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Sonnets and madrigals of Michelangelo Buonarroti

Chapter 72: NOTES ON THE EPIGRAMS
By Michelangelo Buonarroti
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Poetry

About This Book

A compact collection of lyric sonnets and madrigals presented in English alongside the original Italian and explanatory notes. The poems are intensely introspective, often emerging from letters or marginal drafts and showing repeated revision; they meditate on the pains and physical strain of artistic creation, the frustration of being misunderstood, religious doubt, longing and erotic impulse, aging, and mortality. Voices alternate between passionate outburst, austere reflection, and sharp rebuke of critics or patrons. Editorial apparatus traces textual variants, dates where available, and offers commentary to illuminate difficult phrasing and historical context.

[89]

NOTES ON THE EPIGRAMS

1 [I] THE NIGHT OF THE MEDICI CHAPEL. According to Vasari, when the statues of the Medici Chapel were exposed to view, after Michelangelo’s departure for Rome, early in 1535, an unknown author affixed a quatrain to the image of Night. This person was afterwards known as Giovanni di Carlo Strozzi, at the time eighteen years of age. The verse, not ungraceful but superficial, recited that Night, carved by an angel, was living, for the very reason that she seemed to sleep, and if accosted, would make reply. To this fanciful compliment, Michelangelo responded in the beautiful quatrain, which exhibits his view of the Medicean usurpation.

It were to be wished that in presence of the awful forms, visitors would bear in mind the sculptor’s advice. I have heard a young American lady, in a voice somewhat strident, expound to her mother the theme of the statue, reading aloud the information furnished by Baedeker.

2 [II] DEATH AND THE COFFIN. The younger Buonarroti cites the statement of Bernardo Buontalenti, that in his house in Rome, halfway up the stair, Michelangelo[90] had drawn a skeleton Death carrying on his shoulder a coffin, on which were inscribed these lines. The story is interesting, in connection with the part taken by Death in the verse of the sculptor. Giannotti represents him as declining to attend a merry-making on the ground that it was necessary to muse on Death. (See madrigal No. 12 [XVI].) The idea appears to be that death cannot be dreadful, since it bequeaths to life not only the immortal soul, but even the body; probably the artist meant to say the body made immortal through art.

3 [V] DEFINITION OF LOVE. With this definition from the subjective point of view, may be compared madrigal No. 5 [VIII]. As usual the imagination of the poet takes plastic form; Love, in his mind, is a statue lying in the heart, and waiting to be unveiled. Akin is the celebrated sonnet of Dante, Amor e cor gentil sono una cosa, which contains the same conception, and which perhaps Michelangelo may have remembered. But the more mystical idea of the sculptor borrows only the suggestion.