Michelangelo Buonarroti - Becoming Michelangelo: apprenticing to the master, and discovering the artist through his drawings

Copyright 2019 by Alan Pascuzzi

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First Edition

Passages from The Craftsmans Handbook by Cennino Cennini, translated by D. V. Thompson are reprinted by permission of Dover Publications.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pascuzzi, Alan, author.

Title: Becoming Michelangelo : apprenticing to the master, and discovering the artist through his drawings / Alan Pascuzzi.

Description: First edition. | New York : Arcade Publishing, 2019.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018055735 | ISBN 9781628729153 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564Knowledge and learning. | ArtStudy and teaching. | Drawing, ItalianCopying. | CYAC: ArtistsTraining of. | BISAC: ART / History / Renaissance. | ART / European. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Artists, Architects, Photographers.

Classification: LCC N6923.B9 P376 2019 | DDC 709.2dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055735

Jacket design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

Front jacket artwork: Alan Pascuzzi (figure drawing); janeb13/Pixabay (Creation of Adam detail); iStockphoto (paper and fabric textures)

Printed in China

This work is dedicated to my parents,
Louis and Yolanda,
whose love and gentleness are with me always;

to all of those who offered support and encouragement in my endeavors;

to my wife, Loredana; and to my children, Gioele, Elia,
and little Amelia, who was born when I was finishing this book.

Contents

Authors Note

A DANGEROUS DIMENSION OF MASTERY

There I sat, staring at what I had done. It was February 1996, and I was alone in the drawing room of the British Museum in London, surrounded by boxes of some the most important drawings by Michelangelo. Before me was an original Michelangelo drawing in red chalk, perhaps one of his finest, a study of Adam for the Sistine Chapel ceiling (). I had spent hours that morning drawing it while carefully studying the original. There wasnt a single mark, stroke of shading, muscle, or stray line that I did not reproduce. It was a cloned Michelangelo original. And I sat and looked, feeling radiant and glorious. I had spent the last five years copying Michelangelo drawings, and this was the finest I had executed yet. Then, suddenly, an uncharacteristically sinister thought popped into my head. I looked around; no one was watching. I could return my copy with the originals and place t he or iginal in my portfolio and simply walk out. My God , I thought, I could take this!

FIGURE 1: Michelangelo, study for Adam, red chalk, 190 x 237 mm (7.7 x 9.3 inches).

FIGURE 2: Alan Pascuzzi, copy after Michelangelo, study for Adam, red chalk, 190 x 237 mm (7.7 x 9.3 inches).

I could already see the headline in the International Herald Tribune : Fulbright Scholar Steals Michelangelo Drawing and Replaces It with Exact Copy. How many years could I get for it? Would it be worth it for the glory and fame? Wait , I thought, isnt this what Michelangelo did to Ghirlandaio? Didnt he copy his masters drawings so well that he put his copies back into the masters portfolio and passed them off as originals? I sat there, reflecting on whether I should begin a life of crime right there in the British drawing cabinet. An attendant passing by interrupted my imagined brush with crime and infamy and brought me down to earth. I placed the Michelangelo original back in its boxnot without some faint regret, I admit.

While collecting my drawing tools and slipping my copy into my portfolio, I began to think of what this meant. I had arrived, finally. After years of libraries and travels and fighting against the yin and yang of my academic and artistic schizophrenia, with this copy, this perfect copy, perhaps I had finally entered into that long-desired realm: a dimension of mastery.

PREFACE

What This Book Is

I OWE THE READER AN explanation of the nature of this book. In 1999, I submitted my PhD dissertation, Michelangelos Early Drawings: The Formation of the Artist , to my committee at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. In it, I presented a scholarly and artistic study of all of Michelangelos early drawings in a dense, cold, note-ridden academic brick of four hundred pages. Only the professors on my committee read my dissertation, I suspectseven in all. This book, however, is not for an academic committee of seven. Instead, Becoming Michelangelo is an artists study of an artistthe way I had always desired to study him. It is for anyone who loves Michelangelos art and is moved by his genius.

In writing this book, I returned to the Kunsthistorisches Library in Florence where I had done all of my dissertation research. The Kunst, as it is affectionately called by art historians, contains one of the most complete collections of art history publications on Earth. As I looked up at the section where the books on Michelangelo are kept, I was confronted with several huge wooden shelves filled from floor to ceiling with literally hundreds of tomes on Michelangeloon his art, poetry, everything down to his bank records. There are four volumes of just the lists of books and articles written about him alone. Five hundred forty-odd years after Michelangelos death, art historians are still writing about himand give no signs of stopping. There are dozens of biographies, from Condivi and Vasari to Hibbard and even my own professor, William Wallace, that contain a comprehensive view of his life and works. The best of all wasnt written by an art historian and isnt even an academic biography. It is Irving Stones The Agony and the Ecstasy , a brilliantly written novel about Michelangelo that weaves historical fact and fiction to provide an insightful view of the artists life and work. I suggest all of these works for the reader interested in the life of Michelangelo.