaurs were Michelangelo's first two sculptures. The first reference to the Madonna of the Stairs as a work by Michelangelo was in the 1568 edition of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.

<i>The Agony and the Ecstasy</i> (novel) 1961 novel by Irving Stone

The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961) is a biographical novel of Michelangelo Buonarroti written by American author Irving Stone. Stone lived in Italy for years visiting many of the locations in Rome and Florence, worked in marble quarries, and apprenticed himself to a marble sculptor. A primary source for the novel is Michelangelo's correspondence, all 495 letters of which Stone had translated from Italian by Charles Speroni and published in 1962 as I, Michelangelo, Sculptor. Stone also collaborated with Canadian sculptor Stanley Lewis, who researched Michelangelo's carving technique and tools. The Italian government lauded Stone with several honorary awards for his cultural achievements highlighting Italian history.

<i>Bacchus</i> (Michelangelo) Sculpture by Michelangelo

Bacchus (1496–1497) is a marble sculpture by the Italian High Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect and poet Michelangelo. The statue is somewhat over life-size and represents Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, in a reeling pose suggestive of drunkenness. Commissioned by Raffaele Riario, a high-ranking Cardinal and collector of antique sculpture, it was rejected by him and was bought instead by Jacopo Galli, Riario's banker and a friend to Michelangelo. Together with the Pietà, the Bacchus is one of only two surviving sculptures from the artist's first period in Rome.

<i>Crucifix</i> (Michelangelo) Sculpture by Michelangelo

Two different crucifixes, or strictly, wooden corpus figures for crucifixes, are attributed to the High Renaissance master Michelangelo, although neither is universally accepted as his. Both are relatively small figures which would have been produced in Michelangelo's youth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bertoldo di Giovanni</span> Italian Renaissance sculptor


Bertoldo di Giovanni was an Italian Renaissance sculptor and medallist.

In Greek mythology, Amycus or Amykos was a male centaur and the son of Ophion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michelangelo and the Medici</span> Relationship between Michelangelo and the House of Medici

Michelangelo had a complicated relationship with the Medici family, who were for most of his lifetime the effective rulers of his home city of Florence. The Medici rose to prominence as Florence's preeminent bankers. They amassed a sizable fortune some of which was used for patronage of the arts. Michelangelo's first contact with the Medici family began early as a talented teenage apprentice of the Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. Following his initial work for Lorenzo de' Medici, Michelangelo's interactions with the family continued for decades including the Medici papacies of Pope Leo X and Pope Clement VII.

<i>Taddei Tondo</i> Sculpture by Michelangelo

The Taddei Tondo or The Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John is an unfinished marble relief tondo of the Madonna and Child and the infant Saint John the Baptist, by the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti. It is in the permanent collection of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The tondo is the only marble sculpture by Michelangelo in Great Britain. A "perfect demonstration" of his carving technique, the work delivers a "powerful emotional and narrative punch".

<i>Tomb of Pope Julius II</i> Sculptural and architectural ensemble by Michelangelo

The Tomb of Pope Julius II is a sculptural and architectural ensemble by Michelangelo and his assistants, originally commissioned in 1505 but not completed until 1545 on a much reduced scale. Originally intended for St. Peter's Basilica, the structure was instead placed in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli on the Esquiline in Rome after the pope's death. This church was patronized by the Della Rovere family from which Julius came, and he had been titular cardinal there. Julius II, however, is buried next to his uncle Sixtus IV in St. Peter's Basilica, so the final structure does not actually function as a tomb.

<i>Brutus</i> (Michelangelo) Sculpture by Michelangelo

Brutus is a marble bust of Brutus sculpted by Michelangelo around 1539–1540. It is now in the Bargello museum in Florence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Italian Renaissance sculpture</span>

Italian Renaissance sculpture was an important part of the art of the Italian Renaissance, in the early stages arguably representing the leading edge. The example of Ancient Roman sculpture hung very heavily over it, both in terms of style and the uses to which sculpture was put. In complete contrast to painting, there were many surviving Roman sculptures around Italy, above all in Rome, and new ones were being excavated all the time, and keenly collected. Apart from a handful of major figures, especially Michelangelo and Donatello, it is today less well-known than Italian Renaissance painting, but this was not the case at the time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sculpture in the Renaissance period</span> Sculpture during the Renaissance period

Renaissance sculpture is understood as a process of recovery of the sculpture of classical antiquity. Sculptors found in the artistic remains and in the discoveries of sites of that bygone era the perfect inspiration for their works. They were also inspired by nature. In this context we must take into account the exception of the Flemish artists in northern Europe, who, in addition to overcoming the figurative style of the Gothic, promoted a Renaissance foreign to the Italian one, especially in the field of painting. The rebirth of antiquity with the abandonment of the medieval, which for Giorgio Vasari "had been a world of Goths", and the recognition of the classics with all their variants and nuances was a phenomenon that developed almost exclusively in Italian Renaissance sculpture. Renaissance art succeeded in interpreting Nature and translating it with freedom and knowledge into a multitude of masterpieces.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Cagno, Gabriella Di (March 2008). Michelangelo. The Oliver Press, Inc. p. 17. ISBN   978-1-934545-01-0 . Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  2. 1 2 Kauffman, Mark (1964-07-17). "The Genius of Michelangelo". Life . p. 56. Retrieved 2010-04-25.
  3. ↑ Graham-Dixon, Andrew (2 February 2009). Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel. Skyhorse Publishing Inc. p. 24. ISBN   978-1-60239-368-4 . Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Richardson, Carol M. (2 March 2007). Locating Renaissance art. Yale University Press. p. 55. ISBN   978-0-300-12188-9 . Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  5. ↑ Hibbard, Howard (1985). Michelangelo. Westview Press. p. 24. ISBN   978-0-06-430148-0 . Retrieved 25 April 2010.[ permanent dead link ]
  6. ↑ Jay A. Levenson; National Gallery of Art (U.S.) (1991). Circa 1492: art in the age of exploration. Yale University Press. pp. 264–. ISBN   978-0-300-05167-4 . Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  7. 1 2 3 Forcellino, Antonio; Allan Cameron (6 September 2009). Michelangelo: A Tormented Life. Polity. p. 33. ISBN   978-0-7456-4005-1 . Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Scigliano, Eric (2005). Michelangelo's mountain: the quest for perfection in the marble quarries of Carrara. Simon and Schuster. p. 45. ISBN   978-0-7432-5477-9 . Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  9. ↑ Coughlan, Robert (1966). The World of Michelangelo: 1475–1564. et al. Time-Life Books. p. 31.
  10. 1 2 Scigliano (2005), 44.
  11. ↑ Scigliano (2005), 43.
  12. ↑ Homerus; Alexander Pope; Thomas Parnell; Gilbert Wakefield (1796). The Odyssey. Longman. p. 79. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  13. ↑ Tarbell, Frank Bigelow (1919). A history of Greek art: with an introductory chapter on art in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Macmillan. p. 174. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  14. ↑ Kleiner, Fred S. (3 January 2008). Gardner's Art Through the Ages: A Global History. Cengage Learning. p. 144. ISBN   978-0-495-09307-7 . Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  15. ↑ Jenkins, Ian; Ian Dennis Jenkins (2007). The Parthenon sculptures. Harvard University Press. p. 69. ISBN   978-0-674-02692-6 . Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  16. ↑ Robertson, Martin (31 August 1981). A shorter history of Greek art . Cambridge University Press. p.  87. ISBN   978-0-521-28084-6 . Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  17. ↑ Hibbard (1984), 24.
  18. ↑ Forcellino and Cameron (2009), 32.
  19. ↑ Forcellino and Cameron (2009), 32–33.
  20. ↑ Illetschko, Georgia (April 2004). I, Michelangelo . Prestel. p.  81. ISBN   3-7913-3079-9 . Retrieved 25 April 2010.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.