Michelangelo

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Michelangelo the Optimistic Artist

Michelangelo was pessimistic in his poetry and an optimist in his
artwork. Michelangelo’s artwork consisted of paintings and sculptures
that showed humanity in it’s natural state. Michelangelo’s poetry was
pessimistic in his response to Strazzi even though he was
complementing him. Michelangelo’s sculpture brought out his optimism.
Michelangelo was optimistic in completing The Tomb of Pope Julius II
and persevered through it’s many revisions trying to complete his
vision. Sculpture was Michelangelo’s main goal and the love of his
life. Since his art portrayed both optimism and pessimism,
Michelangelo was in touch with his positive and negative sides,
showing that he had a great and stable personality.

Michelangelo’s artwork consisted of paintings and sculptures that
showed humanity in it’s natural state. Michelangelo Buonarroti was
called to Rome in 1505 by Pope Julius II to create for him a
monumental tomb. We have no clear sense of what the tomb was to look
like, since over the years it went through at least five conceptual
revisions. The tomb was to have three levels; the bottom level was to
have sculpted figures representing Victory and bond slaves. The second
level was to have statues of Moses and Saint Paul as well as symbolic
figures of the active and contemplative life- representative of the
human striving for, and reception of, knowledge. The third level, it
is assumed, was to have an effigy of the deceased pope. The tomb of
Pope Julius II was never finished. What was finished of the tomb
represents a twenty-year span of frustrating delays and revised
schemes. Michelangelo had hardly begun work on the pope’s tomb when
Julius commanded him to fresco the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to
complete the work done in the previous century under Sixtus IV. The
overall organization consists...