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Michelangelo's Sistine Frescoes and Blake's 1795 Color-Printed Drawings: a Study in Structural Relationships

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Michelangelo's Sistine Frescoes and Blake's 1795 Color-Printed Drawings: a Study in Structural Relationships ARTICLE Michelangelo’s Sistine Frescoes and Blake’s 1795 Color-printed Drawings: A Study in Structural Relationships Jenijoy La Belle Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, Volume 14, Issue 2, Fall 1980, pp. 66-84 66 MICHELANGELO'S SISTINE FRESCOES AND BLAKE'S 1795 COLOR-PRINTED DRAWINGS: A STUDY IN STRUCTURAL RELATIONSHIPS JENIJOY LA BELLE illiam Blake's large color-printed drawings only through engraved reproductions, many of which of 1795 have often been recognized as among were probably known to him from his earliest years. W his greatest achievements in the visual arts. Blake's very first signed engraving, Joseph of While some of the individual prints have received Arimathea among the Rooks of Albion, is based on a detailed attention, the interrelationships among all figure from Michelangelo's "fresco of the Crucifixion twelve designs have never been satisfactorily of St. Peter in the Cappella Paolina at the Vatican, explained. The subjects of the prints range through and in the 1780s Blake meticulously copied seven of both Biblical and secular literature: the Old and Michelangelo's figures from the Sistine Chapel-- New Testaments, Shakespeare, Milton, and, perhaps, following the engravings in a small book by Adam Blake's own writings. The fact that the designs Ghisi.3 These careful studies from Michelangelo, were all executed in the same technique in the same as well as many other borrowings from his work, year, are of about the same size (approximately 45 indicate that Blake knew the Sistine frescoes by 58 cm.), and would seem to express similar intimately. There were a number of engravings of emotions and basic concepts suggests that the prints the Ceiling available in Blake's day, including may form a series. Yet the range of subject matter Domenico Cunego's outline print (105 by 48.3 cm.) makes it extremely difficult to describe the format of the ceiling, vaults, and lunettes, published in of such a group. A comparison, however, between the 1780 (illus. 1). The schematic linearity of this color-prints and Michelangelo's frescoes on the engraving places particular emphasis on the structure Sistine Ceiling offers new insights into Blake's of Michelangelo's designs, rather than on details work. As I will attempt to demonstrate here, of motif, expression, or color. Blake could have Blake not only borrowed motifs and styles from learned more about the Sistine Chapel from friends Michelangelo for the creation of his great color- such as Flaxman, who returned from Rome in 1794, printed drawings, but also based their organization and Fuseli. on the pictorial program of the Sistine Ceiling.1 Blake wrote the word "Fresco" on five of the Blake's debt to Michelangelo is apparent color prints,4 a word he also used to describe his throughout a great deal of his best work, and has so-called tempera paintings of a later date. He been mentioned by many Blake scholars.2 The color- apparently believed that his own opaque glue or printed drawings are no exception. The heroic gum-based pigments and perhaps even his methods of musculature of the figures, the brooding or terrified preparing paper or canvas were the same as the fresco visages, the dramatic postures, and even the technique of painting on damp plaster used by the schematic simplicity of the backgrounds all bespeak great Renaissance masters.5 Blake hoped that his Blake's unbounded admiration for and borrowings from work in this medium would achieve the same greatness Michelangelo. Blake, of course, knew Michelangelo for his country and age that the works of 67 Michelangelo and Rafael had achieved for the Italian spandrel figures. These majestic characters are of Renaissance. In his Descriptive Catalogue of 1809, two types--01d Testament Prophets who foretold the Blake wrote that he wished four of his drawings destiny of their people and the coming of Christ, were "in Fresco, on an enlarged scale to ornament and the Sibyls, those female soothsayers of classical the altars of churches, and to make England like history whose words were seen as harbingers of the Italy, respected by respectable men of other Christian era by Renaissance theologians. The countries on account of Art."5 That Blake believed, spiritual struggles of these contemplative figures however wrongly, that his color-printed drawings are given dramatic physical embodiment in the ignudi, were in the same medium as the Sistine Chapel youthful male nudes who serve as intermediaries frescoes forms a small but significant technical between the seers and the central panels. Thus, connection between Blake's works and Michelangelo's. Michelangelo has combined sequential narrative and a more open organization based upon levels of human Before turning to specific comparisons between consciousness--with the conceptual arrangement the color-prints and Michelangelo's paintings, we dominant over temporal order. By this flexible must consider for a moment the relationships among principle, Michelangelo has been able to bring the various sections of the Sistine frescoes them- together a vast array of events from both Biblical selves. The central span of the ceiling is dominated and non-Biblical history and to offer the viewer the by nine panels recording the Biblical history of the opportunity to recapitulate on the psychological world from the Separation of Light and Darkness to level man's fall and progress toward redemption. the Drunkenness of Noah. We enter the Chapel at the We find a similar architectonic program in Blake's end of the story, under the Drunkenness of Noah, color-prints of 1795. and proceed backward in time through the Deluge, the Sacrifice of Noah, The Fall and the Expulsion, The most famous and in many respects most the Creation of Eve, the Creation of Adam, the important panel in Michelangelo's central sequence Separation of Heaven from the Water, the Creation of is the Creation of Adam (illus. 2). We are not the Sun and Moon, and finally the Separation of given the creation of Adam's physical form, but Light and Darkness. If one conceives of the series rather the moment when God brings to man the divine as running in the other direction, from altar to spark of intellect. Adam seems to be rising entrance, then the central panels proceed in physically from the primordial earth as an indication chronological sequence--yet with one exception. of incipient spiritual awareness. God's heroic Noah's sacrifice happened after the flood and form framed by attendant spirits and a swirling therefore we should, when entering the room, come cloak is an epitome of the eighteenth century's upon it as the second panel, not the third. Some sense of the pictorial sublime--a mixture of beauty modern scholars believe that Michelangelo desired and power that cannot fail to touch the viewer with the viewer to follow the reverse chronology and awe. Yet God's face expresses tenderness as well that he transposed the second and third panels as majesty. because he wished not just to tell a Bible story, but to indicate a symbolic progression of human David Bindman has suggested that Elohim consciousness as it ascends from a beastly level to creating Adam (illus. 3) is "the most probable an awareness of God's primal being.7 Michelangelo starting design" for Blake's color-printed drawings was conversant with the Christian Neo-Platonism of and that its "ultimate prototype" is Michelangelo's the Italian Renaissance,8 and his organization of Creation of Adam. 9 In this investigation of the the ceiling was very likely influenced by a Neo- conceptual ties between Michelangelo's entire series Platonic, concern for the stages of spiritual and Blake's, the general similarities in subject and enlightenment. We come upon the Deluge before the style are perhaps less significant than the contrasts Sacrifice of Noah since the latter event indicates that link these two designs. In Blake's creation a turning to God and a growth of spiritual awareness. of Adam, we see not spiritual enlightenment, but the The parallels between Blake's group of color-prints physical creation of Adam's body--a body not rising and the sequence of Michelangelo's central panels from the earth but crucified upon it. God's face hold true whether one reads the panels from entrance mixes melancholy with terror and while this God may, to altar (as I do here, following De Tolnay) or like Michelangelo's, touch us with awe, He gives from altar to entrance (thus emphasizing a fall us no hope. Rather than enlightening Adam, with into sensual degradation rather than a progression His right hand He seems to be forcing Adam's head toward enlightenment). closer to the earth. Like "the father [who] ready stands to form / The infant head" (E 281) in Tiriel, About the central sequence Michelanaelo arranged Blake's Elohim is restricting, not expanding, human several types of figures, related thematically but consciousness. With His left hand God reaches for not sequentially to other parts of the entire more clay to add to Adam's partially fleshed body. composition. Again the concept of levels of spiritual Adam's lower limbs are bound by a worm, often awareness would seem to provide the organizational associated with the merely physical in Blake's key. In the four corner spandrels are the deeds of writings10 and, in this context, suggestive of the Old Testament heroes which aided the earthly well- serpent who leads to man's fall into mortality. In being of the Israelites. In the eight side contrast to God's attendants and cloak in spandrels are portraits of unredeemed humanity who, Michelangelo's creation of Adam, Blake gives his as St.
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