Michelangelo’s Sculptural Process and Human Physiology

• In Event: Una linea sola e non stentata: Papers in Memory of David Rosand I

Abstract

Although scholarship has viewed Michelangelo’s poetry as crucial to the interpretation of his sculptural process, this talk argues that a key dimension of these discourses has been overlooked. Placing the poetry alongside contemporary writings about physiology, a parallel between carving stone and inner-anatomical function emerges that throws crucial light on the artist’s conception of his work. Noting how Michelangelo embraced the subtractive method of stone carving, while promoting an ideal of high finish (a finito he rarely achieved in practice), this talk argues that his conception of sculptural method matches period ideas about the physiology of digestion, wherein the primary internal organs distilled ingested food into the blood and quasi-corporeal spirits necessary to exercising the body’s higher, intellectual functions. This talk argues that, when Michelangelo wrote about releasing the lofty concetto from the excess materia of the marble block, he was thinking about the anatomical processes that undergird spiritual attainment.

Author

• Christian K. Kleinbub, Ohio State University