And Yet Another Papal Commission for Funerary Sculpture.I Ji;Ij1ii!Jmr.Ll 1Iii Lit F

Home , Dawn (Michelangelo), Day (Michelangelo), Dusk (Michelangelo), Night (Michelangelo)

"Art and death do not go well together," lamented Michelangelo in a famous letter, as he faced middle age and yet another papal commission for funerary sculpture.I ji;iJ1II!Jmr.ll_ 1IIi lIt f

. I . hat, however, is precisely what Pope Clement VII called on him to 'I do-unite art and death-when. in f1520 he directed the already renowned Hi/ Iorty-five-year-old artist to execute a -.I funerary chapel to house the remains of ', ., four members of the Medici family. jU :r /I # I InI. response, Michelangelo created j one of the most enigmatic sculptural groups of his career. The allegorical f I1 human figures, called Day, Night, Dawn, ~:1I /0 and Dusk, have intrigued viewers ever since the artist left them strewn about the 17 chapel floor in 1534, when he left 0 I I Florence for Rome, never to return.

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, i V Even though it is the only one of his sculptural groups resid- Lorenzo in Florence. Mchelangelo worked on the project Spo- ing in its original setting, we can only conjecture at what radically for fourteen years, but of the four tombs, he only Michelangelo had in mind when he conceived the still-incom- partially completed two. plete decoration in the Medici chapel. The artist conceived each tomb as a cohesive ensemble uni- Pope Clement VII (formerly Giulio de' Medici) charged fying architecture and sculpture. In a central niche, an effigy

MIichelangelo worked on

-i X ithe project sporadically for fourteen years, but of the four tombs, he only partially completed two.

Michelangelo with creating an impressive funerary chapel to of each duke presides over his own sarcophagus, upon which glorify four members of the Medici dynasty: Lorenzo the two over-life-sized allegorical figures recline, creating a tri- Magnificent, his brother Giuliano, and two other recently angular composition with the statue of the deceased at its deceased Medici dukes. Michelangelo oversaw every aspect of apex. The dukes, which Mchelangelo's contemporary biog- the chapel, from its architecture to its decoration, Known as rapher, Condivi, calls "captains" of the church, are dressed the New Sacristy, the chapel stood as an architectural pendant in ancient Roman military garb, and are idealized portrayals to an earlier one executed by Brunelleschi in the church of San rather than portraits.

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Ont page 20: Tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici, white marble. On page 2L: Dawn. Or. page 22. Dusk wvith; Lorenzo in the background. On page 23: Dusk. On this page. top: Otul of Night; bottomn: Mask of Night. Opposite. Night with Gitdliano de' fedici in the backgrotund. On page 26: Day. On page 27: Dawn twith Lorenzo in the backgrountd.

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...I -F .'I Z." I of allegory. All the figures are muscular, yet sagging, ponderous, and fleshy. Are these middle-aged versions of Michelangelo's idealized youths, who have lost their skin's elasticity, their vigor, their will to stand and fight? In a

Day, Night, Dawn, and Dusk seem overwhelmed by inner torment and melancholy, unable to free themselves from their interior struggles and fitful dream states.

:recent letter in The New England Journal of Medicine, James Stark, *a prominent oncologist, even claims that Michelangelo accurately reproduced clinical abnormalities of cancer ravaging the left breast of the figure of Night.2 In these languishing figures, Michelangelo The allegorical figures of Dawn, Dusk, Day is personified as powerfully expresses the morbidity of Day, and Night, however, could not be fur- the flesh, the fleeting nature of beauty, ther from the idealized beauty of the Medici a brooding man peer- and the irreversible passage of time. dukes, and are light years away from the Day, Night, Dawn, and Dusk give vision of human perfection that Michelangelo ing back over his human form to mental and emotional portrayed in earlier commissions such as the states-dreams, nightmares, melancholy, famous David he had created for the city of hulking shoulder. The grief. Beneath the alert figure of Florence some sixteen years earlier. In spite of Giuliano de' Medici, depicted as an their striking muscularity and hulking mass, head was nxever fully embodiment of active life (vita activa), Day and Night lie in dramatic poses the allegorical figures remain passive, as if and it is they are unable to rouse themselves or bear completed, with one knee drawn up to their elbows. the weight of their own bodies. They are not clear if The figures of Dawn and Dusk, beneath tremendous, almost superhuman, but seem the figure of the contemplative Lorenzo incapac:itated as their mass droops over the Michelangelo intend- de' Medici, redine languorously. Night sarcophagi. Even the figure of Day-the most is represented as a giant woman in a active of the four in twisted contrapposto- ed for the eyes to state of disturbed, fitful slumber. Other remains sunken and withdra-wn. symbols of night-an owl a mask, a pea- Michelangelo brings realism into the service appear blinded. cock-surround her. Day is personified

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S C U L P T U R E R E V I E W 27 ...... - as a brooding man peering back over his hulk- iF g shoulder. The head was never fully completed, and it is not clear if Michelangelo intended for the eyes to appear blinded. Dawn a] d Dusk seem frozen in a dream world, in t at semiconscious state between wakefulness and sleep. Dawn is represented by a woman in the stage just before full awakening, her eyes half-closed. Duisk is expressed as a melan- cholic man, his muscular body at rest. Michelangelo's own writing supports this lirterpretation of the fleeting quality of life, a Id of time as consumer of all. These lines, s rawled in the artist's hand beneath a tenta- ti Ye sketch for the Medici tombs, confirm the a tist's intention: Fame makes the epitaphs lie horizontal, r Because they are dead, their action has been stopped, Jt does not go forward, nor backward either.3

Day, Night, Dawvn, and Dtusk seem overwhelmed by inner torment and mnelan- choly, unable to free themselves from their i terior struggles and fitful dream states. Mfichelangelo's vision of death, it seems, was closely linked to sleep and dream states, as eyidenced by these lines he penned in 1545 as he faced the twilight of his own life:

I prize my sleep, and more my being stone... 11 I'llI '1: ..... 1,17.I... So do not waken me, keep your voice downl 4

Notes. V" 1. As quoted by William E. Wallace, Michelangelo: The w Complete Sculpture. Painting. Architecture (Beaux Arts Editions, 1998: 56). 2. James Stark, Letter to the Editor, The Newa England Journzal of Medicine, November 23, 2000. 3, Comnplete Poenms amd Selected Letters of Michelangelo, translated by Creighton Gilbert; edited by Robert N. Linscott (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963, 1980: 92). 4. Gilbert (1963, 1980).

Laura Morelli earned a Ph.D. in art history from Yale University in 1998. She currently works as an independent scholar and writer. Her book, Made itn Italy, will be published next fall by RizzolitUniverse.

Onthis page- Gitliano de' Medici. Opposite: Night.

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...... COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: Day night dawn dusk: "body and soul" SOURCE: Sculpture Review 50 no4 Wint 2001 WN: 0134900726003

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