Today we began class by discussing the mother of all ceiling frescoes, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Ceiling. Having seen the ceiling in person, I can speak to its utter magnificence and structural grandeur. I had no idea, however, that the scenes Michelangelo depicted correspond to different Christian epochs. That is to say, I didn’t know much about the order of the ceiling which I think adds a whole lot of significance to the work overall. Starting at the top with the Ante Legem period, and then moving into the period during/after the life of Christ allows us as viewers to move from the far biblical past to where we stand in the present. I think the brolic figures of Michelangelo’s frescoes speak to his refined understanding of human musculature, and his ability to faithfully contort the forms (particularly those of the sibyls) speaks to his magnificent skills as a painter.
We used this discussion of the contortion of Michelangelo’s figures as a jumping-off point into Mannerism. I think the shift from the serene and balanced compositions of the High Renaissance to the fluid (and perhaps, turbulent) compositions of Mannerism is closely tied to the Sack of Rome in 1527, and perhaps the wider political and social instability of the Italian peninsula at this time, but we didn’t really touch on this in class. Anyway, I’m quite ambivalent towards Mannerist art. I think Pontormo’s Pietà is really beautiful and an emotionally charged and expressively colorful image that uses the serpentine form to its compositional benefit, while Parmigianino’s Madonna of the Long Neck is just straight-up weird to me. Long Neck is a bit abstract, which I don’t necessarily think is a bad thing (in fact, I think it is cool that the painting continues the tradition of the Nativity being paralleled with the Lamentation), but the exaggeration and intense lengthening of the figures’ limbs (particularly Jesus’) just seems to me like a poor understanding of proportions on behalf of Parmigianino.