In Sistine Chapel ceiling, how is the Stylistic analysis and artistic legacy discussed?
Michelangelo was the artistic heir to the great 15th-century sculptors and painters of Florence. He learned his trade first under the direction of a masterly fresco painter, Domenico Ghirlandaio, known for two great fresco cycles in the Sassetti Chapel and Tornabuoni Chapel, and for his contribution to the cycle of paintings on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. As a student Michelangelo studied and drew from the works of some of the most renowned Florentine fresco painters of the early Renaissance, including Giotto and perhaps Masaccio. Masaccio's figures of Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden had a profound effect on the depiction of the nude in general, and in particular on its use to convey human feeling. Helen Gardner says that in the hands of Michelangelo, "the body is simply the manifestation of the soul, or of a state of mind and character."Michelangelo was also almost certainly influenced by the paintings of Luca Signorelli, whose paintings, particularly the Death and Resurrection Cycle in Orvieto Cathedral, contain a great number of nudes and inventive figurative compositions. In Bologna, Michelangelo saw the relief sculptures of Jacopo della Quercia around the Porta Magna of the minor basilica. In Michelangelo's depiction of the Creation of Eve the whole composition, the form of the figures and the relatively conservative concept of the relationship between Eve and her Creator adheres closely to Jacopo's design. Other panels on the ceiling, most particularly the iconic Creation of Adam show what Bartz and König call "unprecedented invention"; the pair call the ceiling in general "an artistic vision without precedent".
Older depictions of the creation scenes had depicted God as mostly immobile, a static, enthroned image whose activity was indicated by a gesture of the hand, as in the creation scenes of the mediaeval Byzantine-style mosaics of Monreale Cathedral. Michelangelo, influenced by the Paradiso of Dante Alighieri, shows God in full-bodied movement, an innovation Giovanni di Paolo had made in his Creation and Expulsion from Paradise. Paolo Uccello also had shown some movement in his scene of the creation of Adam and Eve in the cloister of Santa Maria Novella. In di Paolo's painting, as in Michelangelo's fresco, God is accompanied and apparently carried aloft by attendant putti. Raphael employed movement somewhat more in his contemporary The Prime Mover, next door to the Sistine Chapel in the stanza della segnatura and painted 1509–11; Perugino's slightly earlier Creator in fresco, in the room named for Raphael's Incendio del Borgo, shows a seated, static divinity.The Sistine Chapel ceiling was to have a profound effect upon other artists, even before it was completed. Vasari, in his "Life of Raphael", tells us that Bramante, who had the keys to the chapel, let Raphael in to examine the paintings in Michelangelo's absence; on seeing Michelangelo's prophets, Raphael went back to the picture of Isaiah that he was painting on a column in the Church of Sant'Agostino and, although it was finished, he scraped it off the wall and repainted it in a much more powerful manner in imitation of Michelangelo. O'Malley points out that even earlier than the Isaiah is Raphael's inclusion of the figure of Heraclitus in the School of Athens, a brooding figure similar to Michelangelo's Jeremiah, but with the countenance of Michelangelo himself, and leaning on a block of marble.
Bartz and König state of the ignudi, "There is no image that has had a more lasting effect on following generations than this. Henceforth similar figures disported themselves in innumerable decorative works, be they painted, formed in stucco or even sculpted."In January 2007, it was claimed that as many as 10,000 visitors passed through the Vatican Museums in a day, double the quantity of the previous decade.
Orvieto Cathedral School of Athens Sassetti Chapel Vatican Museums Santa Maria Novella Dante Alighieri Monreale Cathedral Sistine Chapel Raphael Bologna Giovanni di Paolo Church of Sant'Agostino cloister before Eve fig Tornabuoni Chapel Vatican ignudi Adam Heraclitus angel nude Renaissance fresco Florence minor basilica Jacopo della Quercia Giotto Luca Signorelli Paolo Uccello Masaccio art Garden of Eden God Domenico Ghirlandaio Jeremiah Adam and Eve Helen Gardner Isaiah Michelangelo