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Sixteenth CenturyJournal
XXXV/2 (2004)
Michelangelo's Signature
AileenJune Wang
Rutgers University
Michelangelo signed only one work with his name, the Pietd in Saint Peter's Basilica.
As his first public commission in Rome, the sculpture gave the young artist an oppor
tunity to establish his reputation and public image. The band across the Virgin's chest
serves no other function than to hold Michelangelo's signature, which was not added
manual presence. Michelangelo also revived the ancient Greek use of the imperfect
verb tense in his signature; Pliny the Elder had recalled that Apelles and Polyclitus used
it. The separation of Michelangelo's name into two words, Michael Angelus, empha
sizes his association with his namesake, Michael the Archangel, and introduces the
image of the artist as a divinely inspired creator, who conveys God's messages and ideas
as angels do.
MICHELANGELO SIGNED HIS NAME ONLY ONCE in his entire career, on the Pieta' of
1497-99, now located in Saint Peter's Basilica,Vatican City (fig. 1). Commissioned
by the French cardinal and ambassador to the Holy See,Jean de Bilheres Lagraulas,
the Pieta is one of Michelangelo's early works and his first public commission in
Rome.1 Michelangelo's signature is carved on a band placed diagonally across the
Virgin's chest and reads: MICHAELAGELVS BONAROTVS@FLORENT-FACIEBA (fig.
2).2 Never before had a sculptor dared to place his signature so close to a sacred
figure, on a band with such weighty presence that the Virgin's drapery folds are
*For thorough accounts of the Pietas commission, its patron, and its display, see Kathleen Weil
Garris Brandt, "Michelangelo's Piet? for the Cappella del Re di Francia," in "Il se rendit en Italie": Etudes
offertes ? Andr? Chastel (Rome: Dell'Elefante; Paris: Flammarion, 1987), 77-119; William Wallace,
"Michelangelo's Rome Piet?: Altarpiece or Grave Memorial?" in Verrocchio and Late Quattrocento Italian
Sculpture, ed. Steven Bule, Alan Phipps Darr, and Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi (Florence: Le Lettere, 1992),
243-55. For different types of Piet? statues, see W Forsyth, "Statues of the Piet? in the Museum," Met
ropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 9 (1953): 177-84.
2For studies focusing on Michelangelo's signature, see Lisa Pon, "Michelangelo's First Signature,"
Source: Notes in the History of Art 15 (1996): 16-21; Livio Pestilli, "Michelangelo's Piet?: Lombard Critics
and Plinian Sources," Source 19 (2000): 21-30; Weil-Garris Brandt, "Michelangelo's Piet?," 93; and Paul
Barolsky, The Faun in the Garden (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 143-44.
For artists' signatures in the Renaissance, see the series of essays in Revue de VArt 26 (1974), esp.Vladimir
Juren, "Fecit-Faciebat," 27-30; see also Dario Covi,77*e Inscription in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painting
(New York: Garland, 1986), appendixes 434, 436, and 437, which transcribe artists' signatures in Flo
Funding for this research was provided by the Rutgers University Graduate School and
the Princeton Pettoranello Sister City Foundation. Access to the Pietas inscription was
generously provided by His Excellency, Archbishop Oscar Rezzato.
447
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compressed underneath it and made to swell around its borders like waves.3
Michelangelo ensured the visibility of his name by beginning the inscription some
distance away from the left edge of theVirgin's strap (approximately 5 cm from the
edge). As a result, MICHELAGELVS sits squarely at the center of the Virgin's torso.
The letters in MICHAEL are generously spaced, but those in FLORENT and FACIEBA,
O's in BONAROTVS have a larger diameter than the 0 in FLORENT, which is more
oval in shape by comparison. Significant also is the fact that the only words com
pletely spelled out in the inscription are MICHAEL and BONAROTVS. The boldness
of Michelangelo's declaration of authorship, however, is tempered by the shallow
ness of the carving. At a depth of one millimeter, it is not easily legible unless a
light shines on it directly (as seen in photographs) and would have been very diffi
cult to read in candlelit surroundings. The words can be read only when the
viewer is standing a few feet away from the sculpture and when there is not an
intervening altar, which is present nowadays.
The existence of sixteenth-century written explanations about the Pieta signa
ture, beginning with Giorgio Vasari's 1550 biography of Michelangelo, imply that
love and labor in the sculpture that "here- something which he would not do in
any other work-he left his name written across a strap that encircles the bosom of
rentine fifteenth-century paintings; Charles Sala, "La signature ? la lettre et au figure," Po?tique 69
(1987): 119-27; Omar Calabrese and Betty Gigante, "La signature du peintre," La part de l'oeil 5 (1989):
27-43; Victor I. Stoichita, "Nomi in cornice," in Der K?nstler ?ber sich in seinem Werk, ed. Matthias
Winner (Weinheim:VCH, Acta Humaniora, 1992), 293-315; Philipp Fehl, "Death and the Sculptor's
Fame: Artists' Signatures on Renaissance Tombs in Rome," Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 59 (1997): 196-216;
Louisa C. Matthew, "The Painter's Presence: Signatures in Venetian Renaissance Pictures," Art Bulletin
80 (1998): 616-48; Ro?a Goffen, "Vaheando le Alpi: Arte del ritratto neUaVenezia del Rinascimento,"
in // Rinascimento a Venezia e la pittura del Nord nei tempi di Bellini, D?rer, e Tiziano, exh. cat., ed. Bernard
Aikema and Beverly Louise Brown (Milan: Bompiani, 1999), 123-25; Sarah Blake McHam, "The
Influence of PHny's Natural History on the Aesthetics of ItaHan Renaissance Art" (paper presented at the
Medieval and Renaissance Conference, Sarasota, FL, March 2000); Rona Goffen, "Signatures: Inscrib
ing Identity in ItaHan Renaissance Art," Viator 32 (2001): 303-70. For the signatures function in Gio
vanni Bellini's works, see Rona Goffen's two articles, "Icon and Vision: Giovanni BelHni's Half-Length
Madonnas," Art Bulletin 57 (1975): 510-11, and "Bellini's Nude with Mirror," Venezia Cinquecento 2
(1991): 196. Jan van Eyck's signatures are discussed by R. W ScheUer in "Als ich can," Oud Holland 83
(1968): 135-39. Creighton G?bert examined Titian's signing habits in "Some Findings on Early Works
of Titian ,"^4ri Bulletin 62 (1980): 73-75;"A Preface to Signatures (with Some Cases in Venice)," in
Fashioning Identities in Renaissance Art, ed. Mary Rogers (Aldershop: Ashgate, 2000), 82-83.
3The audacity of the signature's placement has been noted previously by Weil-Garris Brandt,
"Michelangelo's Piet?," 93, and Barolsky, Faun in the Garden, 143-44.
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-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
our Lady, as something with which he himself was satisfied and pleased."4 When
the second edition of Le vite was published in 1568 (after Michelangelo's death),
however, Vasari's explanation had changed. He narrated that one day Michelangelo
entered the place where the Pieta was displayed and overheard a great number of
Lombard visitors praising it but mistakenly identifying their fellow countryman "Il
Gobbo nostro da Milano" (our Gobbo from Milan) as the author, referring to Cris
Torrentino, 1550), ed. L. Bellosi and A. Rossi (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1991), 2:886 (hereafter Vasari
Bellosi-Rossi).
5"Michelagnolo stette cheto, e quasi gli parve strano che le sue fatiche fussino attribuite a un altro.
Una norte vi si serr? dentro con un lumicino, e avendo portato gli scarpegli, vi intagli? il suo nome."
Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' pi? eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori (Florence: Giunti, 1568), ed. G.
Milanesi (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1906), 7:152 (hereafterVasari-Milanesi).
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those parts that best suited his purposes.6 Other contemporary opinions echoed
eitherVasari's first or second explanation.7 Equally illuminating is the failure of
Michelangelo's follower Ascanio Condivi to mention the Pieta signature in his ver
sion of Michelangelo's life (published in 1553), which was largely written under the
direction of the master himself.8 Condivi described theVirgin and Christ at length
but did not mention a word about the signature.9
perceived by some as too audacious and even irreverent. The discrepancy between
Vasari's first and second accounts reflects his own uneasiness towards the issue: the
first suggests that the signature was planned, but the second claims that it was an
Rossi (Florence: La Nuova ItaHa, 1964), 358?60; AHce Sedgwick Wohl and HeUmut Wohl's introduction
in Ascanio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, trans. Alice Sedgwick Wohl, ed. HeUmut Wohl, 1st ed.
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976), and 2nd ed. (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1999); Johannes Wilde, "Michelangelo, Vasari, and Condivi," in Michelangelo: Six Lec
tures (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 1-16; Barolsky, Faun in the Garden; Michael Hirst, "Michelangelo and
His First Biographers," Proceedings of the British Academy: Lectures and Memoirs 94 (1996): 63?84. Six
teenth-century marginal annotations to a copy of Condivi's book, recording Michelangelo's responses
to parts of the text, indicate that Condivi misunderstood or was not entirely faithful to his master's inten
tions. See Ugo Procacci, "Postule contemporanee in un esemplare deUa vita di Michelangelo del Con
divi," in Atti del convegno di studi michelangioleschi (Florence/Rome, 1964) (Rome: Ed. deU'Ateneo, 1966),
279-94; CaroHne Elam,"Ch? ultima mano!":Tiberio Calcagni's Marginal Annotations to Condivi's Life
of Michelangelo" Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998): 475-97.
9Ascanio Condivi, Vita di Michelangiolo (1553), ed. A. Maraini (Florence: Rinascimento del Libro,
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sion is implied by the inclusion of Lippi's signature in the second one, where he
followed Michelangelo in declaring his authorship on the strap of the Virgin: 10
LIPPUS STAT * EX IMITATIONE FACIEBAT. Lippi considered himself a rival of Mich
elangelo, and the second copy was executed by Lippi alone. Emphasizing that the
sculpture was a version after Michelangelo, the signature declares Lippi's belief that
his copy is better than the original. Indeed, Lippi made significant emendations. He
portrayed the Virgin as an older woman and tilted Christ's head forward for better
visibility.
Vasari's two different stories and Condivi's reticence have generated diverse
opinions in modern scholarship about Michelangelo's signature. Charles de Tolnay
inscription was planned from the beginning. The strap or band on which the
inscription is carved has no other function except to hold Michelangelo's signature.
The restorers of the Pieta, Nazzareno Gabrielli and Fabio Morresi of the Vatican
Museums, confirmed this observation in a personal interview with the author, 8
May 2000. Because the strap exerts considerable pressure on theVirgin's dress, one
assumes that it is attached to the cloak and that the cloak's weight is pulling down
the strap. A careful examination of the band's position, however, refutes this
assumption. On the left side of the sculpture, the edge of the Virgin's cloak drapes
over theVirgin's right shoulder and upper arm and covers her raised right forearm,
which supports the head of Christ.The cloak's edge reemerges from under Christ's
head to cascade down from the Virgin's wrist. The lower end of the band holding
nThe inscription reads: IOHANE SCHVTS/BOHEMVS HAS/dvas D. D. Ernst Steinmann, Michelan
gelo im Spiegel Seiner Zeit (Leipzig: Buchdr. Poeschel &Trepte, 1930), pi. 24; Rudolf Wittkower, "Nanni
di Baccio Bigio and Michelangelo," in Festschrift Ulrich Middeldorf (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1968), 248-62.
12 The sculpture was likely executed prior to Riccio's death in 1547, although it was not installed
until 1549 in his family chapel in Santo Spirito, Florence. Steinmann, Michelangelo, pi. 23; Wittkower,
"Nanni and Michelangelo," 250; Louis Alexander Waldman, "Nanni di Baccio Bigio at Santo Spirito,"
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz 42 (1998): 198-204.
13Charles deTolnay, Michelangelo, vol. 1,The Youth of Michelangelo (Princeton: Princeton University
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Michelangelo's signature emerges from the right side of the Virgin's waist, but the
edge of the cloak on this side skims over theVirgin's right shoulder and raised arm;
consequently, the band's lower end could not possibly be attached to the cloak.The
same holds true for the right side of the statue. The upper end of the band disap
pears under the Virgin's veil and does not reemerge at the back. Although Miche
langelo brought the rear of the sculpture to only a rough finish (just the front and
slightly over half of the sides are polished, corresponding to the areas visible to the
viewer), he clearly indicated that the cloak falls diagonally from the top of the Vir
gin's right shoulder to the left side of her waist (fig. 3). The position of the cloak
in the back indicates that the strap does not belong to it.That the strap would be
Fig. 3. Michelangelo, Pietd, rear view (Photo: From Michelangelo, Pieta by Robert Hupka
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century, beginning with Leon Battista Alberti.17 Christine Sperling has demon
strated that Alberti constructed the letters on the Holy Sepulchre in the Cappella
Rucellai (1467, San Pancrazio, Florence) according to a geometric module. Lightly
scratched guidelines around the upper and lower edges of the letters can still be
detected. A number of treatises described this method of letter construction, the
brush and ink or paint, especially the M that begins the inscription. Unlike the
straight vertical strokes of the standard epigraphic M, those of Michelangelo's M
curve, echoing the drapery folds surrounding the letter. A similar type with splayed
vertical strokes commonly appears in Renaissance manuscripts (fig. 5).20 Michelan
gelo's M also follows the form of the letter as delineated in fictive stone inscriptions
found in some Florentine paintings, most notably Andrea del Castagno's Equestrian
Portrait of Niccolo da Tolentino (1456) in the Cathedral and The Adoration of the Shep
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as modern scholars have defined this abbreviation sign, rarely appears in ancient
epigraphy.22
handwritten forms. He may also have seen the inscription on the monument of
antique sculpture.24
In both Florence andVenice, selecting the letter style based on the fictive
medium was an established custom. Painters customarily employed Gothic minus
cules or cursive script on folios or leaflets shown in the act of being written or read
or placed casually next to a figure, as exemplified by Piero di Cosimo's Visitation (ca.
1490) and Sandro Botticelli's Madonna of the Magnificat (ca. 1480-81).25 Antonio
22Arthur E. Gordon, Supralineate Abbreviations in Latin Inscriptions (Berkeley: University of CaHfor
nia Press, 1948), 60?61. For another example of this symbol, see p. 347, fig. 5, ofYoni Ascher, "Manifest
Humbleness," in this issue of Sixteenth Century Journal.
23John Sparrow, Visible Words: A Study of Inscriptions in and as Books and Works of Art (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1969), fig. 43.
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Fig. 4. Donatello,Judith and Holofernes, late 1450s, Palazzo della Signoria, Florence,
r-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Xi r
$mIIIIIIig, IlLIt0
Fig. 5. Giuliano Amadei, A Forge. Initial P. Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis,
ca. 1480,Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Photo: Victoria and Albert Museum,
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Fig. 6. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Adoration of the Shepherds, 1485, Sassetti Chapel, Santa
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Vivarini used uppercase Roman script for his signature fictively engraved on the
stone base of the Virgin's throne in the central panel of the S. Moise Triptych of
1446, but he used Gothic script for a signature "written" on a scroll in the Corona
tion of the Virgin of 1444.26 Cima da Conegliano in the 1490s was sensitive to the
By the time of Michelangelo's Rome Pieta, however, humanists and artists had
realized these mistakes. By 1470, Florentine painters like Domenico Ghirlandaio
had purged their inscriptions of nonclassical conventions.31 More importantly,
Alberti's inscriptions on the Holy Sepulchre in San Pancrazio and on the facade of
Santa Maria Novella (1470) were accessible Florentine models of the new archae
John XXIII) in the Florence Baptistery (ca. 1425) represents Donatello's early let
tering style, with its serifless capitals and splayed strokes terminating in clean-cut
edges.33 Donatello used the same type of abbreviation symbol found in Michelan
26Rodolfo Palluchini, I Vivarini (Venice: N. Pozza, 1962), 95-96; Matthew, "Painter's Presence,"
620-21.
27Matthew, "Painter's Presence," 627 and 645n51, for examples by Cima da Conegliano. For sig
natures on a cartellino, see Goffen, "Vaheando le Alpi," 122?26. It is interesting in light of this practice
that Bellini did not usually make this distinction.
28See Covi, "Lettering," 6?7, for a list of nonclassical lettering conventions.
29For the classification of this type of M as nonclassical, see Millard Meiss, "Toward a More Com
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gelo's signature to denote omitted letters. After working in Padua in the 1440s and
coming in contact with humanists and such works by Andrea Mantegna as the
fresco Sacred Monogram Held by SaintAnthony of Padua and San Bernardino, Donatello
began carving letters that were more regular and geometric and closer to classical
conventions.34 His signature on the bronzeJudith and Holofernes from the late 1450s
exemplifies this new lettering style. Notwithstanding the change, Donatello still
used ligatures of medieval origin, placing P, v, and s within the 0 to form the word
oPvs (fig. 4). The Judith and Holofernes stood in the Medici garden during Miche
langelo's sojourn in the Medici household.35 The adoption of a decidedly old-fash
ioned lettering style by Michelangelo looks back to the humanistic script and art of
the early quattrocento, despite the developments that had already been made in
Renaissance epigraphy and paleography by this time.
The last word in Michelangelo's inscription, FACIEBA, does not have its final
T. 36 The word appears to trail off naturally under the Virgin's veil, since the A runs
into the intersecting edges of the veil and the band. There is actually no room for
the T. The verb faciebat (was making), which is in the imperfect tense, indicates a
continuous action in the past that may continue into the present and future. As
Vladimir Juren argues, the wording imitates the manner of signing of Apelles and
Polyclitus, the founders of painting and sculpture in antiquity. In the preface of his
ished works, even the masterpieces which we can never tire of admiring,
and as though they had been snatched away from each of them by fate. Not
35Janson, Donatello, 1:371 and 2:198-205; John Pope-Hennessy, Donatello Sculptor (New York:
36We?-Garris Brandt, "Michelangelo's Piet?," 93, and Pon, "Michelangelo's First Signature," 19,
note this omission as intentional. Other scholars add the T within brackets or in dotted lines in their
transcriptions, but make no comment about the missing letter, e.g., Joachim Poeschke, Michelangelo and
His World (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 76; Hirst and Dunkerton, Making and Meaning, 54.Tol
nay,Youth of Michelangelo, 146, even adds the T without indicating that it is not in the original inscription.
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places); this made the artist appear to have assumed a supreme confidence
in his art, and consequently all these works were very unpopular.37
fac orfaci, and using either of these forms would have completed the inscription.
Another possibility would have been to indicate the presence of the T in FACIEBA
by simply adding a line above the A, which was an acceptable ligature. Michelan
gelo's intentional omission of the T contradicts the now unknown source of Vasari's
1568 anecdote, which explained the missing letter as an accident: "And this was the
reason for the writing of the letters, which truly one can recognize as having been
done at night and almost in darkness, because they are not finished."40
38Michelangelo's presentation of the Piet? as a work to equal and surpass the art of antiquity is
discussed by We?-Garris Brandt, "Michelangelo's Piet?," 93, and by McHam, "Influence of Pliny's Nat
ural History!' McHam notes: "Michelangelo was showing off his knowledge of ancient art, and asking
that his modern sculpture be compared to the greatest ancient sculptures by this device, just as the other
sculpture he carved in Rome, the Bacchus, demanded that the viewer recognize it as the first monu
mental sculpture of an Olympian deity since Roman times?and as good or better than any created in
the past."
39Pon, "Michelangelo s First Signature," 19.
40"Et questa fu la causa del' scrivere di queUe lettere, quale veramente si cognoscono esser state
fatte di notte et quasi che al buio, perche non sono finite." Karl Frey, Der literarische Nachlass Giorgio Vasa
ris (Munich: Georg M?Uer, 1923), 1:64, no. 438; cited in Pon, "Michelangelo's First Signature," 20n5
and 21nl9.
41Jufen, "Fecit-faciebat," 28-29, with a translation of the relevant passage by Poliziano. See also
Goffen, "BeUini's Nude with Mirror," 196.
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artist's name.42 They were also placed in marginal locations. Lorenzo Ghiberti
found on the frames around the reliefs.43 Donatello often signed with oPvs
DONATELLI (work of Donatello), as can be seen in works like theJudith and Holo
fernes from the late 1450s (fig. 4). Here, the inscription appears on the edge of a
pillow framed by Holofernes's dead hands.
Michelangelo's contribution to artistic self-consciousness and self-promotion
is reflected in the works of other artists, who began signing withfaciebat (or another
verb in the imperfect tense) after the unveiling of Michelangelo's Pieta.Vittore Car
paccio composed his signatures with fingebat (was inventing/fabricating) in the fres
coes for the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni inVenice.44 No documents show
that Carpaccio went to Rome, but the composition of the Triumph of Saint George
(1504-7) derives from Pietro Perugino's Charging of the Keys to Saint Peter in the Sis
tine Chapel,Vatican. Carpaccio used an imperfect verb only during this period,
apparently in response to Michelangelo. Before and after the Scuola di San Giorgio
paintings, he employed either the past tense of a verb or opus with his name in the
genitive or simply his name. Albrecht Diirer's first Latin signature, on a plaque in
the engraving Adam and Eve, reads: ALBERTVS/ DVRER/ NORICVS/ FACIEBAT/
I504. Durer indicated his geographic origins ("of Nuremberg") as Michelangelo
had done, following customary practice for a work to be displayed outside an artist's
44Stefania Mason, Carpaccio:The Major Pictorial Cycles, trans. Andrew Ellis (Milan: Skira, 2000),
110-69. VICTOR CARPATHIUS/ fingebat/ MDII appears in the Funeral of Saint Jerome, and VICTOR/
CARPATHIUS/ FINGEBAT in the Vision of Saint Augustine. Both signatures are on a cartellino.
45Erwin Panofsky, The Life and Art ofAlbrecht D?rer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955),
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Because the funerary complex was dismantled in the early sixteenth century, we can
no longer determine the original location of the cardinal's slab relative to the Pieta,
but existing evidence proves that most artists before Michelangelo did not privilege
references to authorship over that to the patron.48 In Donatello's tomb slab for
Bishop Giovanni Pecci, of Grosseto (ca. 1428-30, Siena Cathedral), his signature
OPVS DONATELLI-appears at the foot of the effigy, with the letters partly covered
by the scroll of the funerary inscription. This device, in effect, separates the artist's
name from the epitaph of the deceased. The placement of Donatello's name above
the bishop's is unusual, as H.WJanson points out.49 On the rim of the tomb slab
1473) in the Colleoni Chapel, Bergamo, but he modestly separated his signature
from the epitaph and executed it in much smaller letters.51 Tullio Lombardo made
a similar choice and placed his signature on the base of one statue adorning the
Monument ofAndrea Vendramin (1494) in SS. Giovanni e Paolo,Venice.52
four years before Michelangelo began the Pietd, Pollaiuolo completed the monu
ment of Pope Sixtus IV (1493), then in the Cappella del Coro on the south side.
Pollaiuolo expressed pride in his work through a small plaque located on the edge
of the mattress behind the effigy's head: oPvs ANTONI POLAIOLI/ FIORENTINI ARG
AUR/ PICT AERE CLARI/ AN DOM MCCCCLXXXIII (work of Antonio Pollaiuolo,
who is famous in silver, gold, picture, and bronze, in the year of our Lord 1493).
Nevertheless, the epitaph occupies a more visible and prominent place at the pope's
feet. InJanuary 1498, the remains of Pope InnocentVIII were transferred to his new
tomb in the Chapel of the Holy Lance.54 There Pollaiuolo inserted even bolder
48The slab is now in the Grotte Vaticane. See We?-Garris Brandt, "Michelangelo's Piet?," 82 and
97n61, for a transcription of the inscription; and WaUace, "Michelangelo's Rome Piet?" 245 and fig.
197, for an iUustration.
49Because of the inferior shape and spacing of the letters in DonateUo's signature, Janson suggested
that the artist inserted it as an afterthought. Janson, Sculpture of Donatello, 1:109,2:15-11.
50Janson, Sculpture of Donatello, 1:139,2:101-2.The original site of the CrivelH tomb was not Santa
Maria in AracoeH. Janson has speculated that it may have been Santa Maria sopra Minerva.
51John Pope-Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, vol. 2 of An Introduction to Italian Sculpture, 3rd
ed. (Oxford: Phaidon, 1986), 324 and fig. 122.10VANES?ANT0NIVS?DEAJV1ADEIS?FECIT?H0C?0PVS is
carved across the bottom of the sarcophagus.
52Pope-Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, 54-55 and figs. 57-58. The statue Adam originaUy
stood in one of the lower niches of the monument but now belongs to the MetropoHtan Museum of
Art, New York. The signature reads: TVLLII.LOMBARDI.O.
tures," 197-98.
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the work he had begun). The sculptor also included a medallion with his self-por
trait (now lost). Philipp Fehl has demonstrated that Pollaiuolo intended the living
figure of the pope to occupy the lower tier of the monument (with a dead effigy
above it); therefore, this part would be first to occupy the viewer's contemplation.55
the 1514 demolition of the original site, Santa Petronilla.56 In 1568, slab and sculp
ture were permanently separated when the latter was made to commemorate Pope
Sixtus IV in his funerary chapel in new Saint Peter's.Vasari, Condivi, and Benedetto
Varchi in the mid-sixteenth century hardly paid attention to the identity of the
French cardinal and even confused him with other prelates.57
The placement of Michelangelo's inscription on a part of the Virgin's attire
derived from a medieval and Renaissance custom. Socially prominent or wealthy
people had their clothes embroidered with the names of emperors or other distin
guished persons as well as with monograms, mottoes, or verses. Church vestments
likewise displayed embroidered names, scriptural passages, dedications, or invoca
tions. Fifteenth-century Florentine painting followed this tradition, where the
saints' names appear on collars or hems or accessories, as can be seen in a Coronation
of the Virgin by Fra Angelico (ca. 1430) and another by Fra Filippo Lippi (1447).58
Executed with workshop assistance, Pietro Perugino's Madonna and Child with Saint
John the Baptist, painted after 1500, is a contemporary work with a signature similar
to Michelangelo's; PETRUS PERUGINUS adorns the border of the Virgin's sleeve in
fictive embroidery.59
55Fehl, "Artists' Signatures," 199-203.
56See Weil-Garris Brandt, "Michelangelo's Piet?," 87-90,93.
57BothVasari and Condivi mistakenly identified Michelangelo's patron as Cardinal Rovano (car
58Covi, Inscription, 13, 27, 604-5 (appendix 349b), 608 (appendix 439g). For illustrations, see
Giorgio Bonsanti, Beato Ang?lico: Catalogo completo (Florence: Octavo, 1998), 51 and 128; Jeffrey Ruda,
Fra Filippo Lippi: Life and Work with a Complete Catalogue (London: Phaidon, 1993), 422-26.
59Christopher Baker and Tom Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue (London:
National Gallery Publications, 1995), 524.The authors believe the signature to be reworked but authen
tic. Not all scholars share this assessment.
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The clothing belongs to the Virgin, yet carries neither her own name nor an
inscription relating to her. Unlike Perugino, who marginalized his signature, Mich
elangelo put his self-referential stamp on a prominent part of theVirgin's garment,
a Hellenistic prototype.62 Shearman has also suggested that the strap may allude to
motherhood, since Italian women wore something similar when carrying a child on
the right hip. The Virgin in Filippo Lippi's Madonna and Angels with Saints Frediano
can also be seen in Desiderio da Settignano'sVirgin and Child relief (before 1478) in the Victoria and
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relief during one of his trips to Venice.65 A David (ca. 1470-75) attributed to
Antonio Rossellino wears a single strap across his shoulder, which pulls on the
fabric of his tunic (not as dramatically as in Michelangelo's Virgin).66 The rough
hewn back view shows that the pull of the strap results from an attached pouch,
which would contain stones for his sling.
After Michelangelo's Pieta, the single diagonal strap motif began to appear in
sculpture more often.A bust of Hope (ca. 1525, Castello di San Salvatore, Susegana)
lus for Agniolo/Angelo), does not require the insertion of this symbol, technically
known as an intersyllabic interpunct. For instance, the 1501 Latin document for
the commission of the Florence David, the next commission after the Pieta, stated
that the Operai was appointing "Michelangelum Lodovici Bonarroti, civem floren
tinum."70 Michelangelo himself spelled "Michelagniolo" as one word, not two, on
paper (letters) and in Italian, a less formal context than Latin on stone. Near the
right margin of the sheet containing sketches related to the marble and bronze stat
Albert Museum, London; John Pope-Hennessy and Ronald Lightbown, Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in
the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: HMSO, 1964), 2:114 and 3:135.
65For Michelangelo's presumed visit to Venice in 1494, see Craig H. Smyth, "Venice and the
Emergence of the High Renaissance in Florence: Observations and Questions," in Quattrocento, vol. 1
of Florence and Venice: Comparisons and Relations, Acts of Two Conferences at Villa ITatti, 1976-77 (Florence:
66This statue is now in the Widener CoUection, National GaUery of Art, Washington, DC. It was
attributed to DonateUo by Janson and dated ca. 1412, 1430; Janson, Sculpture of Donatello, 1:21-25 and
2:22. Pope-Hennessy attributed it to Antonio RosseUino instead; "The MartelH David," Burlington Mag
azine 101 (1959): 134-39; idem, Donatello Sculptor, 1 and 322n33.
67Andrea Moschetti, J danni ai monumenti e alie opere d'arte dette Venezie nella guerra mondiale 1915
1918 (Venice: Sormani, 1932), figs. 192 and 197. Pope-Hennessy and Lightbown, Catalogue of Italian
Sculpture, 2:539,judge the bust to be from the same period asTulHo Lombardo's two signed reHefs in the
Santo, dated 1520?25. Weil-Garris Brandt, "Michelangelo's Piet?" 105n202, cites a bust of Hope by
Cristoforo Solari (II Gobbo) with an inscribed diagonal strap, but in fact, this figure does not wear one.
68Sarah Blake McHam, The Chapel of Saint Anthony at the Santo and the Development of Venetian
Renaissance Sculpture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1994), 89-91 and fig. 127.
69McHam, Chapel of Saint Anthony, 89 and fig. 50.
70"Spectab?es viri c?nsules artis lane una cum dominis operariis adunati in audentia dicte opere,
attendentes ad utilitatem et honorem dicte opere, elegerunt in sculptorem dicte opere dignum magis
trum Michelangelum Lodovici Bonarroti, civem florentinum, ad faciendum et perficiendum et pro fede
finiendum quendam hominem vocato Gigante abozatum...." The document is published in Charles
Seymour Jr., Michelangelo's David: A Search for Identity (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967),
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ues of David (1501-2, Paris, the Louvre), the artist wrote: "Davitte colla fromba e
io coll'arco. Michelagniolo" (David with his sling, and I with my bow).71 Since an
interpunct normally occurs between distinct words in Roman as well as Renais
sance inscriptions, its inclusion in Michelangelo's first name-transforming its
meaning into "Michael the Angel"-appears to emphasize his association with his
namesake Michael the Archangel.72
tion of an angel in his commentary (1475) on Plato's Symposium, with which the
artist was familiar:74
As soon as the Angelic Mind and the World-Soul were born from Him,
the Divine Power over everything beneficently infused into them as His
offspring that light in which lay the power of creating everything. In these
two, because they were nearest, he depicted the pattern of the whole
world much more exactly than it is in the material world. Whence this
picture of the world which we see shines whole and more clearly in the
Angelic Mind and in the World-Soul. For in these two are the Forms of
each planet, the sun, the moon, the rest of the stars, the elements, stones,
plants, and each of the animals. Representations of this kind the Platonists
call Prototypes, or Ideas in the Angelic Mind, Concepts or mental images
in the World-Soul, and Forms or physical images in the material world.
They are bright in the material world, brighter in the soul, and brightest
in the Angelic Mind.Therefore, the single face of God shines successively
in these three mirrors, placed according to their rank: the Angelic Mind,
the World-Soul, and the Body of the World. In the first, because it is the
nearest to God, the light is most bright....
Hence, the holy Angelic Mind, because it is unimpeded by any atten
dance upon the body, reflects upon itself where it sees the face of God
engraved within its own breast, and seeing there, is struck with awe, and
clings most avidly to it forever.75
7Charles de Tolnay, Corpus dei disegni di Michelangelo (Novara: Istituto Geogr?fico De Agostini,
1975-80), no. 19; James Saslow, trans, and ed., The Poetry of Michelangelo, an Annotated Translation (New
1996), 7.
74For a discussion of Michelangelo's literary knowledge, see David Summers, Michelangelo and the
Language of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 9 and 17.
7^Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on Plato's Symposium, trans. Sears Reynolds Jayne (Columbia: Uni
versity of Missouri, 1944), 169-70, 5th speech, chap. 4.
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In the apocryphal book Tobias (12:15), the archangel Raphael implies that
angels of his kind are the closest to God. Michael the Archangel was the chief of
angels and helped them in their battles against infidels (Dan. 10:13, 21; 12:1). Saint
John envisioned him leading a host of angels to battle the Devil and his minions
(Apoc. 12:7). Michelangelo's admirers understood his conceit, as Giulio Bonasone's
portrait engravings suggest. These follow Michelangelo's lead in separating the two
components of his name. One engraving served as the frontispiece of Condivi's Vita
and another as an author's portrait inserted in a print of the Sistine Chapel LastJudg
ment. Although he does not specifically discuss the inscriptions of the engravings,
William Wallace has recognized that Bonasone's officially sanctioned portraits pro
not, offers a parallel metaphor of secular meaning.77 In this instance, the poet
equates the closeness of the garment or accessory of a beloved with emotional inti
macy with that person. Michelangelo used this concept in a poem of 1507: "Ma
piCu lieto quel nastro par che goda,/ dorato in punta, con si fatte tempre/ che preme
e tocca il petto ch'egli allacia" (But even more delighted seems that ribbon, gilded
at the tips, and made in such a way/ that it presses and touches the breast it laces
up).78 Weil-Garris Brandt cites this poem in her discussion of the strap but inter
prets the placement of the signature solely as a gesture of votive adoration.79
The explicit association with Michael the Archangel and the unusual location
of the signature imply divine origins for Michelangelo's artistic inspiration. His self
conception drew on two threads of thought-the role of an angel as a messenger
of God and the certainty of divine inspiration in the work of a gifted poet or artist.
nothing can be accomplished unless a certain inner and divinely given energy is
infused in the poet's spirit." His oration ended with the statement, "And I do not
76 William Wallace, "MICHAEL ANGELVS BONAROTVS PATRITIVS FLORENTINVS," in Innovation and
Tradition: Essays on Renaissance Art and Culture, ed. Dag T. Andersson and Roy Eriksen (Rome: Edizione
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deny that in the struggle I have had the advantage of a certain genius given to me
from on high by the giver of all good things, by God himself-that God, who may
be called, in the words of Persius, 'Magister artis ingenique largitor' (Master of art
and bestower of genius)."80 As David Summers explains, Petrarch asserted that God
not only inspired him but also ordained him, and the precious fruit of his ordination
was his poetry, which ornamented the world and men's lives. Boccaccio repeated
this idea in book 14 of De genealogia deorum, where he defined poetry as divinely
inspired, proceeding "from the bosom of God."81 Cennino Cennini put painting
on equal footing with poetry in the first chapter of his Libro dell'arte (first quarter
of the fifteenth century), and in the second chapter, applied the concept of divine
inspiration to the painter by stressing the innateness of artistic excellence.According
to him, the animo gentile (lofty spirit) is necessary to the highest attainment because
"the intellect is delighted by design, only in those whose very nature draws them
to it, without the guidance of a master, per gientileza d'animo."82 Summers recog
nized Cennini's book as an invaluable record of the Florentine tradition of painting,
which set forth issues discussed by painters and those interested in their art. Gio
vanni Pisano's inscriptions on the pulpits in Sant'Andrea, Pistoia (1302), and in the
Pisa Cathedral (1311) echo the ideas expounded by Petrarch and Boccaccio. Rona
Goffen notes that the Pistoia inscription, extolling the artist as "blessed with greater
skill" (sensia meliore beatus), may be the earliest written assertion that artistic talent
is bestowed by God. Giovanni's signature on the pulpit in Pisa asserts the same idea
even more explicitly: "I praise the true God, the creator of all excellent things, who
has perniitted a man to form figures of such purity. In the year of our Lord thirteen
hundred and eleven the hands of Giovanni, son of the late Nicola, by their own art
MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1955), 300?313, quoted in Summers, Michelangelo and Language
of Art, 34.
81 Summers, Michelangelo and Language of Art, 33-34, 36.
82"Non sanza cagione d'animo gientile alchuni si muovono di venire a questa arte, piacciendoH
per amore naturale. Lo'nteUetto al disengno si d?etta, solo che daUoro medesimi la natura accio gli trae,
sanza nuUa ghuida di maestro, per gientileza d'animo." Cennino d'Andrea Cennini, // libro dell'arte, ed.
D.V.Thompson Jr. (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1932), 1-3; trans, in Cennino d'Andrea Cennini,
The Craftsman's Handbook, trans. D.V.Thompson Jr. (New York: Dover, 1933), 1-3. Summers, Michelan
gelo and Language of Art, 37.
83"LAUDO DEUM VERUM PER QUEM SUNT OPTIMA PvERUM/ QUI DEDIT HAS PURAS HOMINEM
FORMARE FIGURAS./ HOC OPUS HIC ANNIS DOMINI SCULPSERE IOHANNIS/ ARTE MANUS SOLE
QUONDAM NATIQUE NICHOLE/ CURSIS UNDENIS TERCENTUM MILLEQUE PLENIS...." For a complete
transcription, see John Pope-Hennessy, Italian Gothic Sculpture, vol. 1 of An Introduction to Italian Sculpture
(New York: Vintage, 1985), 177?78. See also Summers, Michelangelo and Language of Art, 38; Goffen,
"Signatures," 306?7.
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ion, for they "correct" their model by representing the Virgin as an old woman.
Pietro Aretino provided written testimony in a letter to his friend Fausto Longiano,
dated 17 December 1537. The context of the letter suggests that Aretino was
repeating an opinion that had been circulating for some time.84 Criticizing those
who thought themselves erudite but who in reality lacked good judgment or sense,
ples of art that were wanting such good judgment: the Pieta's Virgin appears
younger than her son, and the fresco figures should not have been made to appear
suspended in a void. The brevity of his descriptions suggests an assumption that his
reader was already familiar with the issues in question. An anonymous diatribe of
March 1549, which denounces Lippi's second copy of Michelangelo's Pieta, also
reveals the criticisms directed at the original: "In the same month they unveiled in
Sto. Spirito a Pieta, which was sent by a Florentine to the said church, and they say
pursuing Lutheran whims, now paint and carve nothing for our holy churches but
figures that undermine faith and devotion."85 Leo Steinberg notes that the adjective
and so great a mother were endowed, even though there are some who
object to the mother as being too young in relation to the Son. When I
was discussing this one day with Michelangelo, he answered: "Don't you
know that women who are chaste remain much fresher than those who
are not? ... Indeed, I will go further and say that this freshness and flow
ering of youth, apart from being preserved in her in this natural way, may
also conceivably have been given divine assistance in order to prove to the
84"Giudizio, dico: che l'altre cose son buone per vedere gli ingegni degli altri, onde il tuo si desta
e si corregge. Ecco che fino a quello che tanto sa quanto si desidera ne la scultura e ne la pittura, nien
tedimeno la Nostra Donna di marmo de la Febbre ? assai pi? giovane che il figliuolo, e le figure ne le
volte non dien farsi in aria." Pietro Aretino: Lettere, ed. Francesco Erspamer (Parma: Fondazione Pietro
detta chiesa, et si diceva che l'origine veniva dallo inventor d?lie porcherie, salvandogli Farte ma non
devotione, Michelangelo Buonarruoto. Che tutti i moderni pittori et scultori per imitare simili caprici
luterani, altro oggi per le sante chiese non si dipigne o scarpella altro che figure da sotterrar la fede e la
devotione." Johann Wilhelm Gaye, ed., Carteggio in?dito d'artisti (Florence: G. Molini, 1840), 2:500. A
partial English translation is in Leo Steinberg, "The Line of Fate in Michelangelo's Painting," Critical
Inquiry 6 (1980): 448.
86This equation of artistic license and theological heresy survives into the mid-seventeenth cen
tury and beyond. Steinberg, "Line of Fate," 448.
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world the virginity and perpetual purity of the mother.... Therefore, you
should not be surprised if, with this in mind, I made the Holy Virgin,
mother of God, considerably younger in comparison with her Son than
her age would ordinarily require, though I left the Son at his own age.87
tion of his epic poem Orlando Furioso (1532). Ariosto even attached the adjective
divino to Michelangelo's name.
Timagora, Parrasio, Polignoto,
Protogene, Timante, Apollodoro,
Apelle, piiu di tutti questi noto,
e Zeusi, e gli altri ch'a quei tempi f6ro;
are writers.
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Ariosto devotes almost two lines to Michelangelo (Apelles has one line to himself)
in his enumeration of the greatest artists of antiquity and the modern age.The line
canto 14:78, the archangel is similarly called "Michel angel." Ludovico Dolce noted
Ariosto's epithet in his Dialogo della pittura, intitolato L'Aretino (1557), a fictive dia
to refer to a holy being; it had many other possible meanings in the sixteenth
century. The word often described someone or something as extraordinary or
epithet an unflattering twist in an unsent letter to the artist dated November 1545:
"Is it possible for you, who through being divine do not condescend to the
company of men, to have made this in the foremost temple of God?"93 In the
postscript, Aretino even made a pun on divino: "[S]e voi siate di vino, io non so
90"So d'altra parte, che l'Ariosto nel principio del trentesimo terzo canto del suo Furioso distingue
in tal guisa Michel'Agnolo da gli altri Pittori, che lo fa Divino" (On the other hand, I know too that
Ariosto, at the beginning of the thirty-third canto of his Orlando Furioso, sets Michelangelo apart from
other painters in such a fashion as to call him "divine"). Mark W Roskill, Dolce's Aretino and Venetian
ArtTheory of the Cinquecento, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 2000), 93 and 223.
91Salvatore Battaglia, ed., Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, vol. 4 (Turin: Unione Tipografico
Editrice Torinese, 1966), s.v. "Divino." Dante, II convivio, 4-5-13: "Chi dir? che fosse sanza divina inspi
razione, Fabrizio infinita quasi moltitudine d'oro rifiutare, per non volere abbandonare sua patria?" Spe
rone Speroni: "Se voi m'amate, non vi sia grave, cosi andando di riferirmi le...divine parole [di
Beatrice]; d?lie quali se voi sete quel B?rbaro pien di giudizio che sempre foste, dolce conserva dee aver
fatto la vostra mente."
92On Aretino and the banality of divino in the sixteenth century, see Luba Freedman, Titian's Por
traits through Aretino's Lens (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 148?51. For the
use of divino to describe Michelangelo and other artists, see also Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Rena
scences in Western Art (Copenhagen: Russak, 1960), 187?88; Martin Kemp, "The 'Super-Artist' as Genius:
The Sixteenth-Century View," in Genius: The History of an Idea, ed. Penelope Murray (Oxford: Black
well, 1989), 32-53; Patricia Lee Rubin, Giorgio Vasari:Art and History (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1995), 183-84; Patricia Emison, Low and High Style in Italian Renaissance Art (New York: Garland,
1997), 153-54.
93"E possibile che voi, che per essere divino non degnate il consortio degli huomini, haviate ci?
fatto nel maggior tempio di Dio?" Il carteggio di Michelangelo: Edizione Postuma di Giovanni Poggi, ed.
Paola Barocchi and Renzo Ristori (Florence: Sansoni, 1979), 4:215-19; English trans, from Bernadine
Barnes, Michelangelo's Last Judgment: The Renaissance Response (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1998), 81.
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d'acqua" (While you are divine [with di vino meaning of wine], I am not of water).
The letter was published five years later as addressed to Alessandro Corvino. Aretino
rephrased the question to read: "Is it possible that a man more divine than human
has made this in the foremost temple of God, above the main altar ofJesus...?-94
Aretino's criticism stemmed from his resentment that Michelangelo treated him
with indifference and ignored his request for some drawings, despite his efforts to
cultivate a friendship.95 The picture that Aretino painted of Michelangelo as a being
the greatness of nature, so he, "deciding to deliver us from such great errors,"
decided to send a spirit down to earth to show humanity what perfection can be
achieved in art. This spirit, of course, was born in the person of Michelangelo
Buonarroti. "[God] was pleased, in addition, to endow him with the true moral
philosophy and with the ornament of sweet poesy, to the end that the world might
choose him and admire him as its highest exemplar in the life, works, saintliness of
character, and every action of human creatures, and that he might be acclaimed by
us as a being more heavenly than earthly."96 By the time of his death in 1564, the
Architects (1568), trans. G. C. de Ver? (1912; repr., with introduction and notes by David Ekserdjian,
New York: Knopf, 1996), 2:642.
97Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, trans., The Divine Michelangelo: The Florentine Academy's Homage
on His Death in 1564: A Facsimile Edition of uEsequie del divino Michelagnolo Buonarroti," Florence 1564
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only one to two hours to execute it.99 For this reason,Vasari could defend Miche
langelo's action by informing his reader that the signature was only an afterthought.
The signature is a mark, substituting for the artist's presence, that asserts to the suc
cessful realization of a test of skill. The sculpture's perfection in form and its high
degree of finish (at least in the visible areas) erase all trace of the artist's hand,
enabling the viewer to believe in the actuality of the sacred presence before him.
Meditation in front of the sculpture for any length of time, however, inevitably
reveals the signature, albeit lightly carved, positioned prominently on the Virgin's
bosom. At this moment, the viewer can no longer deny that the image is Miche
langelo's creation-note the use of the verbfaciebat in the active voice-and that he
is the sole mediator between the viewer and the sacred vision.100 The signature
declares that Michelangelo received divine approbation of his efforts by being
granted closeness to divinity.101 Defying common sense and differing radically from
By claiming for himself the role of aynyeXo0 (angelos) or messenger of God, Mich
elangelo meant to preempt criticism and guarantee the truth of the likeness. His
contemporary critics certainly understood this declaration. By the time of Vasari's
and Condivi's biographies, the idea of Michelangelo as a godlike creator was already
established, and punning on Michelangelo's name by calling him an angel or hailing
him as divine was common. Ariosto,Vasari, and Condivi widely disseminated the
image of Michelangelo as a being sent by God, but the inscription on the Rome
Pietd proves that Michelangelo, as a young and relatively unknown sculptor, was
himself the first to introduce this idea.
"This assessment was made by Nazzareno GabrieUi, restorer of the Piet? and himself a sculptor
experienced in making stone inscriptions (personal interview, 8 May 2000).
100My ideas here regarding Michelangelo's signature are inspired by general theories about the
functions of an artist's signature in painting expressed in Calabrese and Gigante, "La signature du pein
tre," 39-42, and Goffen, "Vaneando le Alpi," 124-25. The idea of the signature as a declaration of the
artist's power to mediate a sacred vision was articulated by Goffen, "Icon and Vision," 510-11; idem,
Giovanni Bellini (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1989), 70-72.
101In a sim?ar vein, Goffen has discussed the appearance of the Virgin before Saint Luke to enable
him to paint her portrait, as a sign of her approbation of his efforts; Goffen, Giovanni Bellini, 24?28.1
am grateful to Rona Goffen for her assistance with various aspects of this essay.
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