Engraving Michelangelo
A CSI exhibit showcases
engravings on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and New York
Public Library
Staten Island Advance - May 9, 2004
The prints in “Reproducing Michelangelo were big,
big news 500 years ago. Celebrated Florentine sculptor Michelangelo
Buonarotti (1475-1564) had been compelled by one imperious pope
after another to complete gigantic frescoes (paintings on plaster)
of Biblical epics on the walls and ceilings of the Vatican’s Sistine
Chapel.
The artist was not happy about it. He didn’t like
painting. He preferred sculpture and architecture. The job took
decades.
Once it was unveiled, despite extreme magnificence
and complexity it did not sway all observers. Conservative religious
elements were outraged: Too much exposed genitalia (holy naked
saints and martyrs!) not to mention dubious theological ideas and
other transgressions too unholy to repeat.
Even detractors recognized the Sistine’s peerless
value, however. A compromise evolved when Daniele da Volterra, a
second-rate painter, was hired to make adjustments. For modesty’s
sake, he added many breezy wisps of fabric, strategically covering a
crotch here and a buttock there.
(Remember when the Brooklyn Museum showed a
contemporary painting of the Virgin that was purportedly splattered
with elephant poop —which it wasn’t — and the previous mayor tried
to shut down the place? Religious art that doesn’t toe the party
line has caused problems for centuries).
Over the next few centuries,other additions and
repairs changed the Sistine. Many were erased with the controversial
large-scale cleaning completed 10 years ago last month.
In Michelangelo’s day, colleagues and contemporaries gained access
to the Sistine, a private enclave. They made on-the-spot drawings of
the ceiling and the 46-by-43-foot wall of “The Last Judgment.”
Later, they turned these drawings into prints, specifically
engravings.
Prints are multiples. They’re lightweight, portable and inexpensive,
relatively speaking. Undoubtedly, much of the world got its first
glimpse of “The Last Judgment” as a detailed engraving, in black and
white.
TRUTH AND LIES
As visitors to the CSI gallery will see this month,
the print-makers of Michelangelo’s day studied the giant rolling,
achievement of “The Last“Judgment” several tiers in which hundreds
of figures gravitate toward heaven or sink toward hell, depending on
their soul’s scorecard.
The finest of the modest-sized engravings retain much of the life of
the original.
And unlike the “real” wall, they can be pored over,
slowly and closely.
DIFFERENT APPROACHES
Different printmakers had different approaches and
varying levels of allegiance to the truth.
The Frenchman Nicholas Beatrizet’s engravings are exceptionally
clean and full of light.
Other artists had a darker sense of the drama. Their
versions use more lines that produce more shadows.
In some instances, print-makers expanded the size
and shape of the hell area.
MICHELANGELO CRITICISMS
Michelangelo had been criticized not for devoting
too little space to the original but for suggesting (in the body
language of some of the players) that “hell might not be a permanent
place,” according to Nanette Salomon, the CSI art history professor
who is the curator of the gallery.
Other engravers adjusted postures and placements or
provided even more clothing to the ignudi (nude figures).
The prints come from just two lenders: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library.
“I was actually surprised that there was so much
available,” Professor Salmon said. “All of the important
print-makers of the era are represented.”
“Reproducing Michelangelo” is the last exhibition of
the 2003-2004 season.
Next season, the gallery will show works on paper by
the American Impressionist painter Childe Hassam.
by Michael Fressola
Reprinted here with permission from the
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