Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Galileo (1564 -1642): A birth and death over 400 years ago

(Excerpted from Selected Journalism by HAJ Hulugalle)

Even in the midst of many pressing problems, the quarter centenary of the birth of Galileo and the death of Michelangelo cannot be allowed to pass unnoticed. Galileo was born on February 15, 1564; Michelangelo died three days later. Both came from Tuscany in Italy, the cradle of Renaissance art and literature.

Being neither an astronomer nor an expert of art, I make no pretension to write about these two giants with any degree of authority or even special knowledge. But for five and a half years, I was in a manner of speaking, their neighbour, and my thoughts stray back to scenes with which I am familiar. All roads lead to Rome, and it was my pleasure to show visitors from Ceylon the masterpieces of Michelangelo. I also pointed out to those who were interested, the monastery where Galileo was tried by the Inquisition, and the Villa Medici where he was imprisoned because he publicly announced the discrepancies between the Copernican view of the solar system and the accepted theology of the time.

In what follows I shall try to take any reader who may care to join me, on a brief tour of the best-known work of Michelangelo; and if space permits, have a look at the Leaning Tower, where Galileo tried his first scientific experiments.

Nearly every visitor to Rome, regardless of the religion he professes, finds himself at St. Peter’s. It is the foremost basilica of Christendom, built on the site of the tomb of the first of the Apostles, which has only recently been excavated and identified by archaeologists. Almost the first thing the visitor sees as he enters the great church, is the famous “Pieta”. The “Pieta” is unforgettable even if it is only the prelude to more compelling sculpture. Michelangelo was only 24 years of age when he made it. In this impressive marble group, the Madonna is seated at the foot of the Cross, with her right arm supporting the shoulders of the dead Christ, who lies in her lap with relaxed limbs and head leaning slightly back. The sorrow of the young face of the Virgin is profound, but resigned.

The sculptor’s jealous rivals tried to make out that so young a man could not have produced such a beautiful work. So he inscribed his name, “Michelangelo Bounarroti, Florentine”, at night, with

a light of a small lamp. It is the only instance in which he signed his name to any work. Looking round the vast church, the internal length of which is 632 feet, one is reminded that Michelangelo was an architect as well as painter and sculptor. As his contemporary, Giorgio Vasari, said: “To no other has God granted such perfection in the three arts in all the years that the sun has been going round.”

Michelangelo was one of the architects who built St. Peter’s. He planned the great dome which gives the basilica its airy and symmetrical appearance. Before his death he had completed its drum, and left behind him models for the remainder of the work.

On one side of St. Peter’s is a complex of buildings. They contain the Pope’s apartments, the Sistine chapel and the Vatican Museum. The Sistine chapel in which a Pope is elected and which he uses for various religious ceremonies, contains some of the most famous paintings in the world. We find frescoes by Sandro Botticelli, Ghirlandalo and Perugino, but we go there principally to see the paintings by Michelangelo.

Michelangelo’s quarrels with those masterful Popes, Julius II and the two Medicis, Leo X and Clement VII, are a long story. I should perhaps mention here that it was to Julius II that the Portuguese king, Manual I, announced the ‘discovery’ of Ceylon by his captains in 1507. Celebrations were held in Rome; and the Augustine prelate-general in his lengthy oration ascribed not a little of the glory of the discovery of Ceylon to the Pope. As for Clement VII, he was the Pope who owned a pet elephant which he kept in the Vatican gardens, probably one of the two elephants sent to Lisbon from Ceylon as part of the tribute from the king of Kotte.

Michelangelo was often harassed by the Popes and not always paid promptly for his work or for the purchase of materials such as marble from the quarries in Carrara. He spent his time between Rome and Florence carrying out Papal commissions or trying to escape them. When he was engaged on an important sculptural project in Florence he was summoned to Rome and ordered to paint the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.

Michelangelo was still a young man and spent four and a half years to produce the famous scenes from the Old Testament including the ‘Creation’. The qualities of colour and the decorative effect achieved by them are not surpassed by the work of any other painter, not even the frescoes of Raphael which may be seen in the nearby ‘Stanze’. But many find the act of bending their necks backwards to examine them a trying ordeal, and purchase the excellent coloured prints and slides that are available.

Thirty years later, another Pope dragged the ageing and unwilling artist from his chosen tasks to decorate the altar wall of the Sistine chapel. The result was the awe-inspiring ‘Last Judgment’, which illustrates his power and the fiery daring of his conceptions. While doing this painting Michelangelo was upset by the papal Master of Ceremonies, one Biagio, complaining to the Pope of the indelicacy of the naked figures. The artist took his revenge by giving the face of Biagio to the judge Minos in the picture of Hell and Charon.

Michelangelo was in the interval engaged on many other projects in Rome. There is a statue of the risen Christ in the church of Santa Maria copra Minerva built over a temple dedicated to the Roman goddess of wisdom. He supplied the designs for Porta Pia, one of the city gates. He planned the courtyard and the museum on the Capitoline hill. He was also responsible for part of the Palazzo Farnese, generally regarded as the finest Roman palace. The Farnese was appropriated by Napoleon under a one-sided treaty, and at present houses the French Embassy.

Nearly every visitor to Rome who has read his guidebook wants to see Michelangelo’s “Moses”. The church which contains the monument of Julius 11 of which the statue of Moses is the central figure, San Pietro in Vincoli, is not easy to find without a guide but it is only a short walk from the Colosseum. A Ceylonese nun used to live in an adjoining convent. The “Moses” by any standard, is a remarkable piece of sculptor. The story goes that Michelangelo was so pleased with his work that he brought down his mallet on the exposed knee of the seated Moses and exclaimed: “Speak”!

It is time to move to Florence that liveliest of cities (my favourite) on the banks of the Arno. It was in a suburb of Florence, Settignano, that Michelangelo was born, the son of a podesta or petty magistrate. The stories of Boccaccio’s Decameron were told to each other by seven young women and three young men in a villa hereabouts.

The youthful Michelangelo was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio whose family owned a jewellery shop on the Ponte Vecchio, one of the most charming bridges in Europe. There are many experts who think that Michelangelo’s ‘David’ in the Academia in Florence is one of his most successful works. Made of milk-white marble, the figure of David stands superb and confident with his eyes steadfastly measuring his antagonist. There are two copies of the ‘David’: one at the centre of the Michelangelo square or piazza which overlooks the city of Florence and the other placed before the Palazzo Vecchio, the 15th century Town Hall, where I once lectured at the invitation of my friend, Gorgio La Pira, the popular and irrepressible Mayor.

When I went to Florence to place the order for the statue of Vihara Maha Devi, I visited Michelangelo’s house, the Casa Buonarroti, in Via Ghibbelina, in which one may see examples of his early work, drawings and architectural plans, and some personal effects.

We cannot see all Michelangelo’s work without a tour of Europe. His sculpture can be found in Siena, Milan, Bologna, Paris, London, Bruges and Leningrad. The best work of the master outside Italy is the “Slaves” in the Louvre, in Paris, which was intended for the tomb of Julius 11. The half-finished sculptures in the Academia at Florence were an attempt to execute a new series.

Not even Phidias or Myron could depict the human form with greater mastery than Michelangelo. He was a poet as well as an artist. His sonnet “On the Brink of Death” is worthy of inclusion in any anthology of European poetry.

Michelangelo died and was buried in Rome. But his remains were disinterred and secretly removed to Florence where they were buried ceremonially in Santa Croce, the church which contains some of the finest Giottos, Donatellos and Della Robbias.

The tomb of Galileo is near to that of Michelangelo. He was born in the other famous Tuscan town, Pisa, also situated on the Arno. As a medical student he discovered the principle of the pendulum by observing a lamp swinging in the Cathedral of Pisa. He checked the time of the swing with his own pulse. It was this discovery which made all clock-making possible. Among other things, Galileo invented the thermometer and the telescope. From the Leaning Tower in Pisa he afforded to professors and students of the University of Pisa ocular proof that bodies of different weights fall with the same velocities.

As already mentioned Galileo was tried by the Inquisition for heresy and imprisoned in the Villa Medici. He spent his last years in Florence where he was visited by the English poet Milton who, like, Galileo, lost his sight in his old age. Milton sitting in Galileo’s house and observing his instruments, wrote:

As when by night the glass
Of Galileo, less assured,
observes
Imagines lands and regions in
the moon

The two men about whom I have written – Michelangelo and Galileo – were not alone. That flowering of European culture, the Renaissance, included also other men of genius, like Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Giorgone and Botticelli. In the same year that Galileo died, Newton, who gave us the laws of gravitation, was born. Their lives remind us that we belong to the human family, our culture need not be tribal and that we are inheritors of what they achieved. For Genius is of no country; her pure ray; Spreads all abroad, as general as the day.

(This article was first published in 1964)