Ying Wang
Professor Daniel Casper
ART188
09/18/2014 RLR 2 In Michelangelo’s poem, we can strongly feel that he believed his talents are originates from God. He holds the opinion that it is God who guides him to make sculptures. Just as God creates people in the world, Michelangelo uses “crude hammer shapes the hard stones into one human appearance or another” (Poem 46, 3) The sentence “now my own will fail to be completed unless he divine smithy, to help make it, gives it that aid which was unique on earth” (Poem 46, 12) points out that without God’s guidance, he can’t create anything; the word “unique on earth”, which speaks highly of his status as an artist in the world and his masterpiece David can prove it. In term of the relationship between Michelangelo’s poems and sculptures, I think there are two aspects to demonstrate it. First, there was a turbulent and uncertain society at that time, people’s lives were filled with dire suffering, Michelangelo pinned his hope on God. Under the guidance of God, he finished this giant and great piece David, which was a symbol of freedom, and represents Michelangelo’s motion. Second, David is a hero in bible, which also can be another possible to represent the “divine smithy”. In the bible, David defeat giant “Goliath”, so Michelangelo hope there have a hero at that time to save his country. According to his poem, “not even the best of artists has any conception that a single marble block does not contain within its excess, and that is only attained by the hand that obeys the intellect” (Poem 151) can be reflected on David, who is freed by the artist; as far as the “intellect”, it is the artist’s intellect that guided by God. In conclusion, based on Michelangelo’s poems and sculptures, we can find his philosophy is humanism.