MICHELANGELO

The amazing ceiling inside the Baptistry. In the top right hand corner you can see visions of Eternal Hell and Damnation, which would have been one of the first sights Dante would've seen as a baby.


Looking down to the top of The Baptistry, where Dante was Baptised.

A view form the top of the Bell Tower outside the Duomo, looking north to the Appian Mountains, the direction I came from and buggered my knee up...

Leaving the Franciscan Church of Santa Croce, which is now the final resting place of many of the worlds most famous Sculptors, Artists and Writers.

Tomb of Galileo

Tomb of Dante Alighieri

The Tomb of Michelagelo. Was amazing to see but also quite sad. There is a bust of him above the tomb.

A statue of Dante guards the entrance to the Church.

The Franciscan Church of Santa Croce, the location of Michelagelos final resting place.  

Michelangelo's Laocoon

The Sistine Chapel
Vatican City, Rome
The Sistine Chapel is rectangular and measures 40.93 meters (134.28 feet) long by 13.41 meters (44 feet) wide. It is 20.70 meters (67.91 feet) high.
The work was completed 1508 and 1st Nov 1512. He painted The Last Judgement, over the altar, between 1535 and 1541. Michelangelo felt that he was a more developed sculptor than a painter, but he accepted the offer. By the time he was finished, Michelangelo had painted well over 5,000 square feet of frescoes. Prior to the ceiling frescoes, the only painting he'd done was during his brief stint as a student in Ghirlandaio's workshop. He did not consider himself a painter.

Part of The Last Judgement
St Augustine holds in one hand a knife, and in the other his own skin which was his martyrdom, being skinned alive. The face on the skin is Michelangelos.

GOETHE:
"Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving."

Michelangelo got off to a slow start, not having painted frescoes before. He intended to (and did) work in buon fresco, the most difficult method, and one which only true masters undertook. In addition to having to learn everything about the medium itself and making initial blunders in that area, he also had to learn some extremely hard techniques in perspective. (Consider that his figures look "correct" on curved surfaces, viewed from nearly 60 feet below.)

Frescoe is the process of applying plaster to the surface to be painted first, then applying the paint while the plaster is still wet, this helps the paint saturate into the wall itself and prolongs its life.
Buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Generally, a layer of plaster will require ten to twelve hours to dry; ideally, an artist would begin to paint after one hour and continue until two hours before the drying time. You can imagine the problems this caused especially as he was working on scaffolding he himself had set up so as not to damage the walls of the Chapel, and painted the ceiling standing up (Not lying down on his back), but arched over backwards looking up which must have been hell on his arms, back and neck. I painted a little mural on my nephews bedroom wall and after 3 hours my arms were killing me..!!! Apparently, he remarked that the entire project messed his vision up; not suprising really.

The Four Slaves
(Accademia Gallery, Florence)
Again, sorry about the pictures, but you weren't allowed to take photos in the Accademia, so this quick copy and paste will have to do, but it's worth going online and looking at some hi-res images if possible.
These slaves, figures desperately trying to wriggle free of the stone that holds them, are unfinished works by MichelAngelo that had been part of a project for the Tomb of Pope Julius II. After the death of Julius, his relatives decided that such an expensive was no longer necessary and these statues were left incomplete.
"In each of the statues an intense relationship of forces is established between the emerging figures and the material space enveloping and constraining them."
These four unfinished sculptures are the best examples to show how physically difficult the process of sculpture must've been. You're looking at a huge solid rock that has been chiselled away over years by hand. Looking at these and seeing the untouched marble around them gave me a massive appreciation of this part of the process. I've since read that for the finer details in finishing a sculpture, some chisles are so fine, they are good for 5-10 strokes only, then need to be replaced..!!! An apprentice would be onhand to sharpen and supply more when needed.


The Deposition, or, The Florentine Pieta
(Museo Dell'Opera Del Duomo, Florence)
This work depicts four figures- the dead body of Christ, newly taken down from the Cross, Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene and another incomplete woman. The Nicodemus is actually a self portrait, and it was quite startling to see that he has put himself in the sculpture supporting the Christs dead body; a moving gesture that says a lot.
He was so upset that the marble turned out to be defective he actually smashed this work with a hammer in 1555 and one leg had broken off, one of the first recorded instances of an artist attempting to detroy his own work, and so it remains unfinished. I think because of all these reasons, this was the peice that most affected me. You can actually see where he's worked at the marble and hacked and chipped away at it to reveal the figures beneath... For Michelangelo, the job of the sculptor was to free the forms that were already inside the stone. He believed that every stone had a sculpture within it, and that the work of sculpting was simply a matter of chipping away all that was not a part of the statue.
Even today, scholars and critics still don't fully understand how, overall, he managed to produce such a volume of work, let alone of such perfect quality. All suggest there will never be another like him.

DAVID
(currently in the Accademia Gallery, Florence)
We waited for over an hour to be able to get into the Accademia to see all the works there, but all anyone wants to see really, is Michelangelo's David, his most famous work. As soon as I saw it, I just stood there trying to take it in. You could look at it for hours and not be tired of it, it is FULL of life, and at the same time completely relaxed and at ease. Everyone was just standing there mezmerised, myself included.
From a text:
"...as one gets closer, David's head and hands appear out of proportion. This is an effect deliberately designed to accentuate those parts of the body connected with Thought and Action. Had it been executed according to the classical canons the face would never have shown the same intensity, and the power of the hands would have vanished. Although Michelangelo had a profound knowledge of anatomy, based on his studies of antiquity and real life observation, he goes beyond theoretical rules, elaborating and disregarding them to highlight moral expression."
Also, this was sculpted from a previously scorned peice of marble. Other artists has attempted to sculpt various froms from it but never got very far as they said it had too many imperfections and veins running through it, so Michelangelo picked that up as a challenge and came up with his most famous work aged 26, after three years of labour. Even Leonardo Da Vinci was approched for the commission.

The Pieta.
Currently in Rome inside the Vatican.
This was completed in 1499 when he was 24 years old, taking him two years. It is carved out of a single block of marble, and in parts looks so soft it's unbelievable, particulary around Marys hand, where Jesus's flesh fills out at the shoulder. As well as the challenge of actually carving the whole piece, Michelangelo is able to even add optical illusions to his advantage:
"The proportions of the Pietà are unusual, with the figure of Mary actually larger than the body of Jesus across her knees; when viewed as intended, with the face of Jesus at eye level, the composition seems to be in proportion. The figures are quite out of proportion, owing to the difficulty of depicting a fully-grown man cradled full-length in a woman's lap. If Christ were to be of human scale, the Virgin, standing, would be nearly five meters tall."
Also of interest is that on Marys sash, Michelangelo has actually carved his name. This is the only time he has done his signature in this manner. Also, in the Eighties a mad man smashed an ice hammer on the tip of Marys nose shouting "I am Christ!". This damaged the marble and so it is now behind a protective panel.




(I thought it was worth having a separate post for Michelangelo, as he featured so much on the trip, his works were everywhere, from Belgium to Italy. Some of these photies were taken by me, other's weren't, as some museums didn't allow it. Also, some of these were taken (or not) in Rome, so there is a slight time gap here, but nessecary to show a tiny portion of his work in one post.)