The Agony And The Ecstasy (1987) - Plot & Excerpts
***4.5 stars out of 5***”To some people stone was dead; ‘hard as stone,’ ‘stone cold,’ they said. To him, as he once again ran his fingers along its contours, it was the most alive substance in the world, rhythmic, responsive, tractable: warm, resilient, colorful, vibrant. He was in love with stone.” Michelangelo portrait by VolterraMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born in Florence on March 6th, 1475. It was a fortuitous time to be born. He was coming of age just as the Renaissance was beginning to take full flight. His family was an ancient family, as old as the famous Medici family, but they have fallen on hard times by the time Michelangelo’s father became the patriarch. There had never been artists in the family, so the desire, nay the need, to create that existed in the young Michelangelo did not come from tradition, but from a new flame within him. He wanted to become a sculptor in an age when sculpting was nearly extinct. He wanted a chisel in his hand, not a paintbrush. He wanted white chips beneath his feet. He wanted to be immortal. After all, fire, water, and the passage of time destroyed paint, but stone lasted forever.Donatello died in 1466, but despite never meeting him or receiving the benefit of his teaching, the influence of Donatello was undeniable. Much later, when Michelangelo got the chance to carve a statue that was supposed to represent Florence, he knew that it must be David. I was mesmerized by David’s hand when I took this picture in Florence back in 1992. You must see the statue in person to fully comprehend how amazing it is.That statue grew beyond representing Florence. To many historians that statue symbolizes the whole Renaissance. The title of this book The Agony and the Ecstasy makes me think of a daytime soap opera with overblown tragedy and illicit affairs driving the daily plot. The life of Michelangelo certainly reflects the title. There are so many twists and turns in the narrative of this artist's life. There are so many critical moments where, if fate had intervened differently, the world might not have ever known the name Michelangelo.Everyone wanted him to paint because that was what was in fashion. He could make a living painting. No one was interested in buying new marble statues. Buyers rich enough to afford sculptures were only interested in old Greek statues, freshly pulled from their earthy graves. Michelangelo tried; he really did try to do what everyone wanted him to do, but the only time he truly felt alive, truly felt he was fulfilling his mission in life, was when he was liberating a figure from stone. The marble called to him, and once his hands were on the stone, he merely had to lean close enough to catch the whispers of who was in the stone. ”He had the impression that, no matter how honestly a sculptor designed, it would come to nothing if it did not agree with the basic nature of the block. In this sense a sculptor could never be completely master of his fate, as a painter could be. Paint was fluid, it could bend around corners. Marble was solidity itself. The marble sculptor had to accept the rigorous discipline of a partnership. The marble and he were one. They spoke to each other. And for him the feel of marble was the supreme sensation. No gratification of any other sense, taste, sight, sound, smell, could approach it.”Irving Stone waited six years to begin writing this novel. He arranged for Dr. Charles Speroni, an Italian professor at the University of California, to translate all four hundred and ninety-five surviving Michelangelo letters as well as the records and art contracts that he kept. Stone wanted to be sure that the portrait he carved of Michelangelo by writing this book was based on as much hard data as he could find. Irving also, to add more authenticity, lived in Italy for several years as he was working on this novel so that he could see, taste, and feel the world that made Michelangelo. Irving StoneSome would disagree with Stone’s positive portrayal of Lorenzo de’Medici, but any man who collects ten thousand books and manuscripts to form the largest library since Alexandria is going to receive more veneration than cynicism from me. He held Florence together for his entire life, without holding any office, as did his father and his grandfather. He wasn’t the last of the great de’Medici’s, but let's just say that there was a long drought after his death. His successor, his oldest son, was known as Piero the Unfortunate if that gives you any indication of how well he followed the father known as The Magnificent. Lorenzo, as he did for many artists of the era, took the young Michelangelo under his protection and allowed him the freedom to express himself in stone. He recognized the passion in the young man. Unlike many powerful people that Michelangelo was going to be forced to work with, Lorenzo understood that all that was required of him was to stay out of the young artist’s way. It was quite the contrast with one of the later popes that Michelangelo worked for. Julius II insisted that he produce just about anything but stone sculptures. He forced him to be a bronze caster, an architect, an engineer, and most famously a *phewy*, let me get the paint off my tongue, the painter of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo was also a poet, not just a dabbler, but a really accomplished poet. ”Were it mine, that shaggy fleece that stays,Woven and wrought into a vestment fair,Around her beauteous bosom in such bliss!ALl through the day she’d clasp me! Would I wereThe shoes that bear her burden! When the ways Were wet with rain, her feet I then would kiss!”Michelangelo liked women, but preferred males for sculpting. ”I find all beauty and structural power in the male. Take a man in any action, jumping, wrestling, throwing a spear, plowing, bend him into any position and the muscles, the distribution of weight and tension, have their symmetry. For me, a woman to be beautiful or exciting must be absolutely still.”“Perhaps you just haven't put them in the proper positions.”Michelangelo was not immune to the allures of women. ”She makes my flesh crawl; I mean the flesh inside my flesh.” He had affairs with women, lifelong affairs that, even when they hadn’t seen each other in decades, their desire for each other still burned with a soft flame. They were women impossible to be with (crafty he was), either because of their station in life or in one case because she was the mistress of a powerful man. He had no interest in marriage. He would have made a poor husband after all. He could love them, but he would always cheat on them with the white marble flesh of his craft. Michelangelo was feeling a bit lustful when he created this version of the fable of Leda and the Swan.He was a contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. Da Vinci is held up as the prime example of a Renaissance man, certainly deserved, but until I read this book, I’d forgotten just how much alike he and Michelangelo were in the breadth of their abilities. These three talented men knew each other, but had little to do with each other. Michelangelo was such a loner. He was always so focused on his current project and usually pining for other projects already bubbling in his mind. By the time Mich (after spending this much time with him I feel I can take a few liberties with a nickname) died, he had 80 years worth of projects designed and ready to be made. ”Man Passes. Only works of art are immortal.” You will feel like you know Michelangelo by the time you finish this book. Irving Stone casts his spells and puts flesh on the bones of a long dead artist and made me feel like I was walking the streets of Bologna, Florence, and Rome, with my hand on the shoulder of a genius. So much so that at one point I blew my nose and found only marble dust in the tissue. ”I’ll put my hand in fire” if it’s not true. I was most impressed with Michelangelo’s work ethic and perseverance. His ideas consumed him, but even when he had to leave his true calling because of the whims of more powerful men, whatever task they asked him to do, he did it to the very best of his abilities. Even unpleasant tasks he felt had to be done right. They had to be done with artistry and genius.
I didn't finish this book. But the one star doesn't mean that I thought it was a bad book. I just didn't like it. It was beautifully written and I found it compelling to read, but I was disappointed with how erotic it was in places. Early on Stone describes Michelangelo's experience with sculpting as if it were a sexual act. Then, when there was a real sexual encounter, I skipped the paragraph that described the act. A couple of words jumped out at me, however, and it was clear the description was titillating. So I stopped trusting Irving Stone. If I'm really curious about Michelangelo, then maybe I'll read a biography about him that's not in novel form. Hopefully other biographers won't feel the need to make comparisons between sex and sculpting. I did think the language was beautiful, and even when it was a little difficult to keep up with the sections which explained sculpting and frescoing – the tool making, choosing the stone, prepping the plaster, etc. – I found it fascinating. After awhile, however, I was disgusted with the whole world in the book. I guess it’s a function of having the prominent religion, supposedly Christ’s own church, full of corruption (where Popes have illegitimate sons), and being more of a political identity than anything. There was no spirituality to be found in it, and purity and chastity were mutated into puritanical tyranny. These people, who believed in Christ, prayed to Mary, idolized their Saints for their suffering and sacrifice on behalf of Christianity, had so little restraint. Even Michelangelo, who Stone describes as someone with deep reverence for God, was unable to hold back when faced with temptation. I don’t know if Michelangelo changed in his later years, but I was unsympathetic toward him after awhile. Even Savonarola, a tyrant with a hair shirt and bellowing sermons condemning the corrupt Renaissance, had a bit of a point. Paganism was ever present. The church was completely corrupt. And too many who wanted to reform the church wanted to, instead of purify it, saturate it with Greek doctrine. The most spiritual were those who believed in Christ but ignored His teachings. Only a monster would cry repentance. I’m not saying that I thought the book ought to have been a criticism of Michelangelo. Just the same, it romanticized his viewpoints almost to point of elevating them. His fascination with the human body was so purely religious even though it became his motivation for desecrating the bodies of poor people who had died in a monastery hospital. He sliced into them, peeled back skin, sliced deeper, examined head to toe, and even beheaded a body with his bare hands by candlelight in the middle of night. It was fascinating, gross, and sacreligious. Was it so necessary to make sure that each sculpture was anatomically perfect? I don’t believe so. That doesn’t mean that I think dissecting humans is never right, but I’m sure that those who went to the monastery in their final hours would not have consented to an artist mutilating their corpse for art (even Florentines). Stone has Michelangelo briefly ask himself if he’ll be damned for his actions, and then, when his research is complete, he thanks the priest who granted him access to the dead with a nude crucifix.As I said, I may read a bio by Michelangelo someday, or maybe I’ll just read Wikepedia. For me, though, I don’t think it would be worth finishing this journey.
What do You think about The Agony And The Ecstasy (1987)?
In the wake of The Da Vinci Code, the field of art history has had a curious relationship with pop culture, especially mainstream literature. These books remain infinitely more accessible to readers than scholarly writings, and are marketed as if they carry the same amount of factual evidence, but with an enticing story so no one gets bored (overlooking the fact that the subjects were real people, and even as geniuses, were inherently boring).The result is a public that feels informed, but in fact has a sensationalized understanding of artists as heroes and their work as divine manifestations, which serves no purpose except to sell books. The Agony and the Ecstasy is no different, except that it predates The Da Vinci Code by about forty years. It discusses the life of Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti, and its depiction of Michelangelo as a divine figure among us, like Giorgio Vasari's, is largely responsible for Michelangelo's popularity today.So why did I pick up this book in the first place? Simply to make an abstract moral point on a literature-based networking site made up of people with relatively the same intellectual and financial status as myself?No. I can postulate about the publishing industry's negative effects on our culture's self-perception until the cows come home, but the reason I picked this book up is because I cannot remove myself from pop culture. I read it on the reccomendation of art history professors who told me it was upwards towards fabulous. I read it based on comments from family members and friends who talked about the enjoyable experience of artist biography.What a mistake. The book was published in 1961, a time when our understanding of Michelangelo was completely different. Part of this was a result of scholars' refusal to accept the homosexual undertones of his work and life due to contemporary morality. Even so, Stone's bibliography is primarily made up of books published in the nineteenth century, which seems to me to be a direct refusal of any real understanding of Michelangelo, ignoring important biographical information revealed about Michelangelo during the first half of the twentieth century (such as the location of his childhood home) and instead selecting certain outdated facts which create a more easily understood narrative.Yet the purposeful ignorance behind this book is more of a disservice to Michelangelo than other contemporary pop-art history books. A deeper understanding of Michelangelo is neither boring nor confusing but instead gives a more precise explanation for his interest in the human body, muscle and flesh, passion, death, intense joy, melancholy, stone, resurrection, and other ideas left untouched by his contemporaries. This picture of Michelangelo is more human, more relatable than that portrayed by Stone's novel, which inherently blocks the reader from truly understanding Michelangelo and instead forces them on their knees at the altar of a cultural genius.
—Mary Kathryn
Even with Art History 101 under my belt, I was shocked to learn of his monumental contributions to sculpture, paint, architecture and even politics. But I was even more inspired by the incredible challenges he overcame throughout all of his 90 years of life. Nothing came easy. What an inspiration! Here is a quote from his death bed:"Life has been good. God did not create me to abandon me. I have loved marble, yes, and paint too. I have loved architecture, and poetry too. I have loved my family and my friends. I have loved God, the forms of the earth and the heavens, and people too. I have loved life to the full, and now I love death as its natural termination. Il Magnifico would be happy: for me, the forces of destruction never overcame creativity."It took me 13 months to read this book, and I will miss it (him). PS: If you are going to read it, make a chart with four columns-Family, Medici, Friends, Enemies. There are many people with long Italian names, and they all remain relevant throughout his life
—Emily
Oh good lord. No wonder I'm reading this book so slowly. I have to keep putting it down and fanning myself. Here's the young Michelangelo carving marble for the first time: "He had removed the outer shell. Now he dug into the mass, entered in the biblical sense." Really? He's fucking the marble? Apparently, yes..."In this act of creation there was needed the thrust, the penetration, the beating and pulsating upward to a mighty climax, the total possession. It was not merely an act of love, it was the act of love: the mating of his own inner patterns to the inherent forms of the marble; an insemination in which he planted seed, created the living work of art." Does anybody have a cigarette?***Two weeks later: Finally finished. Four stars -- as promised, it's full of agony, it's full of ecstasy. It's very full of history! Very enjoyable, and I learned a huge amount! But the writing is just so overwrought that I removed a star.
—Ericka Lutz
