Michelangelo and Bill Watterson

The Hourly History biography of Michelangelo makes for great reading. The man, of course, is synonymous with artistic genius:

Florence was home to the uber-rich Medicis, who were huge patrons of the arts:

“(Lorenzo Medici) encouraged local artists of all stripes to volunteer their time creating sculptures for a sprawling garden near the Medici Palace.”

And that is how Michelangelo was “found” by the Medicis. And when the Medicis began to fade, Michelangelo set off to the greener pasture that was papal Rome.

Soon enough, he came pulled back to Florence, for an art project depicting the famous slayer of giants, David. Not just for old time’s sake, but also because the other contendor for the project was his rival, Leonardo da Vinci:

“Not wanting to be outdone by an artist that he considered only a part-time sculptor… Michelangelo decided to seek out the project for himself.”

The statue of David became one of the greatest accomplishments of his career. Today, poor David worries about COVID-19, as this Instagram artist shows:

Returning to Rome, Michelangelo started on the famous Sistine Chapel. But first, he had to first set up the scaffolding:

“These efforts were apparently were much to the chagrin of nearby priests attempting to hold service since the dust and noise interfered with prayers and reading of the liturgy.”

It was brutal work, and he even wrote a sonnet describing how painful it was to paint lieing on one’s back. The last line of the sonnet - “I am not a painter”!

While at Kenyon College, Bill Watterson described his own attempt at doing what the great man had done:

“I decided to paint a copy of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of my dorm room… Working with your arm over your head is hard work, so a few of my more ingenious friends rigged up a scaffold for me by stacking two chairs on my bed, and laying the table from the hall lounge across the chairs and over to the top of my closet. By climbing up onto my bed and up the chairs, I could hoist myself onto the table, and lie in relative comfort two feet under my painting.”

The outcome was, well, nothing impressive:

“What the work lacked in color sense and technical flourish, it gained in the incongruity of having a High Renaissance masterpiece in a college dorm that had the unmistakable odor of old beer cans and older laundry.”

This pic below captures the “unmistakable odor of old beer cans and older laundry” aspect perfectly!

Michelangelo was awesome great, but as he once said:

“If people only knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”

A sentiment Calvin totally subscribes to:

When he died, it turned out “everyone wanted a piece of Michelangelo – in many cases quite literally”:

“The city of Rome was clamoring to keep him there as an adopted son, while his hometown of Florence was of course demanding that he be returned for proper burial on Florentine soil.”

And so:

“Ridiculous as it sounds, in the end Michelangelo had to be snuck out of Rome in order to be brought back to Florence.”