The Medici Madonna
Photo source: wikiart
Building on yesterday's conversation of Madonna of the Stairs, here we fast forward 30 years in Michelangelo's life and revisit the theme of the nursing Christ-child and the "emotionally-unavailable" stare of the Madonna.
If the sculpture seems unfinished to you, you're right. It was originally meant to decorate the Old Sacristy building, designed by Brunelleschi and commissioned by the Medici family. Michelangelo chipped away at it over many years, but when he moved to Rome it was moved to its current location in the New Sacristy.
It is fun to imagine Michelangelo planning this piece when, as a teenager, he completed the low-relief Madonna of the Stairs. If you review yesterday's discussion, we contemplated the theory that Michelangelo was himself the well-muscled Christ-child, hiding under the robe of Mary, as a sculptor working away on his masterpiece. In the Medici Madonna, Mary's eyes are similarly vacant, dispassionate about the events around her. Again, the child is again faced away, hidden from view, trying to feed. Mary seems to reject.
It may be believed that Michelangelo was in this way still working. However, this time it may be mentally and emotionally processing the relationship that he himself had with his wet-nurse. This is alluded to in Rona Goffen's, "Mary’s Motherhood According to Leonardo and Michelangelo".
The piece itself is visually stunning, demonstrating Michelangelo's masterly with carving marble to resemble draping fabric. The principle of design that I want to focus on in this class is movement. As a group, we will discuss movement in this work and the rhythm that Michelangelo created.
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