{"id":57466,"date":"2023-03-13T17:41:59","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T17:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/queertuscanytours.com\/michelangelo-and-tommaso-de-cavalieri-an-endless-passion\/"},"modified":"2023-03-13T17:42:00","modified_gmt":"2023-03-13T17:42:00","slug":"michelangelo-and-tommaso-de-cavalieri-an-endless-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/queertuscanytours.com\/en\/michelangelo-and-tommaso-de-cavalieri-an-endless-passion\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelangelo and Tommaso De\u2019 Cavalieri: an endless passion"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row type=”vc_default” css=”.vc_custom_1473180234920{padding-bottom: 50px !important;}”][vc_column offset=”vc_col-lg-offset-1 vc_col-lg-10 vc_col-md-offset-1 vc_col-md-10″][vc_column_text]Michelangelo Buonarroti was not only the most brilliant artist of the Renaissance but also a sublime poet with a sophisticated and touching pen that reveals, between the lines, his deepest soul. In his letters, especially those written between 1532 and 1564, the portrait of a tormented, meticulous, impatient, stubborn, jealous and maniacal man emerges: in short, the portrait of a problematic and profoundly human artist, a victim of his own Love. After all, it is precisely love experienced as burning agony that pushes Michelangelo towards an art characterized by a restlessness and a lacerating dissatisfaction. Throughout the correspondence there is a sense of dissatisfaction and helplessness towards an art that has failed to represent the ideal of perfection so sought after by its contemporaries. The artist will express his failure by destroying all his drawings, precisely because he is aware that no one, after him, would have been able to convey his vision of the world.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

A shocking encounter<\/b><\/h3>\n

One of the most shocking moments for Michelangelo that we can learn from his letters is the meeting with the young Roman nobleman Tommaso de ‘Cavalieri. He was born around 1510 in Rome, but had Florentine origins on his mother’s side, who was the daughter of the banker Tommaso Baccelli. He was 23 years old when he met Michelangelo during his stay in Rome, in December 1532, when the artist was 57. It was a sculptor, Pierantonio Cecchini, another Florentine living in Rome under the protection of Cardinal Ridolfi, who introduced Tommaso to the great master, perhaps because the young man wanted to receive drawing lessons or simply to be able to meet in person the most renowned and skilled artist of sixteenth-century Italy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever the reason for the meeting, we know that it shook Michelangelo to the core and led him to write, the next day, one of the most poignant letters of his entire career. In order to motivate the beginning of this correspondence, Michelangelo compares his decision to crossing a river, “<\/span>as if I had to cross barefoot a water stream<\/span><\/i>“, which at first appears to him tiny and therefore easy to wade. All of a sudden, without even realizing it, the river becomes a tumultuous and dangerous sea: \u201c<\/span>the ocean with the waves above appeared before me, so much so that if I could, in order not to be completely submerged by them, I would gladly return to the beach I left from<\/span><\/i>\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this certainly fatal crossing, Michelangelo knows he is alone, isolated, and prostrates himself in total submission to his beloved. The confidence in such a difficult undertaking comes from the belief that he has found the true meaning of his own existence, that is, the other half of himself, a kindred soul.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Was Tommaso poetically \u201cpenetrated\u201d?<\/b><\/h3>\n

Unfortunately, Tommaso doesn’t think so (or at least he doesn’t show it right away). In his reply, he takes on a courteous and detached tone, even though he reciprocates Michelangelo’s kindnesses. He promises to visit him soon if it weren’t for the fact that “<\/span>fortune, in this only contrary to me, wants me to be unhealthy now that I could enjoy you<\/span><\/i>“. The recourse to an unspecified illness offers Tommaso the perfect excuse not to meet Michelangelo since he, without a doubt, feels disturbed and, at the same time, attracted by the audacity of this bold man.<\/span><\/p>\n

The two continued their correspondence and, in the subsequent letters, we witness a change in the writing both in language and style. Michelangelo’s letters become more possessive (when he goes to Florence, he is afraid that Tommaso will forget and neglect him) while Tommaso’s take on warmer and more friendly tones, almost submissive, which make us suspect that at the beginning of the acquaintance the young man has observed the rules of courtly love by behaving as a “courted woman” and, as such, reticent and shy, but who, once given to the court of her lover, gives herself to him. It is no coincidence that Tommaso used the same symbolic repertoire and even the same words as Michelangelo in his letters, welcoming the artist’s language into himself, in a kind of metaphorical poetic penetration.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row type=”vc_default” css=”.vc_custom_1473180314875{padding-bottom: 50px !important;}”][vc_column]