Engraving Michelangelo

A CSI exhibit showcases engravings on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and New York Public Library

Staten Island Advance - May 9, 2004

The prints in “Reproducing Michelangelo were big, big news 500 years ago. Celebrated Florentine sculptor Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564) had been compelled by one imperious pope after another to complete gigantic frescoes (paintings on plaster) of Biblical epics on the walls and ceilings of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.

The artist was not happy about it. He didn’t like painting. He preferred sculpture and architecture. The job took decades.

Once it was unveiled, despite extreme magnificence and complexity it did not sway all observers. Conservative religious elements were outraged: Too much exposed genitalia (holy naked saints and martyrs!) not to mention dubious theological ideas and other transgressions too unholy to repeat.

Even detractors recognized the Sistine’s peerless value, however. A compromise evolved when Daniele da Volterra, a second-rate painter, was hired to make adjustments. For modesty’s sake, he added many breezy wisps of fabric, strategically covering a crotch here and a buttock there.

(Remember when the Brooklyn Museum showed a contemporary painting of the Virgin that was purportedly splattered with elephant poop —which it wasn’t — and the previous mayor tried to shut down the place? Religious art that doesn’t toe the party line has caused problems for centuries).

Over the next few centuries,other additions and repairs changed the Sistine. Many were erased with the controversial large-scale cleaning completed 10 years ago last month.
In Michelangelo’s day, colleagues and contemporaries gained access to the Sistine, a private enclave. They made on-the-spot drawings of the ceiling and the 46-by-43-foot wall of “The Last Judgment.” Later, they turned these drawings into prints, specifically engravings.
Prints are multiples. They’re lightweight, portable and inexpensive, relatively speaking. Undoubtedly, much of the world got its first glimpse of “The Last Judgment” as a detailed engraving, in black and white.

TRUTH AND LIES

As visitors to the CSI gallery will see this month, the print-makers of Michelangelo’s day studied the giant rolling, achievement of “The Last“Judgment” several tiers in which hundreds of figures gravitate toward heaven or sink toward hell, depending on their soul’s scorecard.
The finest of the modest-sized engravings retain much of the life of the original.

And unlike the “real” wall, they can be pored over, slowly and closely.

DIFFERENT APPROACHES

Different printmakers had different approaches and varying levels of allegiance to the truth.
The Frenchman Nicholas Beatrizet’s engravings are exceptionally clean and full of light.

Other artists had a darker sense of the drama. Their versions use more lines that produce more shadows.

In some instances, print-makers expanded the size and shape of the hell area.

MICHELANGELO CRITICISMS

Michelangelo had been criticized not for devoting too little space to the original but for suggesting (in the body language of some of the players) that “hell might not be a permanent place,” according to Nanette Salomon, the CSI art history professor who is the curator of the gallery.

Other engravers adjusted postures and placements or provided even more clothing to the ignudi (nude figures).

The prints come from just two lenders: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library.

“I was actually surprised that there was so much available,” Professor Salmon said. “All of the important print-makers of the era are represented.”

“Reproducing Michelangelo” is the last exhibition of the 2003-2004 season.

Next season, the gallery will show works on paper by the American Impressionist painter Childe Hassam.