The route to Michelangelo’s legacy was driven by his devout faith. His art was emblematic of the constraints imposed by the orthodoxy of his beliefs, including that his talent was bestowed upon him by god himself, and that his message would be exalted by the mastery of his craft.
“Idealise so that no one will genuflect before a Madonna only to discover later that it was the fishmongers daughter.”
And so it was, that Michelangelo’s trademark was exemplified amongst his contemporaries by the idealised form, which is interpreted through today’s prism as highly expressionistic: his giant’s youthful flesh betrayed by manly hands in The David; his angels—floating thugs tangled in the grip of grotesque serpents—in The Last Judgement; a horned Moses. And in gentle contrast, the limp lifeless body of Christ adored by the reflective expression of the Madonna’s youthful mask in Pieta.
Two generations divide them.
Bernini. A devout prodigy of a different kind; of nature; of realism; of love lost. His fragile paper folds of cold marble pierced by the hot arrow of Ecstasy. And a great wonder of the world before us, and still: David, his soft sinuous tension expressed in a secular motion.