A slow reading of books about Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci is on my agenda

Pieta by Michelangelo, 1499

Since I already quoted what Georg Brandes had to say about Leonardo da Vinci in his book 'Michelangelo: His Life, His Times, His Era' (1921) in earlier posts, I've decided to also include quotes about Leonardo from 'Michelangelo' (1974) by Howard Hibbard. Hibbard's biography about Michelangelo is the first biography that I've read about this artist, and I enjoyed reading it almost as much as Brandes's book, though Hibbard had a lot less to say about Leonardo in his book. "The speed and assurance of Michelangelo’s technique seemed to open a new era in the production of marble sculpture, just as his imagination and insight had created a newly mature style. The several Roman works, produced in a few years, and the David, already described as 'half-finished' in February of 1502, gave a promise of unprecedented productivity that is reflected by new contracts and demands on Michelangelo. With the encouragement of Pietro Soderini, the Operai of the Cathedral commissioned Michelangelo in April 1503 to carve twelve Apostles, one a year for twelve years. During this time he was also working on three round Madonna compositions, one of them painted; and in December 1503 he was given a first payment for the mysterious Bruges Madonna, which was finished by 1505. As if this were not enough, late in 1503 the almost legendary Leonardo da Vinci had begun working on a sixty-foot mural of a battle between Florence and Milan, and in the following year Michelangelo was asked to paint an equally large composition. Then in March of 1505, Pope Julius II ordered him to Rome to create a tomb of unprecedented size and magnificence. By the time that episode ended, with the cancellation of the contract the following year, Michelangelo’s youth was at an end, his dreams shattered. The great artistic event of 1500 in Florence was the return of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) after an absence of some eighteen years. He brought with him studies for a commission he had received in Milan, which survive in the form of a beautiful cartoon. Here, as in all of Leonardo’s works, we find an interest in grouping for unity, not only on the plane of the design but also in its imaginary depth - an intertwined physical, psychological, and spatial unity that had been, when he began his career, the decisive new force in Florentine art and the first sign of what we now label the High Renaissance. In the early years of the 1500s this style, matured and sophisticated, became the school for every Florentine artist, most notably Raphael, and for Michelangelo as well. In April of 1501 Leonardo exhibited another version of this cartoon and it created a sensation. Vasari says that for two days it attracted to the room where it was exhibited a crowd of men and women… who flocked there, as if they were attending a great festival, to gaze in amazement at the marvels he had created. When Michelangelo arrived fresh from his Roman triumphs the following month, instead of being greeted like a conquering hero, he may have found himself overwhelmed by the fame, accomplishment, and charm of the tall, handsome older artist. Michelangelo may have begun the athletic Doni Madonna in 1503. It is in tempera, with the hard, emphatic shot-colors that we associate with later Quattrocento masters like Ghirlandaio and Signorelli. Thus it is somewhat old-fashioned, especially if we remember that Leonardo’s miraculous Mona Lisa was underway in the same year. The frame of the Doni Madonna has on it the arms of the Strozzi family: Angelo Doni, the patron, married Maddalena Strozzi late in 1503 or early in 1504. A Mary of heroic proportions, seated on the ground, twists to adore and receive the Christ child, who is evidently supported by Joseph behind her - a highly artificial grouping that must have been inspired by Leonardo’s experiments. There is a beautiful chalk study from life, of astounding maturity, for the head of the Virgin. Red chalk drawings were an innovation of Leonardo’s; Michelangelo’s drawing in that novel medium seems so advanced that it has occasionally been dated several years later. There was also a profound difference in the natures of these two supreme geniuses of Italian art. As Kenneth Clark wrote in his fascinating book on Leonardo, "We see that the antipathy, the sdegno grandissimo as Vasari calls it, which existed between the two men was something far more profound than professional jealousy; sprang, in fact, from their deepest beliefs. In no accepted sense can Leonardo be called a Christian. He was not even a religious-minded man… Michelangelo, on the other hand, was a profoundly religious man, to whom the reform of the Roman Church came to be a matter of passionate concern. His mind was dominated by ideas - good and evil, suffering, purification, unity with God, peace of mind - which to Leonardo seemed meaningless abstractions, but to Michelangelo were ultimate truths. No wonder that these ideas, embodied in a man of Michelangelo’s moral, intellectual, and artistic power, gave Leonardo a feeling of uneasiness thinly coated with contempt. Yet Leonardo held one belief, implicit in his writings, and occasionally expressed with real nobility: the belief in experience." The word 'Renaissance' refers to a rebirth of antique forms and ideals, and it seems at first odd that the style should have been Florentine rather than Roman. Florence (Florentia) had been merely a provincial town in Roman times; there was very little local antiquity to revive. But Rome, which was governed by the popes, was all but deserted during a crucial period when the Great Schism placed the real popes in Avignon and feeble anti-popes, or none, in Rome. Even after its restoration as the papal capital in 1420, Rome necessarily remained little more than a provincial town. It was considerably smaller than Florence, which was a rich and powerful city of some forty or fifty thousand inhabitants. Florence had produced those precocious literary giants, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, who established Tuscan as the vital literary language of Italy. Their works in prose and verse, together with the money in the Florentine banks, may have furnished the humus needed for sustained growth of the other arts. Dante already records the fame of Cimabue and Giotto. By 1378 the painters of Florence were allowed to form a separate group within their old guild because their work was 'important for the life of the state.' This statement reflects the growing self-consciousness of the Florentines, who by 1400 had a sense of identity and uniqueness that was probably unknown in the Middle Ages and that led to an identification with the great city-states of antiquity - Athens and Rome. Florence was also ahead of its time in the foundation of democratic institutions, but it was somewhat unstable in its government. In the mid-thirteenth century a first democracy, il primo popolo, was formed by the Guelphs (originally the pro-papal party), although the guilds, especially the prosperous cloth guilds, really ran the city. Florence was notable for its industry, which has been called a small-scale prototype of modern capitalism; and, as in many capitalist countries today, there was an impoverished lower class of manual workers. Like many Florentines, Michelangelo was born to a Guelph family that cherished a republican ideal. He grew up, however, under a bureaucratic oligarchy headed by Lorenzo de' Medici. The growth of Medici power can be traced back more than a century before Michelangelo’s birth. A series of disasters had struck Florence in the mid-fourteenth century: a flood in 1333, bank failures in 1339, and the Black Death in 1348. Out of these calamities grew a mercantile oligarchy led by two rival families, the Albizzi and the Alberti. In 1387 the Alberti were forced into exile - and so one of the brightest lights of the Florentine Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti, was born in Genoa. Florence prospered; Florentia, the city of flowers, became the city of the florin, the local coin with an image of a lily that became an international medium of exchange. The Medici bank gradually became so rich that it could control much of Florentine life, but in general the members of the family avoided visible office, governing from behind the counter. Cosimo de' Medici, later called reverently Pater Patriae, triumphed over the Albizzi and by 1434 was exercising control through a financial stranglehold that allowed him to tax his political enemies out of existence. Medici supremacy became overt under Cosimo’s son Piero (d. 1469), and Piero’s son, Lorenzo il Magnifico (1449-92)."

One of the books that I've been slowly reading is 'Victorian Science: A Self-Portrait from the Presidential Addresses of the British Association for the Advancement of Science' (1970) by George Basalla, William L. Coleman, and Robert H. Kargon. I bought this book some years ago, but I must admit that I've read only a small chunk of it so far. Still, I've already come across some interesting parts that I'd like to quote. But, before I do that, I can mention that I recently finished reading 'A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes' (1988) by Stephen Hawking. My knowledge of this famous physicist is almost nil. I didn't enjoy reading this book all that much, partly because some of its contents didn't interest me and partly because Hawking wasn't a very good writer. Well, as far as I know, because of his disability, Hawking couldn't write himself and had to tell another person to type what he wanted. Still, I did find almost half of the book's contents to be interesting, and I don't really have anything negative to say about the book or about Hawking. Carl Sagan's books are more interesting to read for me, though I must say that Sagan at times veered into the area of political propaganda in his books. Hawking didn't really do this in this work, which was his first published book, and I appreciate this. Anyway, the following is a quote from 'Victorian Science'. "Ali, the son-in-law of Mahomet, the fourth successor to the Caliphate, urged upon his followers that men of science and their disciples give security to human progress. Ali loved to say, "Eminence in science is the highest of honours," and "He dies not who gives life to learning." In addressing you upon texts such as these, my purpose was to show how unwise it is for England to lag in the onward march of science when most other European Powers are using the resources of their States to promote higher education and to advance the boundaries of knowledge. English Governments alone fail to grasp the fact that the competition of the world has become a competition of intellect. Much of this indifference is due to our systems of education. I have ill fulfilled my purpose if, in claiming for science a larger share in public education, I have in any way depreciated literature, art, or philosophy, for every subject which adds to culture aids in human development. I only contend that in public education there should be a free play to the scientific faculty, so that the youths who possess it should learn the richness of their possession during the educative process. The same faculties which make a man great in any walk of life - strong love of truth, high imagination tempered by judgment, a vivid memory which can co-ordinate other facts with those under immediate consideration - all these are qualities which the poet, the philosopher, the man of literature, and the man of science equally require and should cultivate through all parts of their education as well as in their future careers. To England steam and electricity have been of incalculable advantage. The ocean, which once made the country insular and isolated, is now the very life-blood of England and of the greater England beyond the seas. As in the human body the blood bathes all its parts, and through its travelling corpuscles carries force to all its members, so in the body politic of England and its pelagic extensions, steam has become the circulatory and electricity the nervous system. The colonies, being young countries, value their raw materials as their chief sources of wealth. When they become older they will discover it is not in these, but in the culture of scientific intellect, that their future prosperity depends. Older nations recognise this as the law of progress more than we do; or, as Jules Simon tersely puts it - "That nation which most educates her people will become the greatest nation, if not to-day, certainly tomorrow." Higher education is the condition of higher prosperity, and the nation which neglects to develop the intellectual factor of production must degenerate, for it cannot stand still. If we felt compelled to adopt the test of science given by Comte, that its value must be measured by fecundity, it might be prudent to claim industrial inventions as the immediate fruit of the tree of science, though only fruit which the prolific tree has shed. But the test is untrue in the sense indicated, or rather the fruit, according to the simile of Bacon, is like the golden apples which Aphrodite gave to the suitor of Atalanta, who lagged in her course by stooping to pick them up, and so lost the race. The true cultivators of the tree of science must seek their own reward by seeing it flourish, and let others devote their attention to the possible practical advantages which may result from their labours. There is, however, one intimate connection between science and industry which I hope will be more intimate as scientific education becomes more prevalent in our schools and universities. Abstract science depends on the support of men of leisure, either themselves possessing or having provided for them the means of living without entering into the pursuits of active industry. The pursuit of science requires a superfluity of wealth in a community beyond the needs of ordinary life. Such superfluity is also necessary for art, though a picture or a statue is a saleable commodity, while an abstract discovery in science has no immediate or, as regards the discoverer, proximate commercial value. In Greece, when philosophical and scientific speculation was at its highest point, and when education was conducted in its own vernacular and not through dead languages, science, industry, and commerce were actively prosperous. Corinth carried on the manufactures of Birmingham and Sheffield, while Athens combined those of Leeds, Staffordshire, and London, for it had woollen manufactures, potteries, gold and silver work, as well as shipbuilding. Their philosophers were the sons of burghers, and sometimes carried on the trades of their fathers. Thales was a travelling oil merchant, who brought back science as well as oil from Egypt. Solon and his great descendant Plato, as well as Zeno, were men of commerce. Socrates was a stone-mason; Thucydides a gold-miner; Aristotle kept a druggist’s shop until Alexander endowed him with the wealth of Asia. All but Socrates had a superfluity of wealth, and he was supported by that of others. Now if our universities and schools created that love of science which a broad education would surely inspire, our men of riches and leisure who advance the boundaries of scientific knowledge could not be counted on the fingers as they now are, when we think of Boyle, Cavendish, Napier, Lyell, Murchison, and Darwin, but would be as numerous as our statesmen and orators. Statesmen, without a following of the people who share their views and back their work, would be feeble indeed. But while England has never lacked leaders in science, they have too few followers to risk a rapid march. We might create an army to support our generals in science, as Germany has done, and as France is now doing, if education in this country would only mould itself to the needs of a scientific age."