Born March 6: Michelangelo Buonarroti
Gently, whoever you are, you're no Michelangelo. He created iconic perfection in not one, not two, but three fields, and his burst of inspired genius lasted more than sixty-five years. He carved the Pieta when he was twenty-four, David when he was twenty-nine, painted the Sistine ceiling by thirty-seven, designed the Laurentian Library from his mid-forties to fifty, painted the Last Judgment from fifty-nine to sixty-six, and oversaw the construction of his St. Peter's basilica as he died at eighty-eight. Proud as he was, he was perpetually dissatisfied with his work.
If we lived in a world that valued verse as much as image, we might equally revere his poems. After his sixteen year-old boyfriend Cecchino dei Bracci died, Michelangelo wrote 48 epigrams commemorating their love. During the three decades of his relationship with Tommaso dei Cavalieri, thirty-four years his junior, Michelangelo created more than 300 sonnets to him that were so beautiful and universal they became a popular book after his death, but they were also so obviously sexual that Michelangelo's grand-nephew rewrote all the masculine pronouns as feminine. (For comparison, fifty years later Shakespeare penned 126 sonnets to his younger male lover, and 27 to the Dark Lady.) This degaying of Michelangelo's desire endured more than three centuries until John Addington Symonds translated the sonnets himself for his biography in 1893. Other of Michelangelo's young lovers were Gherardo Perini and Febbo di Poggio. Stephen Rutledge feels that Febbo di Poggio would make an awesome band name.
Again, as for the notion that gay sex (or the craziness of starstruck parents) is a 20th century invention, bear in mind that one of Niccolò Quaratesi's workers, trying to convince Michelangelo to accept his boy as an apprentice, suggested his son would also be hot in bed. The often arrogant Michelangelo gave a furious no. Art before everything.
Gently, whoever you are, you're no Michelangelo. He created iconic perfection in not one, not two, but three fields, and his burst of inspired genius lasted more than sixty-five years. He carved the Pieta when he was twenty-four, David when he was twenty-nine, painted the Sistine ceiling by thirty-seven, designed the Laurentian Library from his mid-forties to fifty, painted the Last Judgment from fifty-nine to sixty-six, and oversaw the construction of his St. Peter's basilica as he died at eighty-eight. Proud as he was, he was perpetually dissatisfied with his work.
If we lived in a world that valued verse as much as image, we might equally revere his poems. After his sixteen year-old boyfriend Cecchino dei Bracci died, Michelangelo wrote 48 epigrams commemorating their love. During the three decades of his relationship with Tommaso dei Cavalieri, thirty-four years his junior, Michelangelo created more than 300 sonnets to him that were so beautiful and universal they became a popular book after his death, but they were also so obviously sexual that Michelangelo's grand-nephew rewrote all the masculine pronouns as feminine. (For comparison, fifty years later Shakespeare penned 126 sonnets to his younger male lover, and 27 to the Dark Lady.) This degaying of Michelangelo's desire endured more than three centuries until John Addington Symonds translated the sonnets himself for his biography in 1893. Other of Michelangelo's young lovers were Gherardo Perini and Febbo di Poggio. Stephen Rutledge feels that Febbo di Poggio would make an awesome band name.
Again, as for the notion that gay sex (or the craziness of starstruck parents) is a 20th century invention, bear in mind that one of Niccolò Quaratesi's workers, trying to convince Michelangelo to accept his boy as an apprentice, suggested his son would also be hot in bed. The often arrogant Michelangelo gave a furious no. Art before everything.
From Stephen @ Band Of Thebes
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