Michelangelo’s ‘Captives’

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Michelangelo’s ‘Captives’

The ‘Captives’, much like the rest of Michelangelo’s art, have classical origins in their form and finesse alike ancient Roman and Greek statues where the detail in the marble captures the “ideal” image of the human body (athletic, strong, beautiful) and realistic characteristics.  The ‘Captives’ have both realistic and idealistic qualities, but the artistic emphasis is on recapturing human realism.  Art has always been used as an outlet to express political and religious views and the ‘Captives’ go beyond these themes.  The sculptures were never deemed finished, but their “unfinished” state enhances an appropriate representation of humanity.  The statues personify ideas about human identity; reflect the tension between humanism and religion; and give insight into Michelangelo as a person and as an artist.

Ancient Greece and Rome were a part of a very important era regarding the development of philosophical thinking and art (among politics, religion, and other things).  Many of the virtues, values, and ideas of these maturing civilizations were absent during the following medieval era.  The Renaissance began to build upon, alter, and improve art, architecture, and ideas of the Classical Greco-Roman period. Michelangelo combined classical ideas and ideals as well as personality in his sculptures.  The ‘Captives’ have a neo-platonic essence in their expressed personality.  Plato believed personal identity is not just something within us, but that it is made up of two parts: body and soul, which are both separated and completely independent of the other.  Michelangelo’s captive statue called the ‘Dying Slave’ relays the most evident picture of the dualist struggle and co-existence of the body and soul.  The posture and expression of the ‘Dying Slave’ depicts the soul being trapped within the sensuality of the flesh and struggling to separate from the slave’s body.  Perhaps it is called the ‘Dying Slave’ because its soul remains enslaved by the body and, in result, its soul (reason and knowledge part) is dying because it is unable to leave the cave (Plato’s analogy).  The rest of the ‘Captives’ are slaves physically trapped and seemingly trying to escape the marble from which they are sculpted.  They accurately depict Plato’s dualist perspective of personal identity, but in the same way they are showing humanism and its relationship with God (religion/Christianity).

Christianity during the Renaissance had a powerful, overbearing presence in everything.  The gigantic and magnificent architecture of the cathedrals gave anyone who entered them a feeling of smallness, making them feel crushed in the great presence of God.  The rise and heavy prominence of humanism promoted the power and possibility of humanity, which clashed with Christianity. A humanist believes that humans are the highest entity (“Man is the measure of all things”) whereas Christians believe God is the highest entity.  Michelangelo created the ‘Captives’ for the tomb of Pope Julius II, the first humanist pope.  Being a pope who is also a humanist presents difficulty with a struggle between personal beliefs, and Michelangelo symbolized that in his statues for Julius.  The ‘Captives’ appear to be trying to escape their bonds, twisting and contorting their bodies to be free, and the unfinished sculpted marble seems to solidify their state of being imprisoned.  Kenneth Clark compares the rough marble to the effect of shadows in Rembrandt’s paintings and reveals how it causes the viewer to focus on the features felt most intensely.  This seems to imprison the unfinished captives even though they sport no bonds, much alike how a neo-platonic humanist pope may be captured in his own beliefs.

Michelangelo channeled his own beliefs and feelings through his art.  He was a melancholic and passionate person who relayed his inner quarrels of thought through his creations.  Kenneth Clark describes the ‘Captives’ as “Michelangelo’s deepest preoccupation: the struggle of the soul to free itself from matter”, which circles back to Plato’s dualistic view of identity.  It is suggested by historians that Michelangelo was homosexual, so in that case the ‘Captives’ hold a truthful representation of cognitive dissonance between his homosexuality (“desire”) and devotion to God (“duty”).  His desire (soul) is struggling to be suppressed, controlled, and freed all at the same time, yet his duty (body) traps his desire (soul).  The ‘Captives’ depict the mental and emotional strain between his beliefs and identity.  His ‘Captives’ and many of his other works are best recognized for their quality of emotion and how they most always engage the viewer to feel the intense emotions engraved in the marble, as if the statues really do possess such energy and feel the power and unsettling sadness that they convey.  Through his sculptures he creates open-ended potential which leaves the viewer dumbfounded at the spirit and ability of the art and the artist.

The Renaissance was the rebirth of classical art, ideals, and ideas; all of which the ‘Captives’ possess.  The characteristics of the statues develop philosophical themes of the Renaissance and Greco-Roman periods and dig deeper into the meaning and existence of identity, thought, and humanity.  Appreciation of the human body and mind was drawn, painted, sculpted and written about by Michelangelo.  The vast amount of praise for his work throughout his lifetime and history following makes him one of the greatest artists ever for his ability to urge people then and now to understand and experience the grandness and capability of humanity, whether it be in the form of an inconceivably skillful Renaissance artist or the striking reification of humankind in art.