From God reaching out to give Adam the spark of life on the sweeping Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco to a grieving Mary holding the limp body of her son Jesus in her lap, the works of Michelangelo are iconic.
Less well-known are details of the life of the high Renaissance artist, a man who scrupulously controlled his image as he rose to become the most renowned artist of his time and arguably one of the most famous artists ever.
To this day his name still makes headlines. Two days before the 551st anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth, new claims about his death and his works emerged from an independent researcher. Valentina Salerno presented a theory that the master sculptor and painter had hidden his artworks in a secret room in the days before his death, leaving keys to friends as part of a complex scheme to keep them in trusted hands. She also attributed a marble bust of Christ in a minor Roman church to him.
Salerno, who based her theory on archival research, is not an art historian but an actress and fiction author who began studying Michelangelo a decade ago for a book idea. She described her findings as “a great story of friendship that spans the centuries” and presents a new image of the legendary artist. Her claims have yet to be reviewed by scholars, and many experts withheld comment after her announcement. Still, the news invited many to revisit Michelangelo’s life and art and reexamine what we do know about a man who continues to fascinate.
Painter, sculptor, architect, poet: A true Renaissance man
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on March 6, 1475, about 100 km east of Florence, the city that launched his career. While he thought of himself primarily as a sculptor, he was also a painter, architect and poet. He rose to prominence as a young man under the patronage of the Medici family in Florence and worked mainly between Florence and Rome, taking commissions from prominent individuals including popes.
His artistry is praised for harmonious, balanced compositions rich in anatomical detail, cosmic grandeur and human drama. “When Michelangelo came along, the works of art that he made, it’s really a first generation of responding to a universal message,” says Elizabeth Lev, a US art historian and Renaissance expert based in Rome. “He deals with the most fundamental aspects in the most fearlessly iconic way.”
Michelangelo: The brand
“One of the things that really makes him stand out is he’s a man who constructed a brand for himself very early on,” Lev explains.
Michelangelo, who died in 1564, was the first Western artist to have biographies published while he was alive. He collaborated closely with Giorgio Vasari, whose 1550 book on the lives of artists included a chapter on Michelangelo. Three years later, Michelangelo’s assistant Ascanio Condivi published a biography that the artist essentially ghostwrote.
Despite differences, both biographies present a similar image of him not merely as a craftsman but as a highly intellectual artist and lone genius whose art emerged fully formed. “The blood, sweat and tears of the creative process; the missteps and the errors that we all make when we’re trying to perfect our craft — Michelangelo didn’t want that to be seen,” Lev explains.
He destroyed many of his drawings, sketches and papers, likely to control public perception of the labor his art required. He even took a hammer to a Pietà in Florence, known as the Bandini Pietà, partially destroying the statue. “The only reasonable answer to why he would do that was because the work was coming out not of the standard that one expected from Michelangelo,” Lev says.
A different secret room
These motivations feed the long-standing story that he burned his remaining works in his final days — a story Salerno contests with her theory that his artworks were hidden in a secret room.
Without claiming certainty, Lev notes that burning unfinished work would fit the artist’s desire to avoid public exposure of incomplete pieces. “You see all of this poetry at the end of his life where he knows the end is near,” she says. “He’s very concerned about legacy.”
Regarding Salerno’s theory, Lev points out there is no account of a secret room among Michelangelo’s intimate friends. However, Michelangelo did hide for a time due to political danger: he supported the Florentine Republic, and as it transitioned to a dukedom, calls for his execution forced him into hiding in a secret chamber below a chapel. “That secret room makes a whole lot of sense,” Lev says, but adds there is no direct evidence that he used such a space to stash artworks.
A new day, a new Michelangelo
Given the quantity and scale of Michelangelo’s finished works, there should be many preparatory pieces, yet relatively few drawings and sketches are known. That scarcity helps explain why sketches and drawings occasionally surface and are hotly debated. In February, a sketch of a foot identified as his by Christie’s experts sold for a record $27.2 million.
Sometimes known works are reattributed. In 2015, two art historians proposed that two bronze statues of nude men riding a lion-like animal were early Michelangelo works and his only known bronze output. In her recent publication, Salerno argued that a marble bust in the Roman church of St. Agnes should be restored to Michelangelo’s authorship. The statue had been attributed to him through the 19th century; by the 1980s scholarship assigned it to an anonymous artist.
Salerno hopes her archival work will spur further scholarship. Lev says much more extensive proof would be needed to substantiate the claims.
At the end of the day, Michelangelo’s legacy will persist beyond new stories and disputed works. As Lev points out, he addressed “these huge concepts, the big questions, the things that every single one of us, regardless of religion, background, language, all have — we’re part of these big questions — and he was able to recount them with such beauty and elegance and to their essential form that everybody can relate to it.”
Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier