Michelangelo Buonarroti and His Family Juliana Marie Surratt
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A Labor of Radical Love: Michelangelo Buonarroti and His Family Juliana Marie Surratt College of the Holy Cross 1 Michelangelo Buonarroti is renowned as a sculptor, a painter, an architect, and a poet. In remembering this fine artist and his achievements, it seems one important title—of which he is worthy— is forgotten. Michelangelo, too, was a radical family man. Regardless of all the feuds that occurred throughout the years, regardless of the shame and anger some of his siblings aroused in his heart, regardless of the constant complaints and bickering, and regardless of blood-ties, Michelangelo always came through to support those he considered family. From the very beginning of his artistic career, and to the very end, Michelangelo provided for the Buonarroti bunch. He provided more than financial support, offering and even pushing advice upon his kinsmen for their own sakes. Further, the artist strongly indicated a willingness to sacrifice his own comfort for that of his family. In a letter dated August 19th, 1497, about a year after his arrival in Rome, the young and struggling Michelangelo wrote his father, “Nevertheless, whatever sum you [Lodovico] ask me for I will send you, even if I have to sell myself into slavery to raise it.”1 Over fifty years later, on March 25, 1553, Michelangelo again alludes to his sacrificial nature in a letter to his nephew Lionardo: “For sixty years I have devoted myself to your welfare: now I am an old man and must think of my own.”2 As Lionardo was nowhere near sixty at the time, Michelangelo is referring to his entire family through the plural pronoun “you”. Michelangelo recognized his own generosity, and wanted his family to recognize it as well. Numerous letters address his knowledge on the matter. In this essay I will be describing Michelangelo’s family dynamic. I will cover the artist’s relationship with each of his family members in detail, focusing specifically on those he conversed with most frequently: his father Lodovico, his favorite brother Buonarroto, and his 1. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Michelangelo: A Record of His Life, trans. Robert W. Carden (London: Constable & Co. ltd., 1913), 9. 2. Ibid., 276. 1 2 nephew Lionardo. In addition to the Buonarrotis, I will extend Michelangelo’s notion of family to include his well-loved assistant of twenty-six years, Francesco di Bernardino Amadori—called Urbino.3 In this and other ways is the radicalness of Michelangelo’s family dynamic emphasized. Lodovico Buonarroti Lodovico Buonarroti and Michelangelo had a difficult relationship, stemming from Michelangelo’s life choices. Since his boyhood, Michelangelo desired to be an artist, but Lodovico was against the very idea.4 Indeed, Lodovico wanted Michelangelo to be a lawyer, government employee, or shopkeeper, and thus earn a steady- income.5 Perhaps Lodovico had good intentions underlying his cruelty towards Michelangelo, as he did not want him living in squalor, but this is no justification for violence. As a youth, the aspiring artist “was resented and quite often beaten unreasonably by his father and his father’s brothers who, being impervious to the excellence and nobility of art, detested it and felt that its appearance in their family was a disgrace.”6 Michelangelo’s resilient nature in growing up and actually becoming an artist, against his father’s will, is testament to his opposition of the status quo regarding family dynamics during the Italian Renaissance. 3. The nickname Urbino originates from Francesco di Bernardino Amadori home town of “Casteldurante, in the Marches near Urbino.” William E. Wallace, Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and His Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 259- 260. 4. James Beck, Three Worlds of Michelangelo (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999), 9. 5. Ibid., 16; William E. Wallace, Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and His Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.), 25. 6. Ascanio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, ed. Hellmut Wohl and trans. Alice Sedgwick Wohl (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 9. 2 3 Lodovico Buonarroti had a great deal of power over his children and, indeed, their opportunities were expected to hypothetically funnel through him first. In Thomas Kuehn’s Family and Gender in Renaissance Italy 1300- 1600, he writes: Obedience was a quality they [fathers] wanted to instill in sons and daughters. Ideally then children would “interiorize their family’s interests” and come to follow “spontaneously” the path set out for them. On the other side, in the normal course of events grown sons could come to doubt their fathers’ competence as managers of the property and prestige they hoped to inherit. We know, of course, that some did rebel, but many more seemingly did not.7 Michelangelo did not follow “the path” his father had envisioned for him. In this way he was a rebel. Of course, this rebelliousness did affect the relationship between the artist and his father. Michelangelo was constantly trying to prove himself to Lodovico, in an attempt to gain his respect. On completion of the David, which became a source of great pride for Florence, Michelangelo “gained what his father valued most: ‘honor at home.’” 8 This must have been an even greater source of pride for the young artist, who desired his father’s acceptance. It seems, however, that this acceptance was never achieved, as “Lodovico’s lingering disapproval of Michelangelo’s profession was virtually impossible to overcome.” 9 It was, unfortunately, a great disappointment to Michelangelo that Lodovico was not supportive of his profession. Even at the ripe age of forty-eight, the artist illustrated his frustration regarding this point. In the last letter the artist wrote to his father, sent eleven years before Lodovico’s death, Michelangelo scrawled a spillage of heated emotion. He wrote, I have always done and left undone exactly as you wished, but now I no longer know what you wish me to do. If the fact that I continue to live is displeasing to you, you have found the means of protecting yourself, and you will inherit the key to that treasure which 7. Thomas Kuehn, Family and Gender in Renaissance Italy 1300- 1600 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 76. Emphasis added. 8. William E. Wallace, Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and His Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 61. 9. James Beck, Three Worlds of Michelangelo (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999), 101. 3 4 you say I possess. And you will do well, because all Florence knows what a precious rich man you used to be, and how I have always robbed you and deserve to be chastised. And you will be highly praised for treating me as I deserved.10 Michelangelo’s displeasure becomes very vivid within this letter. Though he had indeed disobeyed his father—and shouldn’t be punished for following his dream—he angrily denied ever doing anything against Lodovico. Then he sarcastically wrote about “deserving” punishment and chastisement, for this disobedience. Clearly there was still hurt from his youth, likely remaining from the beatings he received as a child. Perhaps this dislike for Michelangelo’s profession was the result of a continued anger from being disobeyed on Lodovico’s part. Maybe Lodovico did not want to admit that he was wrong, that artistry was graceful and worthy of the family. It could no longer be attributed to a lack of finances regarding the profession, as Michelangelo eventually became the monetary support for his entire family. Indeed, even as Michelangelo suffered under the disapproving gaze of his single, “hard-nosed Florentine,” parent, he provided monetary assistance and advice to Lodovico.11 Many letters written to his father address money matters. In one letter, Michelangelo wrote Lodovico, “To-morrow I will write you another letter with reference to certain moneys I wish to send to Florence, telling you what to do with them.”12 Then, in another letter the artist ordered his father to “take the money to the Spedalingo, and tell him to do with it as with the former sums, and remind him about the farm.”13 In this way Michelangelo was financially 10. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Michelangelo: A Record of His Life, trans. Robert W. Carden (London: Constable & Co. ltd., 1913), 139. Emphasis added. 11. William E. Wallace, Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and His Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 25. 12. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Michelangelo: A Record of His Life, trans. Robert W. Carden (London: Constable & Co. ltd., 1913), 36. 13. Ibid., 73. 4 5 supporting his family, and trying to ensure that they follow through specific plans that would be for the family’s benefit. Michelangelo did not want to be cheated, so all business transactions were carefully planned out by him. This illustrates another fascinating aspect of the artist’s family dynamic. In Renaissance Italy it was expected that “fathers had sole control of family property while they lived.”14 Yet Michelangelo seems to reverse the role entirely. Lodovico’s paternal role is swapped for one more closely illustrating that of a brother, while Michelangelo became the breadwinner and ultimate overseer of property. While artist and father had some thorns in their relationship, there were moments of deep affection present between the two. When Buonarroto informs Lodovico of a swelling Michelangelo has on his side, the father wrote his son a letter in which he told him to “watch yourself,” and then provides the ingredients for a remedy which had proved successful for himself in the past.15 The two also exchanged gifts quite frequently. When Michelangelo visited his father in 1517, Lodovico’s records show that on June 20 he purchased “a couple of pepperonis and oranges” for his son.16 Lodovico would treat Michelangelo with gifts of marzipan as well.17 In addition to these kindnesses, there was a strong bond of trust established between the two.