When you hear the name of Michelangelo, what comes to mind?
- Painter of the Sistine Chapel in Rome?
- Sculptor of the monumental David statue, symbol of Renaissance Florence?
- Architect whose vision led to the completion of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome?
- Poet who wrote more than 300 sonnets and madrigals about death, shortness of life, faith, love, etc.?
Michelangelo’s creations showed his genius,
but make us wonder*:
- Was he born with these artistic gifts?
- If not, how did he develop his talent?
- How did he come up with his revolutionary new approaches to sculpture, painting, and architecture?
- Was Michelangelo a model of how to develop or become a genius?
Was there a downside to his genius?
- Powerful people virtually forced him to work on projects and in places he wouldn’t have chosen
- As a rock star of his era, he attracted fans, but had few true friends. His peers (artists like Raphael and Bramante) were jealous of his success.
Did his success make for a happy life?
Michelangelo was a complex character with a complicated life.
- Although he created masterpieces demanded by popes, he belonged to a group of independent-thinking lay people, called spirituali, who embraced some of Martin Luther’s religious ideas, such as emphasis on the Bible as the only source of truth, and faith as the only way to salvation.
- Did he secretly follow Luther? We can’t know, but his spirituality shines through in this passage from a poem he wrote 10 years before he died:
“Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to calm my soul, now turned toward that divine love that opened his arms on the cross to take us in.”
(from Sonnet, poem 285, 1554, translated by James M. Saslow)
*For answers to these questions, I recommend The Giant, a recent novel by Laura Morelli, which approaches the complexities of Michelangelo’s personality through his friendship with fellow artist, Jacopo Torni. In contrast to Irving Stone’s Agony and the Ecstasy, which covers Michelangelo’s life story (1495-1564) in depth, The Giant is told from the perspective of Jacopo Torni, and focuses primarily on Michelangelo’s creation of the David statue (1501-1504).
This month, I’m excited to share an interview about The Giant with the author, Laura Morelli.
Q: Was there an event that triggered your decision to tell the story of Michelangelo’s creation of his monumental David statue?
Laura Morelli: The Giant: A Novel of Michelangelo’s David, was originally intended to be a nonfiction book in the spirit of Ross King’s Brunelleschi’s Dome. But then I put the project away for nearly twenty years! It was only after I pulled my old book proposal out of a drawer that I knew it was meant to be a novel instead.
For three decades, the story of Michelangelo’s David pestered me nearly as much as real-life Jacopo, the protagonist of THE GIANT, pestered his genius friend. I kept putting this project away, but it wouldn’t let me go. The story kept coming back to me over years.
Q: How did you discover a new angle that hadn’t been written about?
LM: I have always wondered what it was about Michelangelo’s David that changed the course of art history. How did that happen? How did a single man–and a single sculpture–have the power to transform the course of art history? As I began to look for answers in traditional art history research, I discovered a drama so incredible that you could not make it up! (Well, OK, I made a few things up… It’s a novel.)
As I looked for the right person to tell the story of Michelangelo’s gigante, I came across historical references to a Florentine fresco painter called Jacopo Torni, also known as L’Indaco.
The sixteenth-century art historian Giorgio Vasari tells us that L’Indaco lived “in close intimacy” with Michelangelo, and that Michelangelo found L’Indaco the funniest and most entertaining of his friends. We also know that Michelangelo invited L’Indaco to work with him on the Sistine Chapel in 1508. According to some sources, it was a friend who convinced Michelangelo to return to Florence to take on the David commission in 1501, and I like to think it was L’Indaco.
Michelangelo is one of the most notoriously temperamental artists in history, and I wondered about this relationship of seeming opposites. It is this push and pull of two creative friends, in combination with the creation of two of the most seminal works of art history—the David and the Sistine Chapel ceiling—that drew me to this story and made me want to explore this complicated friendship further.
Q: What sources helped you fill in the details and context for this story?
LM: I always start with primary sources—things written at the time. For the Italian Renaissance, there are so many great primary sources! My personal favorites are legal accounts. Sometimes the laws are so weird! And consider that laws are only made when someone does something considered egregious at the time; it really helps you understand what a culture valued and what they condemned.
For The Giant, I started with the fascinating primary accounts of Michelangelo’s David, then added the scant yet tantalizing known details of Jacopo Torni’s life.
Q: Did you discover any surprises while researching this novel?
LM: We know just enough about Jacopo to make him an incredibly interesting character: he was in Michelangelo’s inner circle, he worked on the Sistine ceiling, he may have invented a way to inhibit mold on fresco, he was funny, lazy, a practical jokester. Giorgio Vasari gives us one anecdote to hint at the complicated friendship he had with Michelangelo. Little more. What an interesting character! He’s the perfect protagonist for a historical novel, especially woven into the rich tapestry of the known facts around the creation of Michelangelo’s David.
Building out Jacopo’s character gave me the chance to delve into parts of Florentine history I didn’t know about before—life in the taverns, Renaissance card games, and (spoiler alert) what it was like to be in jail in 16th-century Florence. There were lots of fascinating surprises down each of those research rabbit holes!
Q: How much did you have to deviate from history to create a satisfying story? (What’s the ratio of fact to fiction?)
LM: For me, the fun of historical fiction is taking the facts as far as they go, then realizing there’s a whole lot of stuff we don’t know. It’s like putting together a complex jigsaw puzzle with a bunch of missing pieces. You make up the rest. For this period, there are so many rich sources that there was always at least a hint to get started.
Q: How did the events and changes happening at this time in Renaissance Florence impact the lives of your characters?
LM: It’s incredible to realize that while Michelangelo was sculpting his David, just down the street, Leonardo da Vinci was painting his famous Lisa. You can’t make that up! And that’s just one small thread in the rich tapestry of Renaissance Florence.
Q: What were the most challenging aspects of writing your novel?
LM: Honestly, this book was a long slog! Whenever you write about a real historical person—especially a “giant” like Michelangelo—you feel the burden of responsibility to do justice to your subject. I thought about this a lot as I was writing.
Q: What did you enjoy most about writing The Giant?
LM: I enjoyed living vicariously in Florence circa 1500 for many years—if only in my head.
Q: What do you hope readers will take away after reading The Giant?
LM: My readers tell me they read historical fiction to transport themselves to the past—and to learn something new. They don’t want to be hit over the head with a textbook but they want to come away smarter. I hope they also come away entertained and enriched by an armchair trip to Renaissance Italy.
Reader, would you want to be a genius if you had to go through what Michelangelo experienced?