By Samito Jalbuena
THE inside secret that many know yet are afraid or coy to discuss in the wide open, has been the tantalizing “innuendo” going around since pre-modern times that Michelangelo Buonarroti, the Italian Renaissance sculptor of hard, virile marbles, was gay. But then again, so what?
The evidence was and is overwhelming. One cursory glance at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome is all one needs to shy away like Adam and Eve as they were expelled from the Garden by the glory of God. Yes, a few old masters had a thing or two for the sexiest male nudes. Hearsay went rumbling in all directions that the famous artist was in love with a certain handsome Italian knight, a bello cavalier, yet dear old classic was betrothed fundamentally to the platonic, and perhaps, the unrequited. He was also rumored to have fallen in love with a daughter of the Medici in his teens.
But whether this or that was true or not has no eternal bearing on the majesty of the oeuvre, or on the artist’s worth as a human being. If he was a homosexual, perhaps this preference made him more sensitive and more artistic than most, following common gender-based generalizations.
But as big as these statements come, Michelangelo is etched in the cognitive as artist par excellence, a perennial favorite not merely for the radar’s voyeuristic speculation, but for resounding creative brilliance that echoes through the centuries.
And this, through the work of a man who saw beauty in most yet hated his own face.
It was quite the resumption into Michelangelo studies earlier this year in northwestern Europe and the United Kingdom when a pair of 16th-century sculptures, known as the Rothschild Bronzes, which had been earlier attributed to the master, were finally saved from further speculation and brought forward as the latest additions to his body of work.
Each of the two statues depicting a naked man riding a panther was presented by two highly respected institutions, the University of Cambridge and the Fitzwilliam Museum (also in Cambridge), as unimpeachable specimens. The basis was a tiny portion of a drawing by an apprentice and other details. It was a certain Dr. Paul Joannides, emeritus professor of art history at the University of Cambridge, who connected the bronzes to a drawing by one of Michelangelo’s students now in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France.
A Sheet of Studies with Virgin Embracing Infant Jesus, c.1508, is a student’s copy of various lost sketches by Michelangelo. On one corner is a composition of a muscular youth riding a panther, akin to the pose of the bronzes, and sketched in the abrupt, forceful manner that Michelangelo developed when making designs for sculpture, suggesting the correctness of the attribution.
This evidence is now being studied by a team of international experts that has gathered a thesis that these two pieces are actually early works made just after David and before the artist set up scaffolds for the Sistine Chapel.
More findings are set to be published after the presentation at an international conference on July 6.
It is generally regarded that no bronzes by Michelangelo had survived the centuries. In an early communique in Cam.ac.uk, the University of Cambridge could not deny that if its attribution is correct, the Rothschild Bronzes would be “the only surviving Michelangelo bronzes in the world.”
This is great news for fans of the artist. The Rothschild Bronzes are a nonmatching pair, one figure older and the other young and athletic. Admired for their deft handling of anatomy and expression, their first recorded attribution was to Michelangelo when they were exhibited in 1878 as the property of Baron Adolphe de Rothschild, although the attribution was disputed and dismissed for lack of documentation and artist signatures on the works. When the heir of Rothschild died, the bronzes changed ownership to a French private collector.
In 2002 they were again sold to a British collector, and in 2012, they were exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts. Through the years, the pair has been variously attributed to Tiziano Aspetti, Jacopo Sansovino and Benvenuto Cellini, or their respective circles.
Noted the Prospero Blog of The Economist: “If the attribution is endorsed by scholars round the world, the 500-year-old, 1-meter-high bronzes would become this century’s second-most spectacular Renaissance discovery after Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi.” Da Vinci’s representation of Christ, with one hand held up in blessing and the other grasping a translucent globe, made headlines when it was exhibited at the National Gallery in London three years ago. The world awaits with bated breath.
Meanwhile, the bronzes have been put on display in advance of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s bicentenary in 2016 and before its next major exhibition, Treasured Possessions, the result of an interdisciplinary university research project revealing hidden items in the museum’s reserves. The bronzes and a selection of the evidence can be found in the Italian galleries of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge until August 9. Admission to the Fitzwilliam is free.