Michelangelo and the Reform of Art. (Reviews).

Alexander Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art.

Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xvi + 105 illus + 303pp. $70. ISBN: 0-521-66292-3.

Combining beautiful Formal analysis with larger theological and liturgical issues, this book, rich in new ideas, makes an important contribution to a number of issues: the nature of Renaissance cult images, medievalism vs. modernity in religious art, the mid-sixteenth-century religious crisis that pitted artistic ambition against the needs of religious art, and the evolution of visual representations of Christ's Entombment. A major theme throughout is the altarpiece, its unarticulated conventions and function, and the significance of narrative and iconic imagery.

The author argues that the "reform" of religious art that is usually associated with the circle of Vittoria Colonna in the 1530s started much earlier. The first and longest part of the book consists in a prolonged analysis of Michelangelo's unfinished Entombment in London as the only such instance of reform. The second part places Michelangelo's presentation drawing of the Pieta for Vittoria Colonna into the intellectual and theological views of the circle that surrounded her, and ends by considering briefly the artist's Florence and Rondanini Pietas as further instances of his continuing interest in the reform of religious art. Nagel's theories thus depend on a very narrow foundation of art -- basically two works. Nonetheless, most of his hypotheses appear eminently plausible with the exception of his understanding of the importance of Bacchic and Bacchanalian themes that seems inherently unlikely.

The Entombment, a rare narrative altarpiece started in the late 1490s, probably for S. Agostino in Rome, depicts the dead Christ being carried to the tomb. Traditionally, this action was presented laterally, Christ's body being transported across the picture space. Michelangelo, however, adopted a frontal presentation of Christ's body, and depicted it as being withdrawn from the worshiper into space. His composition thus respected the altarpiece's function as the focus of prayer by conforming to its conventions of frontality, symmetry, and stability. This solution enabled Michelangelo to merge the work's iconography with a theme that held a life-long fascination for him: the Imago Pietatis or Man of Sorrows.

Influenced by Hans Belting's definition of the Italian Renaissance as the beginning of the "era of art," the author interprets Michelangelo's focus on the Man of Sorrows as an attempt to reconcile the new modes of narrative art, as instituted by Alberti, with a venerable cult image that was emblematic of the Eucharist. In short, Michelangelo is seen as endowing his Entombment with both narrative complexity and sacramental significance.

Nagel reads the restraint of the mourning women's lament as another attempt to draw attention to the eucharistic symbolism of the (unfinished) altarpiece. Michelangelo was influenced by Savonarola, who complained of a form of piety that saw only pain and suffering in Christ's passion, whereas, given its importance within the Christian scheme of redemption, the passion was also an occasion for "theologically informed joy" (36). Unlike Flemish painting, which Michelangelo himself condemned for its appeal to emotionalism, Nagel argues that the artist sought to arouse "high-minded" piety (193). The lament of the kneeling holy women assimilated them to the kneeling devotees before the altar, for whom, presumably, their muted emotional reaction was to be understood as instructional. Be this as it may, Nagel fails to address this altarpiece's absence of overt communication in the sense that none of the self-absorbed holy actors exchange glances with those kneeling before it.

Nagel does not follow up his earlier archival research on the altarpiece's probable intended destination in S. Agosrino, the Roman center of Augustinian reform. A stronger case for the altarpiece as an isolated, early instance of reform could surely have been made by analyzing the intellectual and theological views of this circle of remarkable humanists that included such a well-known reformer as Giles of Viterbo, future Prior-general of the Order.

A major issue throughout the text is the elite's growing consciousness of the emerging incompatibility between modern artistic practice and religious belief and their sense that Christian subjects did not lend themselves to elegant artistic expression. Federico Gonzaga's comment in 1524 that images of saints were less than belle da vedere (191) is used as evidence of his realization that secular subjects offered better opportunities for the display of "art." The famous letter written by Aretino in 1545, criticizing Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel as full of beautiful figures that were however of dubious Christian relevance, is interpreted as perhaps the earliest statement of this position: that what was good for art, such as the depiction of the nude and the pursuit of "difficulties," was not necessarily good for religion (192). Indeed, Nagel calls the Last Judgment a "colossal failure" (195) to the extent that Michelangelo sought in it to prove that modern artistic experiment was congruent with the work's religious function. He also interprets the self-portrait in this light. Unlike all the other figures in the Last Judgment, whose twisting, athletic figures embodied the highest achievements of art, the denial of the ideal body in the flat, lifeless skin held by St. Bartholomew may have represented Michelangelo's perception that real piety entailed abandoning high ambitions for his art.