Michelangelo in Florence, Leonardo in Vinci - walking tour of Florence

Arts & Activities, March, 2003 by Barbara Herberholz

WALKING through HISTORY

After a walking tour of Florence with our group leader, we were left in the impressive shadow of Brunelleschi's enormous Duomo. With guidebooks and maps in hand to help us make the decision as to what to see in the short time we had remaining in this historic city, we decided to concentrate on sites that were notable in the life and works of one the major giants of the Italian Renaissance: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564). So much to see, so little time.

We began with a visit to the Casa Buonarroti, which is now a museum containing several portraits of Michelangelo, as well as a collection of paintings, sculptures, majolicas and archeological finds. At the age of 33, Michelangelo bought five houses in an old neighborhood on Via Ghibellion, a historic street in the center of Florence, and made his home in two of them for some years. The house we see today was built by Michelangelo's descendants on the location of his old houses.

Going upstairs we found the Madonna della Scala (ca. 1491), a delicate, shallow relief that was carved when Michelangelo was 15 or 16, and is the sculptor's earliest surviving work. Nearby, the Battle of the Centaurs (ca. 1492) was done during the time he spent at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent.

We discovered in the Casa Buonarroti a small-scale model of the wooden contraption used to move David, the three-times-life-size statue that he completed in two and a half years at the beginning of the 16th century. We found it interesting to learn that the huge marble block nicknamed "The Giant," from which David was sculpted, had remained in a yard near the cathedral in Florence throughout Michelangelo's youth. A sculptor had botched a job and given up on making anything from the 18-foot-tall block, which weighed tons and was coveted by every sculptor in Florence. The block was given to Michelangelo by the Opera del Duomo.

Michelangelo worked on the marble in the Opera del Duomo showing David an instant before his battle against Goliath. Scaffolding allowed him to carve the figure. The youth is seen in a relaxed but alert pose. He holds a stone in his unusually large right hand, in readiness to hurl at Goliath, and a sling in his left hand. His gaze shows his concentration. The massive and heroic piece was designed to be placed on top of the cathedral, but the city officials decided to place it in a more visible location.

So, in 1504 the exceptionally beautiful statue was taken out of the Opera del Duomo and placed in front of the town hall (the Palazzo Vecchio), as a symbol of civic pride and Florence's struggle against tyranny as a small but independent city-state. Workers had to break down the wall above the door to allow it to go through. It was moved by 40 men and was suspended so it would not touch the ground. It was transported along 14 greased beams that were changed by hand. It took four days to reach the Piazza. David remained there for more than three centuries.

However, in 1874, to protect it from the weather, David was moved from the Piazza Vecchio in a special wooden crate (the scale model we had seen in the Casa Buonarroti), to the Galleria dell'Accademia, a 15-minute walk from where it once stood. It took five days to accomplish the move. Because of the intense summer heat, the work proceeded from 4 a.m. to 11 a.m. The specially built carriage ran along tracks and had a rotating base to allow it to move around street corners.

A replica, still in the Piazza Vecchio today, was put on display in its place. Another replica stands high above the city at Piazzale Michelangelo, facing the River Arno and Ponte Vecchio.

The great Michelangelo was born in 1475 in Caprese, in the hills of Tuscany in central Italy, some 60 miles from Florence. His aristocratic family had fallen on hard times and when his mother found that she was unable to breast-feed him, he was sent to a nearby wet nurse whose husband was a stonecutter. Michelangelo later joked that he gained his skill from his nurse's milk. His mother died when he was 6, and from the age of 10 he attended school in Florence. At 13 he decided he wanted to be an artist and soon became an apprentice of Ghirlandaio, a leading Florentine painter.

At this time, the wealthy Medici family controlled Florence and its head was Lorenzo the Magnificent, a great patron of the arts. Lorenzo was so impressed that he took young Michelangelo into his own household, gave him a purple cloak to wear, and had him educated with his son and nephew. The Medici were great politicians and lovers of culture and the arts. The home was visited by artists and scholars, and here Michelangelo developed his love of literature. Today the Medici Chapel houses Night, Day, and other works by Michelangelo.

Lorenzo the Magnificent had placed antique statues in a garden near the Garden of San Marcos. Young artists could go there and practice sculpture under Bertoldo di Giovanni, who had studied under the famous Donatello. It was here that, at 14 years of age, Michelangelo sculpted the head of an old faun of marble, copying it from an ancient sculpture. A faun is an ancient Italian deity who was a patron of fields and herds. Lorenzo made a joke, saying, "You made him with all of his teeth. Don't you know that old people always have some teeth missing?" So Michelangelo broke a tooth off the mask and Lorenzo smiled, satisfied. This piece may be seen in the Casa Buonarroti.