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I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

Michelangelo (attributed)

Art

The story behind the card

The line is not in Michelangelo's letters or poems. A version of the anecdote was printed in 1884 about an unnamed sculptor, and by 1916 a self-help magazine called Ambition was telling it of Michelangelo. His real poetry holds a similar idea. In a sonnet written around 1540 he says that even the greatest artist can conceive nothing that a block of marble does not already contain, and that the hand guided by the mind simply finds it there. Both describe carving as taking stone away, not adding to it.

Türkçe oku
Mermerin içindeki meleği gördüm ve onu özgür bırakana dek yonttum.
Michelangelo (atfedilir)

Bu cümle Michelangelo'nun mektuplarında ya da şiirlerinde geçmez. Anekdotun bir sürümü 1884'te adı verilmeyen bir heykeltıraş için basılmış, 1916'da ise Ambition adlı bir kişisel gelişim dergisinde Michelangelo'ya mal edilmiştir. Yine de onun gerçek şiirlerinde benzer bir düşünce vardır: 1540 dolaylarında yazdığı bir sonede, en büyük sanatçının bile mermer bloğun içinde zaten bulunmayan hiçbir şeyi tasarlayamayacağını, aklın yönettiği elin onu yalnızca orada bulup çıkardığını söyler. İkisi de yontuyu bir şey eklemek değil, fazla taşı atmak olarak anlatır.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Michelangelo
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In 1723 Bach became director of music for the main churches of Leipzig. The job meant a cantata, a piece for choir, soloists and orchestra, for nearly 60 Sundays and feast days a year. In his first year he composed most of them new, week after week, alongside some reworked earlier pieces.

Bach's official title was Thomaskantor, music master of St Thomas School, and he held the post from 1723 until his death in 1750. Each cantata had to suit that Sunday's Bible readings and was performed during the service at St Thomas or St Nicholas church. His first annual cycle began on 30 May 1723; alongside the new works he restaged and adapted some cantatas from his earlier post in Weimar. Music paused for most of Advent and Lent, the quiet seasons before Christmas and Easter. Senior pupils of the school sang in the choir and helped rehearse and copy out the parts by hand. His obituary, written by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel and a former pupil, speaks of five complete annual cycles. More than 200 of his cantatas survive; many others are lost.

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Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican between 1508 and 1512 standing on a tall wooden scaffold with his head tilted back, not lying down as is often imagined. The ceiling, about 35 by 14 metres, holds more than 300 figures.

Pope Julius II commissioned the ceiling. Michelangelo saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter and accepted reluctantly; the contract was signed on 8 May 1508. He rejected the first scaffold, which hung on ropes through holes in the vault, and had a freestanding one built instead. His early biographers Giorgio Vasari and Ascanio Condivi both say he worked standing, and Vasari describes the discomfort of painting with his head bent backwards for so long. The lying-down version comes from another writer of the time, Paolo Giovio. Michelangelo is thought to have joked about the strain in a comic poem to a friend, with a sketch in the margin of a figure painting overhead. The ceiling was painted in fresco, on patches of fresh plaster laid each day, and the modern restoration mapped each of these daily sections. It was unveiled on 31 October 1512.

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In true fresco, the painter brushes pigment mixed only with water onto fresh, wet lime plaster. As the plaster dries, it reacts with the air and binds the colour into the wall itself, which is why frescoes can last for centuries.

Fresco means “fresh” in Italian. Wet lime plaster absorbs carbon dioxide from the air and slowly turns into calcium carbonate, a kind of limestone, trapping the pigment as it hardens. The plaster sets within the day, so each morning only as much fresh plaster is laid as can be painted that day. This patch is called a giornata, Italian for “a day's work”, and its faint seams often remain visible. A mistake means chipping the plaster off and starting again. Some colours, especially blues such as ultramarine, did not work in wet lime, so they were added later on dry plaster, a method called secco (“dry”); paint applied this way flakes off more easily. Among the oldest known true frescoes are Minoan wall paintings from Crete and Santorini of the second millennium BC. Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel in Padua and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling are famous later examples.

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Chiaroscuro, Italian for “light-dark”, is the use of strong contrast between light and shadow in a picture. Shading from light to dark makes figures look rounded and solid, and a bright patch set against darkness draws the eye and adds drama.

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