Abstract.

‘Ut pictura poesis’. If painting is as poetry then there is a neglect in addressing the poetry of Michelangelo

when considering his painted works. Here it will be asserted that the visual narratives of his gift drawings

for Tomasso de’Cavalieri cannot be viewed without reference to Michelangelo’s poetry. The question of

Michelangelo’s sexual intentions can be viewed in a new and brighter light if his philosophical background

is used as a torch for illuminating both verse and drawings.

Christopher Ryan, and others, read Michelangelo’s poetry as indicators of a homosexual tendency.1 Indeed,

the endeavour to identify at least an element of homoeroticism in his poetry has resulted in much scholarly

investigation.2 This essay suggests that there is a need to examine both the Neo-Platonic influence, which

impacts upon Michelangelo from his early years in Florence to his later years in Rome through his contact

with the circle of Ficino and Viterbo, as well as the poetic influences of Dante and Petrarch.

In addressing both the poetry and drawings, and insisting that there exists a confluence of both in terms of

artistic intention and spiritual desire; it will be shown that the drive towards linking both forms of

representation with homosexual desires conflicts with the philosophical and religious aspirations and

understandings of the artist.

In choosing to focus on just two drawn works, The Rape of Ganymede and The Punishment of Tityus, we are

offered a well defined intersection between Michelangelo’s Sonnets and the gift drawings exchanged

between the artist and de’Cavalieri. These drawings allow for an interpretation which deviates from the

explicit, and oft remarked upon, homoerotic reading of the works towards a more spiritual Platonic

1 Ryan, Christopher, The Poetry of Michelangelo, Madison (NJ): Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1998.

2 For an indicative work on the examination of homoeroticism in Michelangelo’s poetry and drawings see: Francese,Joseph, ‘On Homoerotic Tension in Michelangelo's Poetry’, MLN, Vol. 117, No. 1, Italian Issue, 17-47.

understanding guided by the philosophical influences, as outlined earlier, and the textual evocation of

religious symbolism.

The process of gifting in the relationship between Tommaso and Michelangelo is one where the divinely

inspired, Michelangelo, uses the gift which he received from God to pursue through the drawn image a

discourse with and of beauty the end of which brings a spiritual marriage of both their souls and an

entering into the “…circle which begins and ends with God…”.3

In engaging with the trifold connection of visual, textual and discourse through gift giving this we will

develop an approach which permits a vivid encounter with the mind and soul of the artist furthering our

understanding of his artistic process.

Keywords: Michelangelo, drawing, poetry, Neo-Platonic, philosophy.

3 Symonds,163.

Essay

Should Michelangelo’s gift drawings be read as presentations of Neo-Platonic ideas regarding therelationship between the physical and spiritual realms?

Word count : 2,691

Michelangelo spent some of his formative years in the household of Lorenzo il Magnifico. During

this period he was encouraged to be part of the philosophical discourse which took place between,

and amongst, Neo-Platonist philosophers such as Angelo Poliziano and Marandola. 4 All this took

place under the influence of Marsillio Ficino. Ficino, a favourite of Cosimo de’Medici, had

translated Plato’s texts and was the most important Neo-Platonist philosopher of the Renaissance in

Italy.5 In examining the role of Neo-Platonic thought in Michelangelo’s gift drawings this essay will

assert that not only should they be read as representations of such but also that his sonnets impart a

textual confluence with the drawn image. Further, an examination of the importance of the Gift of

the Divine, as a process, which parallels with the gift in the temporal will be referred to as a means

to cohere process, text and image as evidence of the Neo-Platonic ideas inherent in all three.

We know that Ficino saw love to be an operation of contemplation on the Creator by the

substances of creation and a seeking out God as its source.6Devereux further clarifies for us that in

allying the desire for beauty with love and love with God Ficino outlines “…a circle which begins

and ends with God…”.7 In defining love of others and of oneself Ficino sees it only as a means

through which love of the divine is expressed.8 In this respect Ficino, in his interpretation of

Platonic thought, sought to create a synergy of Neo-Platonism and Christianity with the ultimate

goal of spiritual union with the Divine9.

It is from these contemplations that Ficino develops the concept of Platonic love. Here Ficino sees

that a spiritual relationship between individuals can be a mirroring of the spiritual relationship

which exists between the individual and God.10 In attaining this spiritual relationship then two

people will have reached the highest form of friendship which can be achieved. This is not to say

that Ficino denied or opposed physical or sexual union; rather that for him the superior form was

4 Hugo Chapman, Michelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master, London, 2005. 62.5 Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, New York, 1979. 58.6 James A. Devereux, S.J., The Object of Love in Ficino’s Philosophy in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 30, No. 2, 1969. 162.7 Ibid. 163.8 Ibid.9 Kristeller, Renaissance. 58.10 Ibid. 61.

that of the spiritual. Hall, quoting Ficino, gives us a definition of Platonic love derived from Plato’s

Symposium on Love:

Among lovers beauty is exchanged for beauty. A man enjoys the beauty of a beloved youth

with his eyes. The youth enjoys the beauty of the man with his intellect. And he who is

beautiful in body only, by this association becomes beautiful also in the soul. He who is only

beautiful in soul fills the eyes of the body with the beauty of the body. Truly this is a

wonderful exchange. Virtuous, useful and pleasant to both. 11

In examining the gift drawings which Michelangelo gave to Tommaso de’Cavelieri this essay will

reconcile the visual narrative representations with Michelangelo’s poems to assert that these were

indeed drawings which dwelt in the Neo-Platonic sphere. As observed above Michelangelo was

within the philosophical circle operating in Florence it is also true to say that he would have

encountered the deep philosophical interrogations which were occurring in Rome, Aegidius of

Viterbo was a supporter of the Platonic doctrine of the unity of the intellect with the immortality of

the soul.12 In addition, Michelangelo had a great love for the poetry of Petrarch and great interest in

the work of Dante and that the love expressed in the works of these two poets could be equated with

the feelings which Michelangelo might have felt and gave expression to in his drawings. 13

Kristeller disagrees with the notion that Dante and Petrarch were Platonic poets but, importantly,

Ficino did not and this is evident in Michelangelo’s adopting of this form of poetry in his sonnets.14

If Michelangelo’s poetic output is then to be defined as Neo-platonic it is a natural and logical

extrapolation to apply the same conclusion when addressing his gift drawings. Kristeller argues that

an analogy exists “…between the artist and the conceptions of the artist and the ideas of the divine

creator…” and that such a link has been partly established in the public work of Michelangelo and

others. 15

Given the pre-Christian, pagan narratives of the gift drawings, The Rape of Ganymede, The

11 James Hall, Michelangelo And The Reinvention of The Human Body, London, 2005. 172.12 Kristeller. 61.13 Hall, Michelangelo. 21.14 Ibid.15 Ibid. 62.

Punishment of Tityus16, the two drawings which will be focussed on in this essay, it might be

suggested that they were at odds with the Christian, spiritual outlook of the Renaissance

Neo-platonic thought of Ficino and others in his school but this interest in the pagan and heroic

mythology can be seen under the light of the allegorical and the situation existing during the period

which seems to allow for a public and private deviation from Christian moralising17.

Having undertaken a, brief, examination of the philosophical nature of Neo-Platonism and its

conjoining of the spiritual and the physical worlds, and referring to the poetry of Michelangelo as

Platonic, it is now possible to begin to unify his word and image with the intention of demonstrating

the Neo-Platonic ideas with which he endows the drawings, listed earlier.

Michelangelo’s poetry with the greatest Neo-Platonic content occurs after his meeting with

Tommaso and, writing in his fifties, Michelangelo echoes Ficino’s belief that the eyes seek beauty

as the soul seeks the heavenly18:

Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth,

Resemble for the soul that rightly sees,

That source divine which gave us birth. Sonnet 5419

In reconciling the textual with the visual, I would like to expand beyond the reliance on those

poems addressed directly to Tommaso to include those which deal with love in a general sense for

Michelangelo and in his rejection of what appears to be a denigration of his Platonic love by others

unknown to us. In Sonnet 36 Michelangelo gives us a clear message that his love is unsatisfied

physically yet does find expression through vision, it also rejects those who do not trust his love to

be pure:

Tongue cannot tell how fair, how pure as day,

Is the soul’s thirst that far beyond it lies.

16 Hence forth these shall be referred to as Ganymede and Tityus.17 Hall, 67.18 Devereux, The Object of Love. 163.19 John Addington Symonds, Trans., The Sonnets of Michelangelo, London, 1967. 131.

How then, ah woe is me! Shall that chaste fire,

Which burns the heart within me, be made known,

If sense finds only sense in what it sees?

All my fair hours are turned to miseries

With my loved lord, who minds but lies alone:

For, truth to tell, who trust not is a liar. Sonnet 3320

It is clear from this sonnet that Michelangelo longs to express his inner feeling but refuses to do so

by the tongue as it is incapable of encompassing his thirst which embraces both the spiritual

through his soul and the, unacted upon, physical which can only be brought to the light by the visual

sense. Further, the tongue only serves falsehood and this falsehood is the doubt and lies of others

who do not trust in his Platonic intention.

In viewing Tityus, (Plate 1), we can begin to see that there is both a message to Tomasso and to

himself. There is a pedagogical imperative at play through the use of a pagan narrative. Tityus is

bound, in the myth and in the drawing, by bands and in Sonnet 31, addressed to Tommaso;

Michelangelo makes an appeal to also retain his chastity and to maintain his love on the Platonic

plain:

If only chains and bands can make me blest, Sonnet 3121

Tityus is bound to the earth while the eagle is free to soar; Tityus is also of the Earth, being the

son of Gaia and the liver, the seat of desire, is to be eaten each day by an eagle only to grow again

in an endless cycle of devouring and growth. 22 Hall argues for homosexual love as an interpretation

of both Ganymede,( Plate 2), and Tityus and visually this might well be the case, however I would

argue that Michelangelo does not operate on a homo- or hetero- plain rather he is operating purely

within the Neo-Platonic spiritual definition of love. 23 Michelangelo does not want to breach the

20 Ibid. 91.21 Ibid. 79.22 Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford, 2003. 1533.23 Hall, Michelangelo. 184- 185.

barrier that may cause him to transgress and seeks to suffer chastity, hetero- or homo-. A physical

collision of love can only occur with a Heavenly sanction:

Yet, if but heaven like earth incline to thee,

Let my whole body be one eye to see, Sonnet 2324

Like Tityus, Michelangelo suffers to quench his desire and via the conduit of the drawn image he

is both instructive, to Tommaso in a pedagogical way as suggested by Hall, and chastening to

himself as a reminder of the Ficino definition of Platonic love. 25 Thus, while we see Tityus

enduring eternal punishment Michelangelo voluntarily abstains. To succumb to the materiality of

physical love is to debase the spiritually of the love within and between souls and thus God. The

body must remain under control along with its desire and so the eye and hand become the paths of

walking for the love within the soul:

The pure ethereal soul surmounts that bar

Of flesh to where thy splendours glow,

Free through the eyes; while prisoned here below,

Though fired with fervent love, our bodies are. Sonnet 2326

And so, the eye is allowed to view the love of the soul but this is conveyed through the word, in

the sonnets, and hand, in the visual expression of the soul transferred to the paper supporting image.

By engaging body, eye and mind Michelangelo approaches the total life of contemplation

demanded by Ficino if one is to hope to encounter the spiritual through the immortal soul and thus a

“…direct vision of God…”.27 In his deliberations on immortality and the soul we learn as, I assert,

did Michelangelo of the incorruptibility of the soul and the divinity of ideas.28 When we read Vasari

24 Symonds, Sonnets. 63.25 Hall, 171- 172.26 Symonds. 63.27 Kristeller. 189.28 Ibid. 190.

and Condivi, we learn of the Heavenly alignments under which Michelangelo was born and

additionally that we are gifted Michelangelo by God. 29

Ganymede is kidnapped by Zeus in the guise of an eagle under the pretence of needing a wine-

steward yet the narrative is interpreted in a homoerotic fashion from the Hellenistic period30. Hall,

as noted above, continues this tradition as does Chapman31 yet Condivi, quoted by Hall, says that

Michelangelo’s “…love of the male body is as chaste and paternal as Socrates’ interest in

Alcibiades…”32. If not a homoerotic drawing then what does it become? Varchi is sure that

Michelangelo’s love for Cavalieri “… was an example of Platonic love…”33 and this leads us once

more to an understanding based on Neo-Platonism of the work guided by Ficino. Varchi is in

agreement with Ficino’s ideas on love and “…concludes that Michelangelo’s Platonic behaviour

eclipses his achievement as a painter…”34.

Returning once more to context within text to align with the visual Sonnet 32 provides us with a

Platonic reading of Ganymede:

If in two bodies one soul triumph still,

Raising the twain from earth to heaven beyond. Sonnet 3235

In many of the sonnets which Michelangelo composes after his meeting with Tommaso we find

allusions to heaven bound flight of two souls:

…since for my flight

29 George Bull, Trans., Michelangelo: Life, Letters and Poetry, Oxford, 2008, 8 & Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, Oxford,2008, 414-415.30 Hornblower, Classical Dictionary. 624.31 Chapman, Michelangelo. 224.32 Hall. 17133 Chapman. 226.34 François Quiviger, Benedetto Varchi and the Visual Arts in The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 50, 1987.221.35 Symonds. 81.

He gives me wings to share in his elation.36

True to its element the fire wings

Its way to heaven and to me is true

By taking me aloft where love is mounted.37

My soul, which mortal flesh and blood pervade,

Climbs Godward with it to eternity.38

Wingless, but with your plumes, here I’m in flight.39

Michelangelo acknowledges the love he has for Cavalieri but it is a love defined by Ficino’s

exhortation, referred to earlier, on the love between individuals in spirit and soul as a means to

arriving at the face of God. The spiritual Platonic love is given substance in the concrete of the

drawn image. Cavalieri becomes not an object of physical desire but rather a conduit for

transcending the material to the spiritual. Through the beauty of the younger and the intellect of the

older two souls are expressed as a unity via the eye and the hand. As Michelangelo insists in Non

vider gli ochi miei cosa moratale :

No man can gratify through what must die

All his desires…

…but if on earth perceived

As friends, we’re perfect when to heaven we’re

Raised.40

It is clear that the drawn image is a Neo-Platonic reflection on the role of beauty as an

36 Bull, Michelangelo. 14137 Ibid. 142.38 Ibid. 144.39 Ibid. 148.40 Ibid. 152.

externalising of the soul and the true desire to return to the creator rather than merely a homoerotic

treatment of a material longing. It has been accepted by some that Ganymede is indeed an

expression of Platonic love and that Tityus refers to sensual passion41, however this “sensual

passion” must be seen as a rejection of it and a restatement not of unfulfilled desire for the physical

but an overriding desire for the spiritual, Platonic drive for a reunification with God.

I would agree with Nagel in his assertion that the gift drawing is “… a finished work in its own

right and offered as a gift.”42. However, what role does the gift drawings given to Tommaso play in

the exercise of transmitting art and what is their purpose? I would argue that they differ greatly

from the roles ascribed to those given to Vittoria Colonna by Michelangelo and dealt with in depth

by Nagel43. Nagel, quoting Barkan, states “As genres, presentation drawings and sonnets are quite

parallel: both are acts of introspection transferred into privacy à deux, but beyond that often

circulated within a larger, but still private, coterie."44 We know this to be the case with the drawings

for Cavalieri, Michelangelo’s drawings were for friends and not for pay, yet they differ from those

for Colonna in so far as they engage with a discussion of Michelangelo’s deeper thoughts on the

soul, love and the goal of reunification with the divine either by a rejection of the sensual or an

embracing of the beauty of the object, here Tommaso, as a vehicle for transcendence. 45 Nagel

addresses the issue of religion within the process of the giving of gift itself and the etiquette which

arises between two mutual gift givers; there is no conflict of material and spiritual desire which is

highlighted by Ganymede and Tityus. We know that Tommaso loved the drawings he received from

Michelangelo, one image of Cleopatra he was forced to give to Duke Cosimo ll and the loss was

described by Cavalieri as “… no less a suffering than the loss of a son…”.46 That the sonnets were

not published in print form until fifty-nine years after Michelangelo’s death displays the limited and

exclusive distribution of them confirms Barkan’s assertion, above. 47 Further, we know that there is

an exchange of gifts between Colonna and Buonarroti from the letters which they exchanged.48 I

41 Julius S. Held, “Prometheus Bound” in The Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol.59, No. 279, 1963. 26.42 Alexander Nagel, Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna in The Art Bulletin, Vol. 79, No. 4, 1997. 647.43 Ibid.44 Ibid.652.45 Hall. 170.46 Exhibition label. Leonardo and Michelangelo in The Musei Capitolini, Rome. 13/11/11.47 Symonds. 10-11.

would argue that Michelangelo’s drawings for Tommaso can be understood more clearly as a visual

representation of the gifting referred to in the quote in the first page of this essay.

Truly this is a wonderful exchange. Virtuous, useful and pleasant to both.

The process of gifting in the relationship between Tommaso and Michelangelo is one where the

divinely inspired, Michelangelo, uses the gift which he received from God to pursue through the

drawn image a discourse with and of beauty the end of which brings a spiritual marriage of both

their souls and an entering into the “…circle which begins and ends with God…”.49

From the foregoing we can see that there was a profound influence of the Neo-Platonic on

Michelangelo’s thought from an early age. It is also clear that this philosophy guided his behaviour

and his relationship with his art, his soul and his love. The dialogues which Ficino examined,

translated and interpreted, I would argue, allow Michelangelo to reconcile his spiritual imperatives

with the material flaws of his bodily desires by reconstructing his soul, mind and eye in the drawn

image. 50 It is fortunate that some much of Buonarroti’s Sonnet’s are extant in that they allow us to

do as he did and reconfigure text, image and philosophical context to arrive at the Neo-Platonic

conclusion of their reading as he, I contend, intended them to be.

49 Symonds, 163.50 Joseph Francese, On Homoerotic Tension in Michelangelo’s Poetry in MLN, Vol. 117, No. 1, 2002. 18. While this article dealswith homoerotic readings of the poetry it also highlights the link between the eye and the intellect and the body which is animportant consideration when viewing the drawn images.

Bibliography

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Plate 1. Michelangelo, The Rape of Ganymede, Black chalk on paper, Royal Library, Windsor, 1533.

Plate 2. Michelangelo, The Rape of Ganymede, Black chalk on paper, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1532.