Platonic Michelangelo

We can’t think that Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) known the Platonic philosophy, he was an artist, and he was very distant from this will, also because to read Plato was necessary to know the Latin or ancient Greek language, and he didn’t known neither or other, he written the poetry, or at last tried it and one sonnet expressed a concept that after the critic of art has took and used much times, it says: “The very good artist hasn’t concept that an marble alone surrounded in itself  for its excess, and alone to it come the hand that obey to brain”, these poor verses can seem alone words without a sense, but the experience of sculptor that Michelangelo has made, inducts him to consider that the sculpture was already in marble block, and the matter that surrounds the sculpture is alone more matter that the sculptor must remove, because the work is already in the block; this concept is very fantasy as Platonic, the verses that we have read are a heredity from Neoplatonic academy, that Michelangelo attended and where he, after the store of Ghirlandaio(1448-1494), he learned the sculpture, hence the frequentation of this academy has allowed to him of learned some philosophic concept, that he has used for this sonnet, written on 1538-1544; because it is a translation very synthetic of an ideal word of ideas of Plato, and the sculptor is alone an instrument necessary to pick up the sculpture, fortunately this sculptor was Michelangelo, because we can admire his art, but on philosophic level, the nature of this think is alone the academic think, and it is reproofs also from the following of this sonnet, that is dedicated to Vittoria Colonna(1492-1547), after these words he turned the attention to Vittoria, the woman that he Platonically loved, but after the read of following of sonnet the first question is: “So what?”, because. “The hell that I escape, and the good that I promise to me, in you, beautiful woman, dive and proud, so it is hide…”; the question is same: “What cock so what?”, answer: “Absolutely nothing” would answer Michelangelo, . “but some memories of Platonic philosophy is came and I a wanted send this sonnet to a cultured woman, hence this Platonic think was necessary, also because I am Michelangelo and not certainly Dante Alighieri(1265-1321), whereby I am an sculptor, painter and architect, no a poet”. This valuation of this sonnet learns to us that of Michelangelo is certainly better study the sculpture, the painting and architecture rather that study his poetry. Anyway I wanted alone consider that the concept of matter that surrounded the sculpture is a Platonic concept, and following Charles Baudelaire(1821-1867) “the remain is literature”, and it is alone literature because the critic of art is literature, thereby we can also say: “The remain is alone critic of art”.

Alessandro Lusana