Best known for works such as the statue of David, Michelangelo is one of the greatest painters and sculptors who has ever lived. Now, a new book has revealed a fascinating insight into his artistic genius and versatility in disciplines beyond the arts.
According to the Michelangelo: A Life on Paper, the Italian Renaissance painter scribbled jokes, thoughts and even mundane shopping lists in the margins of his artistic sketches — in fact, apart from the famous works, he also left behind 600 cartoons and drawings, the Daily Telegraph reported.
The scraps of writing on about a third of the drawings include lines of poetry, memos to his assistants, explanatory notes to some of his greatest works and “achingly personal expressions of ambition and despair surely meant for nobody’s eyes but his own”, according to the author Leonard Barkan, a professor of comparative literature at Princeton University. In the margin of one drawing he carefully documented the money he had spent on chickens, oxen and his father’s funeral. Next to a drawing of a Madonna and child he wrote a parody of a love poem that began: “You have a face sweeter than boiled grape juice, and a snail seems to have passed over it.” Prof. Barkan spent five years studying Michelangelo’s words and produced the book with reproductions of his private papers. On one sheet, he drew a large hand and two human figures, alongside expressions of longing, sadness and regret, including “Death is the end of a dark prison” and “Desire engenders desire and then leaves pain”. Another sheet features a playful drawing of a cherub next to lines from Petrarch in Latin, the book says.