In response to the Florentine poet Benedetto Varchi’s request for his contribution to the paragone debate being conducted among some of his contemporaries, the celebrated Italian architect, painter, poet, and sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti writes:
Though he ultimately follows up on this assertion by confessing that, in his old age, he has acquiesced to the idea that painting and sculpture are, in fact, ‘one and the same’ in that they both ‘proceed from one and the same faculty of understanding’, it is made equally evident – through both his lexical choices and his manifest scorn at the notion that one might consider painting a ‘nobler’ art form than ‘sculpture’ – that the renowned artist still harbours a preference for sculptural art. This, …show more content…
The Laocoön, which was unearthed in 1506 to great communal and papal fanfare in Rome, features the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two young sons being devoured by sea serpents; with their anguished facial expressions and their desperately contorted limbs, the figures, whose anatomy and physiognomy are both startling in their realism, serve, in essence, as a study on the presentation of tension through movement. It is perhaps for this very reason that Michelangelo is believed to have once deemed the Laocoön a testament to the triumphs of stone carving. It is perhaps also for this very reason that the Laocoön’s influence permeates and recurs so often in Michelangelo’s body of work. Though the sculpture’s influence on Michelangelo’s own sculptures can be seen, for example, in the contortions of the body of St Matthew, whose ‘torso moves in opposition to his lower extremities’, a move culminating in a ‘figura serpentinata’ that ‘terminates in the powerful thrown-back head’, its influence is also apparent in the positioning and structuring of the bodies of the various ignudi and prophets, such as the Prophet Jonah, with his gaping mouth and reclining form, stippling the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel …show more content…
The painting appears to become more convex at its centre, where Jesus, Mary, and St John the Baptist are all stood; there is a different measure of light falling on the angels to St John’s right, which creates an illusion of distance between them and St John. (Interestingly enough, The Madonna and Child with St John and Angels does not feature an ornate landscape; instead, it sports a broad expanse of sky, which, in turn, likens the entire painting to a
Though he ultimately follows up on this assertion by confessing that, in his old age, he has acquiesced to the idea that painting and sculpture are, in fact, ‘one and the same’ in that they both ‘proceed from one and the same faculty of understanding’, it is made equally evident – through both his lexical choices and his manifest scorn at the notion that one might consider painting a ‘nobler’ art form than ‘sculpture’ – that the renowned artist still harbours a preference for sculptural art. This, …show more content…
The Laocoön, which was unearthed in 1506 to great communal and papal fanfare in Rome, features the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two young sons being devoured by sea serpents; with their anguished facial expressions and their desperately contorted limbs, the figures, whose anatomy and physiognomy are both startling in their realism, serve, in essence, as a study on the presentation of tension through movement. It is perhaps for this very reason that Michelangelo is believed to have once deemed the Laocoön a testament to the triumphs of stone carving. It is perhaps also for this very reason that the Laocoön’s influence permeates and recurs so often in Michelangelo’s body of work. Though the sculpture’s influence on Michelangelo’s own sculptures can be seen, for example, in the contortions of the body of St Matthew, whose ‘torso moves in opposition to his lower extremities’, a move culminating in a ‘figura serpentinata’ that ‘terminates in the powerful thrown-back head’, its influence is also apparent in the positioning and structuring of the bodies of the various ignudi and prophets, such as the Prophet Jonah, with his gaping mouth and reclining form, stippling the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel …show more content…
The painting appears to become more convex at its centre, where Jesus, Mary, and St John the Baptist are all stood; there is a different measure of light falling on the angels to St John’s right, which creates an illusion of distance between them and St John. (Interestingly enough, The Madonna and Child with St John and Angels does not feature an ornate landscape; instead, it sports a broad expanse of sky, which, in turn, likens the entire painting to a