IV.

First Return to Florence

In 1501, Michelangelo returned to Florence, where he was based until 1505. There he produced two free-standing sculptures, the Madonna and Child (1501-1505, Notre Dame, Bruges). The major work of this period is the colossal (4.34 m/14‚ ft) marble David (1501-1504, Accademia, Florence). The Old Testament hero is depicted as a lithe, naked youth, muscular and alert, looking into the distance as if sizing up the enemy Goliath, whom he has not yet encountered. The statue, which symbolized the fortitude of the Florentine republic, originally stood in the Piazza della Signoria in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine town hall. (A copy now stands in the piazza.) The fiery intensity of David’s facial expression exemplifies the terribilità (emotional intensity) that is characteristic of many of Michelangelo’s figures and of his own personality, and the whole figure demonstrates his mastery of the male nude. A similar power of expression in the human body is also clearly seen in the figure of Christ in the Entombment (c. 1504, National Gallery, London), an unfinished tempera painting on panel.

Michelangelo’s most ambitious project of this period, the fresco of the Battle of Cascina commissioned in 1504 for the Palazzo Vecchio, was, unfortunately, never completed. However, copies of a part of the cartoon have survived, representing a tightly packed crowd of twisted, muscular nudes. The pronounced sculptural quality of Michelangelo’s painting is also apparent in the circular panel known as the Doni Tondo (1503-1504, Uffizi, Florence), in which the vigorous modelling of the figures invites comparison with actual reliefs, such as the Taddei Tondo (1505-1506, Royal Academy, London).

Between 1505 and 1508 Michelangelo divided his time between Florence, Rome, and Bologna, where he produced a bronze sculpture of Pope Julius II, destroyed by the Bolognese in 1511.