In the context of this artwork, discuss the Pendentives of the Pictorial scheme.
In each corner of the chapel is a triangular pendentive filling the space between the walls and the arch of the vault and forming a doubled spandrel above the windows nearest the corners. On these curving shapes Michelangelo has painted four scenes from biblical stories that are associated with the salvation of Israel by four great male and female heroes of the Jews: Moses, Esther, David and Judith. The first two stories were both seen in Mediaeval and Renaissance theology as prefiguring the Crucifixion of Jesus. The other two stories, those of David and Judith, were often linked in Renaissance art, particularly by Florentine artists as they demonstrated the overthrow of tyrants, a popular subject in the Republic.The Punishment of Haman – seen to the left when facing east, towards the altar
The Brazen Serpent – seen to the right when facing east, towards the altar
Judith and Holofernes – seen to the left when facing west, towards the rear
David and Goliath – seen to the right when facing west, towards the rearIn the Book of Esther, it is related that Haman, a public servant, plots to get Esther's husband, the king of Persia, to slay all the Jewish people in his land. The king, who is going over his books during a sleepless night, realizes something is amiss. Esther, discovering the plot, denounces Haman, and her husband orders his execution on a scaffold he has built. The king's eunuchs promptly carry this out. Michelangelo shows Haman crucified (instead of hung as in the original story) with Esther looking at him from a doorway and the king giving orders in the background. The composition shows Haman at the table with Esther, as well as being crucified. Mordechai sits on the steps, linking the scenes.In the story of the Brazen Serpent, the people of Israel become dissatisfied and grumble at God. As punishment, they receive a plague of venomous snakes. God offers the people relief by instructing Moses to make a snake of brass and set it up on a pole, the sight of which gives miraculous healing. The composition is crowded with figures and separate incidents as the various individuals who have been attacked by snakes struggle and die or turn toward the icon that will save them. This is the most Mannerist of Michelangelo's earlier compositions at the chapel.Writing in the 19th century, English art critic John Ruskin compares The Brazen Serpent favourably to the canonical classical statue group Laocoön and His Sons, which Michelangelo saw upon its discovery in 1506. Both works are crowded compositions of figures attacked by supernatural reptiles: the "fiery serpents" of the book of Numbers and the sea monsters of Virgil's Aeneid. Ruskin states that he prefers the sublimity expressed by Michelangelo's "gigantic intellect" in "the grandeur of the plague itself, in its multitudinous grasp, and its mystical salvation" and his "awfulness and quietness" to the "meagre lines and contemptible tortures of the Laocoön" and argued that "the grandeur of this treatment results, not merely from choice, but from a greater knowledge and more faithful rendering of truth". Attacking the sculpture's unnaturalistic snakes as "pieces of tape with heads to them" and criticizing the unrealistic struggle, he praises the painting
in the rendering of these circumstances; the binding of the arms to the body, and the knotting of the whole mass of agony together, until we hear the crashing of the bones beneath the grisly sliding of the engine folds. Note also the expression in all the figures of another circumstance, the torpor and cold numbness of the limbs induced by the serpent venom, which, though justifiably over-looked by the sculptor of the Laocoön, as well as by Virgil – in consideration of the rapidity of the death by crushing, adds infinitely to the power of the Florentine's conception.
Judith and Holofernes depicts the episode in the Book of Judith. As Judith loads the enemy's head onto a basket carried by her maid and covers it with a cloth, she looks towards the tent, apparently distracted by the limbs of the decapitated corpse flailing about. The composition is vertically split, not unlike the Punishment of Haman at the opposite corner of the chapel.
In David and Goliath, the shepherd boy, David, has brought down the towering Goliath with his sling, but the giant is alive and is trying to rise as David forces his head down to chop it off.David and Goliath is a relatively simple composition, with the two protagonists centrally placed and the only other figures being background observers.
Serpent sublimity Judith sling David and Goliath John Ruskin Book of Esther Mediaeval Esther vault The Brazen Serpent Laocoön and His Sons Jesus Haman Judith and Holofernes Aeneid The Punishment of Haman Book of Judith fig fiery serpent Mannerist angel the Brazen Serpent altar Jew book of Numbers pendentive Renaissance Moses Mordechai David Ham Crucifixion of Jesus Jews art spandrel God Virgil Goliath salvation Michelangelo left Renaissance art