Renaissance Art. Victoria Charles

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      After the manifold fates of the Israelites, The Fall of Man was to be followed by the redemption, and the redeemer even come from its midst. The powerful figures of the prophets and the sibyls prepare for this, which surround the mirror of the ceiling vault and the transition between it and the vault pendentives on all sides. These paintings are perhaps only comprehensible to the individual when he reduces them to their parts and looks at each picture in itself, only then will the abundance of beauty which may find its best expression in the Creation of Eve (around 1508) be fully revealed. The ceiling paintings were completed with The Last Judgment (1536/1541). This painting is doubtlessly the greatest piece of work of the Italian High Renaissance, which, through its superabundance of figures and the guidance of their movement, prepares for those exaggerations which developed in the Late Renaissance and in the Baroque period. In all these figures Michelangelo made one thing clear: to reveal his uncompromising will; his absolute control of the anatomy of the human body in such a way that no other artist before or after him could counter with anything. With the contempt for humanity, which became second nature to him in his late years, he wanted to force all artists around him, friends as well as opponents, to look to him in admiration. That is why in Michelangelo’s work the human being can never be separated from his work. He thus considered himself the measure of all artistic matters.

      Among his work are also the marble Medici tombs in the Florentine Chapel near the church of San Lorenzo. Originally planned as the tomb of the entire Medici Family, only a small, laborious and frequently interrupted part of this great project by Michelangelo, who also created the architectonic design of the chapel (1519/1534), was realised. Only the two statues of the dukes Giuliano Lorenzino, who was murdered in 1547, were finished by Michelangelo, so that they could be put up in the quadrilateral chapel in 1563.

      Fate did not look upon Michelangelo the master builder very favourably either, though he was awarded the greatest task commissioned in Rome at that time: the construction of St Peter’s Cathedral. Pope Julius II had had the old basilica demolished, in order to erect an imposing new building in its place. Donato Bramante, who had been commissioned with the design and execution, intended a ground-plan in the shape of a Greek cross and a mighty dome above the crossing. When he died in 1514, only the four dome pillars with their connecting arches had been completed.

      Michelangelo reached old age. He died at the age of 89, on 18 February 1564 in Rome. But the Florentines demanded his body and he was entombed in the Pantheon of their illustrious men, in the Basilica of Santa Croce.