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Michelangelo's Masks
John T. Paoletti
symbols for night and sleep; as such they have not been discussed in any detail. Michelangelo, however, was not given to
her left hand and arm (Figs. 1-2) does add an important
footnote to Michelangelo's biography in the form of a
personal and self-referential message which the patrons of
the chapel could hardly have failed to read.
The Night is anomalous-and thus particularly noticeable-among the four allegories representing the Times of
Day in the Medici Chapel insofar as it is the only one with
clearly defined attributes. The figure is identified by a crown
The mask shows a face with distinctly-even exaggeratedly-muscled features, a prominent nose with flared nostrils, a curling beard and mustache, and a curiously unnatural curved upper lip which serves to frame two prominently
himself, the first work of sculpture that the artist had ever
I would like to thank William Wallace, Sheryl Reiss, and Clark Maines for
their reading of the text in draft form and for their comments. This
paper also benefitted from conversations with Wendy Stedman Sheard,
and, although he did not agree with all of its conclusions, provided
2 Condivi/Wohl, 11; Condivi/Frey, 20: "In vista gia vecchio, con lunga
barba e volto ridente." Vasari does not include this anecdote in his life of
self-fashioning.
Night, saying merely that "to signify Time [Michelangelo] meant to carve
Wesleyan University for providing the sabbatical leave during which this
Although Condivi does not specifically associate the mouse with the
a mouse" ("per la significatione del tempo voleva fare un topo, havendo
lasciato in su l'opera un poco di marmo"), he does say that the figures of
Day and Nzght were "collectively [to represent] Time which consumes
all" ("significandosi per queste il Glorno et la Notte e per ambi due il
Tempo che consuma il tutto") (Condivi/Wohl, 67; Condivi/Frey, 136),
thus connecting in a loose way the mouse with the personification of
either Day or Night. It should be noted here that the identification of the
garland at the foot of Night as one of poppies does not come from
heads" (p. 183); this is apparently the first reference to this flower in
connection to the Night. It must be said that, given the summary nature
of the carving, moder historians might be wise to imitate the reticence
of the early writers.
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1 Michelangelo, Tomb of Giuliano dei Medici. Florence, S. Lorenzo, Medici Chapel (photo: Gabinetto Fotografico della
Soprintendenza ai Beni Artistici e Storici di Firenze)
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Mask
of
the
Night
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(ph
that "... fuor della antica testa, di suo fantasia gli aveva
traponato la bocca e fattogli la lingua e vedere tutti i denti
..." (different from the antique head and from his own
imagination he drilled out the mouth, made a tongue and
made all the teeth visible . . .),5 thus suggesting a transformation of the original antique model. In the mask of the Night a
tongue is also clearly visible rising behind the teeth (Fig. 2).
odd in their details that unless they echo an as-yetunidentified literary topos from classical antiquity, they cannot be pure invention but must in some way record an object
and an event important in Michelangelo's own memory.6
3 Condivi/Wohl, 12; Condivi/Frey, 20: "Si che si vedea il cavo d'essa con
tutti i denti." Although the two teeth so obviously revealed by the upper
lip of the mask of the Night must function as a synecdoche for "all the
teeth" mentioned in Condivi's description, there is a ridge of marble
behind the lower lip that could have been fashioned into a row of teeth.
1989, 14, and J. Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo,
Leo X and the Two Cosimos, Princeton, 1984, 236. Barolsky, 26-29,
continues his discussion of the "socratic satyr" by seeing this painting as
Condivi's tale of the faun's mask; this would presume that Vasari or his
It should be noted, however, that from the viewer's vantage point slightly
patron, Ottaviano de' Medici, found such a reference apt in 1534. For
below the mask, such teeth would hardly have been visible had they been
further interpretation of this painting as a personal reference to Vasari
carved.
and his family, see P. Barolsky, Why Mona Lisa Smiles and Other Tales by
4 Condivi/Wohl, 12; Condivi/Frey, 22: "Cav6 un dente al suo vecchio di Vasari, University Park, Pa., 1991, 92.
8 It must be noted, however, that no such mask appears in the 1492
quei di sopra. ... "
inventory of Lorenzo's possessions, written at the time of his death. For
5 Vasari/Barocchi, I, 10.
the copy of this inventory made at the request of Lorenzo di Piero in
6 Barolsky, 19-20, comes the closest to positing an antique reference by December 1512 (Archivio di Stato, Florence, Mediceo avanti il princisuggesting that the mask implies Socrates who is referred to in the pato, 165, fols. 1-120), see E. Miintz, Les Collections des Medicis au XVe
Symposium, among other things, as a satyr, thus meaning that MichelanSiecle, Paris and London, 1888; the document is incomplete in its
gelo "was like Socrates in his pursuit of beauty." On this subject we might published form. In an earlier article, "Les Collections d'antiquites de
note that Socrates' physical features were well known in the 16th century
Laurent le Magnifique," Revue archeologique, n.s. 38, 1879, 243-250; 39,
and that his portrait was included by Raphael in the School of Athens. 1880, 257-259, Muntz noted (p. 257) that the marbles in Lorenzo's
Socrates looked much more like Silenus than a satyr, although the two collection, for whatever reason, were not inventoried. For a recent study
are related. I am grateful to The Art Bulletin's anonymous reader for of Lorenzo's antiquities, see L. Beschi, "Le antichita di Lorenzo il
pointing out this distinction. It must be noted as well that the mask of the Magnifico: Caratteri e vicende," Gli Uffizz: Quattro secoli di una galleria
Night does not show the pointed, erect, and often long ears of antique (Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Florence, Sept. 20-24,
satyrs.
operative texts here are those of Condivi and Vasari, which describe
Michelangelo's mask very clearly and which say nothing about elongated
7 Florence, Uffizi, Inv. 1578; for the meaning of this painting, see U.
Davitt Asmus, Corpus Quasz Vas. Beitrage zur Ikonographie der Italienzschen
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3 Giorgio Vasari,
Lorenzo the Magnifi-
cent. Florence,
Uffizi (photo:
Alinari)
gli fregiavano la vita . .." (with all the ornaments whose great
qualities surrounded his life .. .).9 Of all the antique objects
9 K. Frey, Der literarische Nachlass Giorgio Vasaris, Munich, 1923, 18. The
dating of the letter is uncertain, since only the month ofJanuary is given
at the end; the letter may be from either 1533 or 1534. I am indebted to
The Art Bulletin's anonymous reader for this reference.
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Steinmann.
Even if the mask of the Night and the later literary dederiving from it; see Steinmann, 42-43. Perhaps the drawing of a
scription of Michelangelo's precocious copy of the antiquebearded male head in profile that has been problematically connected to
do not coincide on every point, it is useful to underscore that,a number of figures on the Sistine Ceiling should now be associated with
the head of Holofernes and considered a self-portrait as well; see
and Michelangelo over the faun that inspired the head of the 13 There are two versions of this drawing; the one formerly in the Seilern
Medici family to bring the young artist into what wouldCollection, London, and now in the Courtauld Institute, London, is genbecome a very long and close, if sometimes troubled, rela-erally accepted as autograph, while the version in the Morgan Library,
tionship with the Medici. It is also useful to remember in this New York, inv. no. IV, 7A, is thought to be a copy (Tolnay, II, no. 333r,
regard that Michelangelo was also to have built a tomb forcello Venusti. I would like to thank Stephanie Wiles of the Morgan
Lorenzo the Magnificent in the New Sacristy, so memories ofLibrary for her kind assistance in showing me the drawing. The sphere
on which the male nude reclines in each drawing is usually described as a
14 The forked beard appears in virtually all the images of the mature
Michelangelo from the cinquecento. Of particular note are the bronze
10 There are further echoes of this mask in depictions of Michelangelo's busts after the original attributed to Daniele da Volterra (Fig. 7) and a
and Lorenzo's lives. In the 17th century in the Sala dell'Argenteria of the drawing pricked for transfer, also attributed to Daniele, which is now in
Pitti Palace, Ottavio Vannini painted an image of a youthful artist,the Tylers Museum, Haarlem. One might note that there is a suggestion
"Michelangelo ragazzino scolpisce la testa del Fauno," presenting theof the forked beard in two strands carved just below the edge of the block
bust of a faun or satyr to a seated Lorenzo. And as late as 1862 Emilioon which the mask rests. In an article that deserves to be better known,
Zocchi carved a marble statue, now also in the Pitti Palace, of Michelan- J. A. Testa, "The Iconography of the Archers: A Study of Self-Concealgelo as a very young boy chiseling away at a block revealing an antiquement and Self-Revelation in Michelangelo's Presentation Drawings,"
faun's grinning mask. The romantic nature of this tale obviously had Studies in Iconography, v, 1979, 45-72, discusses the drawings for
continuing power to inflame artistic imagination. The reference toTommaso Cavalieri in terms of their autobiographical content read
Lorenzo contained in the portrait-like mask becomes particularly
through metaphorical self-portraiture; she does not treat the mask as a
appropriate if one accepts Howard Saalman's (disputed) suggestion thatportrait image, however. One might also note the mask lying on its side
Lorenzo was the original ideator of the project for the New Sacristy
immediately to the left of the bearded self-portrait mask in the Sogno. Its
shortly before his death in 1492; see his "The New Sacristy of Sanprofile, with its rounded forehead and unmistakeable ski-jump nose, is
Lorenzo before Michelangelo," Art Bulletin, LXVII, 2, 1985, 199-228.
reminiscent of the physical features of Lorenzo the Magnificent; see my
discussion of the Prudence drawing below.
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of the painting. Rather, he invented a much more selfreflexive and complicated self-image whose meaning is
accepted the convention of artists including their selfportraits in major sculptural programs, fresco cycles, and
drawing studies, yet he wryly turned that convention upside
down by fragmenting his own body and by giving the image
an implied personal content transcending mere documenta-
tion. The artist appears to have eschewed the typical selfportrait image used consistently throughout the quattrocento, which functioned merely as a signature at the periphery
artist.
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6 Attributed to Mich-
elangelo, Head of a
Bearded Man. London,
British Museum, Department of Prints
British Museum)
been added after the main structuring of the physiognomy,step it touches on issues of self-portraiture and concealment.
and rather awkwardly in the case of the right eye (Fig. 6).15Even if the drawing is not by Michelangelo, it does underAlthough the path between the mask of the Night and this score the likelihood of a person hidden in the mask. The
sculptor was in his fifties when he carved the Night, an age
drawing is hardly a straight one, it is tantalizing that at each
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15 British Museum, London, 1895.9.15.51 lr; see J. Wilde, Italian Draw16 For a discussion of the bust attributed to Daniele da Volterra, which is
ings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum:
now in the Bargello, and its variants, see Steinmann, 55-69, pls. 54-71;
Michelangelo and His Studio, London, Trustees of the British Museum,
see also P. Barolsky, Daniele da Volterra: A Catalogue Raisonne, New York
1953, no. 57, pp. 93-95, pl. LXXXIX, and Tolnay, ii, no. 220r, p. 46,
and London, 1979, no. 27, p. 112. For an early history of the Jacopino
where the drawing is connected to the mask of the Night. Wilde (pp.
painting now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1977.384.1) and for
94-95) points to a traditional connection of the British Museum Headthe
of numerous portraits after it, see Steinmann, 23-38, pls. 8-30. All
a Bearded Man with the Saint Bartholomew of the Last Judgment, an
discussions of portraits of artists are now indebted to W. Prinz's "Vasari's
association that bears serious reconsideration. The extreme to which
Sammlung von Kunstlerbildnissen," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen
writers have gone to find Michelangelo self-portraits in masks is evident Institutes in Florenz, xII, 1966, 5-158; I am grateful to Wendy Stedman
in a little-known article by A. M. Bessone Aurelj, "Una curiosita per Sheard for this reference.
author proposes that a winged mask under the right false window of the
mezzanine story of the Porta Pia is a self-portrait of the artist.
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but on the very face of it. He even seems to invite the viewer'smask to open discussion of his sculptural career. As Paul
participation in the ruse. One should note, for example, that Barolsky has noted, Michelangelo characterized his physiogthe eyes of the mask, unlike those of any other figural imagenomy in a later poem by saying, "My face has the shape that
in the Chapel, align with the position of a viewer standing in causes fright."l9 Condivi's connection of the mask with
the center of the room, and that, although the mask itself is Lorenzo's first perceptions of the artist's abilities may also be
raised above the eye level of anyone standing before it, the an example of Michelangelo's mordant humor, since Lorenzo
eyeholes are carved with an interior membrane behind the was notoriously unattractive physically; thus the commission
lid so that they appear to look down at the viewer, thus is made to reflect the patron with cruel Florentine humor.
setting up a potential dialogue in which the power of theThe distorted features of the mask of the Night also serve to
conceit takes on particular poignancy.17 The eyes of the pun on the idealized features of the Lorenzo and Giuliano
mask, moreover, are carved differently from antique proto-figures in the Chapel as well as on those of the Night. In a
types and are unlike the blank openings depicted in painted room filled with essentially blank faces to which we have
masks such as those in Vasari's portrait of Lorenzo the carefully assigned identities, the one face that has physiogMagnificent (Fig. 3). They show a second level of carving, a nomic distinction and intensity of gaze has hitherto re-
socket within a socket, which brings a verisimilitude andmained unidentified and undiscussed.20
look-often evident in photographs that do not show thethe Night can be found in a modest painting after the
inner carving-was clearly not intended by Michelangelo.'8sculpture by an unknown sixteenth-century artist, now in the
In a way impossible with any other image in the Chapel, we
can look the mask directly in the eye.
The mask-portrait functions rather like a joke, a facetia,
one that has hidden its many-faceted meanings from commentators, apparently even from someone like Vasari, who
knew Michelangelo, worked in the Chapel, and ultimately
read Condivi's tale. In fact, we might read Condivi's story as a
burlesque of the very idea of classical imitation as a means of
attaining artistic perfection and beauty, for the young artist
not only surpassed the antique with his very first sculptural
effort, but did so with a grotesque, rather than a beautiful
figure. Michelangelo's self-consciousness about his own disfigured facial features after Torrigiani had smashed his nose
may have something to do with his selection of the faun's
mentions that one of the capitals of the ducal tombs has a face with
grimacing teeth, not unlike the mask of the faun; see Michelangelo, no.
265, p. 453. F. Hartt, Michelangelo's Drawings, New York, 1970, no. 304,
p. 217; fig. 304, p. 224, connects a pen drawing which he calls a Head of a
Giant (?) (drawn over what he stated was a red chalk sketch by Antonio
Mini; Louvre 684r) to the mask of the Night. In Tolnay, I, no. 95r, it is
called Head of a Faun. A. Perrig, Michelangelo's Drawings: The Science of
Attribution, New Haven and London, 1991, pl. 52, attributes the drawing
entirely to Mini. Although caricatural, the drawing does suggest some
collection of the Casa Buonarroti (Fig. 9). The small painting, a rather perfunctory if competent image, includes two
rather odd and telling details: the mask has been adjusted in
relation to the figure to face the viewer directly, with a rather
wide-eyed stare, and it has been transformed by the addition
of a turban-like head wrapping. The latter, curious elaboration recalls both a drawing in the Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford (Fig. 10), in which Michelangelo depicted himself
with a similar turban, and a group of portraits deriving from
a painting usually attributed to Giuliano Bugiardini showing
the artist wearing a similar headdress (Fig. 11), a telltale
iconographical sign often used in portraits of artistsespecially sculptors.21 More interesting yet is Michelangelo's
so-called ironic profile self-portrait, also in the Ashmolean,
figure above Dawn and Dusk as Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the son of
Piero di Lorenzo. A dissenting opinion, reversing the conventional
identifications, has been offered by R. Trexler and M. E. Lewis, "Two
Captains and Three Kings: New Light on the Medici Chapel," Studies in
Medieval and Renaissance History, IV, 1981, 91-177. The point to be made
is that the Medici figures cannot be identified by the physiognomic
characteristics provided (or not provided) in the statues, whereas
Michelangelo can be recognized in the particularized features of the
mask. Liebert, 242, proposed that the unfinished head of the Day was a
self-portrait, but he said nothing about the mask.
21 Parker, 135, no. 292r; see also Tolnay, I, no. 18r, p. 3. Neither Parker
nor Tolnay identifies the two heads as self-portraits of the artist. The first
to do so was Liebert, 95 and figs. 7-14. For the Bugiardini painting, see
Steinmann, 17-18 and pl. 3; this painting is related to a portrait drawing
of Michelangelo wearing a turban now in the Louvre, Inv. no. 2715
(Tolnay, I, no. 118r, p. 97). The use of the turban to denote an artist is
also reminiscent of portraits of Donatello, if, in fact, the panel in the
Louvre attributed to Uccello actually represents that artist. The portrait
painting and again shows Donatello with the turban. The presumed
portrait of Orcagna on his tabernacle in Or S. Michele also shows the
artist wearing a comparable turban, as if this were an identification of
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9 Unknown 16th-century artist, Night, after Michelangelo. Florence, Casa Buonarroti (photo: Quattrone)
Perhaps the reason that this mask has escaped the attention of Michelangelo scholars is that it is a double image, a
conceit really meant to be read upside down rather than
right side up (Figs. 15a-b). If one inverts the two drawings,
the mask can be seen for what it really is, a caricature
portrait, comparable to the mask of the Night. This image is
difficult to interpret, however, since the copied drawings
must inevitably have transformed, however slightly, Michelan-
gelo, and that he may therefore also be a surrogate represenin which the artist not only shows himself with a curious cap tation of the sculptor himself. The putto does, after all,
appear as a hunch-back, recalling Michelangelo's own infirfalling down over his right eye, but with his mouth wide open
mities
as he recorded them in the well-known visceral poem
to show his teeth (Fig. 12).22 It is significant that the carved
describing
the torments of painting the Sistine Ceiling.24 If
mask of the Night is banded over the forehead with a piece of
material suggesting the beginnings of a head covering. Nothis is the case, the image would represent Michelangelo
antique masks are carved in this manner; they show instead wittily presenting his own persona, but in a manner that
unruly tufts of hair appropriate to their dionysiac subject.
Three nearly identical drawings, rarely discussed in the The challenges of suggesting an identification for the
Michelangelo literature, are also instructive both for under- mask in the Prudence drawings are compounded by one
22 Parker, no. 322r; see also Tolnay, II, no. 310r, p. 92, where Tolnay
24 For the poem and Michelangelo's caricature of himself painting the
no. 316v) compares this head with a screaming faun (London, British
174r, p. 126, and Michelangelo, no. 5, pp. 70-72: "With my beard
Museum, 1895.9.15.493v), whose face is "quasi ridotto ad una maschera."
toward heaven, I feel my memory-box atop my hump;... In front of me
23 The best of these three drawings is now in the Uffizi (614E) and ismy hide is stretching out and, to wrinkle up behind, it forms a knot ...."
attributed to Battista Franco; another by a draftsman in the circle ofIn the light of this literary burlesque of his own appearance, it might be
Bandinelli is in the British Museum (Ff.I-5); a third is in the Ambrosiana useful to remember Vasari's account of Michelangelo's physical features
in Milan. For a brief discussion of the drawings see Wilde (as in n. 16),in relation to the mask of the Night. Vasari's description (I, 131-132) of
Michelangelo's "occhi piu tosto piccoli che no" (eyes more narrow than
no. 89, pp. 124-125, and P. Barocchi, Michelangelo e la sua scuola,
not) and his "labbra sottili" (thin lips) makes the features of the mask
Florence, 1962, I, 248-250, and II, pl. cccIx; for a discussion of these
seem like a deliberate and gross self-satire, not unlike the poem. The
works and of their iconography, see H. Thode, Michelangelo. Kritische
fact that the putto's nudity in the Prudence drawing is accentuated by the
Untersuchungen iiber seine Werke, Berlin, 1908, II, 347-348. In corresponframing cloak-thus suggesting that he is exposing himself before the
dence with me, Paul Barolsky made the compelling suggestion that the
female Prudence-must also be noted, but I will have to leave the
seated female represents Vanitas rather than Prudence and that, as such,
psychological interpretation of the image to others more qualified. In
she appears to be mocked by the mask-wearing putto. A telling echo of
this drawing is found in Stefano della Bella's etching Putto in a Masksuch a discussion, one would also have to consider Michelangelo's telling
placement of the owl under the raised leg of the Night, so that as
(1633-39), which is one of a group of prints illustrating antiquities in the
bird/phallus
it functions symbolically as something more than a referMedici collections in Rome; see P. D. Masser, Presenting Stefano della
ence to a time of day, as Liebert, 256, has already pointed out; as such,
Bella, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1971, 55.
the compositional connection normally made between Night and Michelangelo's lost Leda moves from the formal to the iconographical and
psychological. See also the discussion of the Venus and Cupid below.
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Vasari's portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Figs. 3, 15a-b).addition, the hat, sometimes referred to as a beret, seems to
Thus, unlike the mask of the Night, which clearly seems to be
fall only behind the head, as if the artist were reluctant to
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13 Battista Franco, Prudence. Florence, Uffizi (photo: Gabinetto Fotografico della Soprintendenza ai Beni Artistici
e Storici di Firenze)
::
:0::
:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~:
. a6
ii)
t: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~' ::
tion about a "paternal surrogate," as Liebert has suggested,29 a search that Michelangelo was to carry on in a
variety of ways during most of his adult life. The mask in the
28 See Langedijk (as in n. 27), II, 1046-1051.
been described by Kathleen Weil-Garris in her provocative article,Museum (photo: Ashmolean Museum)
approving
and supportive of his art as Lodovico Bu
figliuolo ..." and "che Michelangelo sedette sopra i figliuoli
di
had been disapproving of his son's desire to be an
Lorenzo...."
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17 After Pontormo, Venus and Cupid. Florence, Accademia (photo: Gabinetto Fotografico della Soprintendenza ai Beni Artistici e
Storici di Firenze)
concealed and carnivalesque imagery, moreover, is a fitting not unlike Vasari's roughly contemporary portrait of
form of reference to Lorenzo, who had been the inventor of Lorenzo.31 If a faun-like mask is a sign of Michelangelo's
carnival songs replete with humor and double entendres. presence in his work, as the previous examples cited seem to
Michelangelo had followed a long and sometimes arduous indicate, then we might also consider its possible meaning in
road from Lorenzo's garden to the Medici Chapel; that he this lost drawing and the surrogate role it played for the
artist. In the case of the Venus and Cupid, the bearded mask
displaces the act of viewing into the painting, thus removing
Night may signal both his profound indebtedness to LorenzoMichelangelo's active looking at the sexually available Venus
as well as his reluctance to be seen as an uncritical courtier
to the safe distance of the anonymous mask. For other (male)
viewers, this displacement calls attention to the voyeuristic
within the consorteria, especially after the events of 1494 and
1527.30
process in which they are engaged, especially since the mask
chose to recall the Medici patron who, according to Condivi,
had initiated his career with the conceit of the mask of the
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:
:I
--
:r - r
?:
i - :s :? ?-::-
::"fi:
.a;
18 After Michelangelo, Night from the Medici Chapel; Venus and Cupid. London, British Museum, Department of Prints
and Drawings (photo: Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum)
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gelojuxtaposes the Night and the Venus and Cupid (Fig. 18),33Michelangelo's relationship with Lorenzo the Magnificent
thus indicating that these two images had resonance with one and with the Medici family. As such, it reflects that compli-
another both for Michelangelo and for some of his close cated history with humor, with irony, and with not a little
friends. The drawing is provocative for the change it intro- sadness just prior to Michelangelo's departure from Floduces into the mask of the Night; here Night rests her left rence forever.
hand on the crown of the head of the mask, almost appearing
to pull its hair, and the figure's startled expression seems a John T. Paoletti is the author of articles on Italian Renaissance
frightened response to the action. Night, coyly in this painting and sculpture and of articles and exhibition catalogues
instance, seems not to be asleep at all, but well aware of the concerned with art in Europe and the United States since 1960
joke she is playing on Michelangelo as mask.
[Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. 06459].
Other than as a disguised self-portrait recalling Michelangelo's personal history in the house of his reputed patron,
the meaning of the mask remains elusive. Seen merely as an
individual part of a larger sculptural project, the mask might
serve simply as a symbol of death, a symbol that was clearly
not inappropriate for a tomb sculpture. By the time of Ripa's Barolsky, P., Michelangelo's Nose: A Myth and Its Maker, University Park,
Pa., 1990.
third edition of the Iconologia in 1611, the skeletal form of
death appears with a mask tied to its forehead, suggestingCondivi, A., The Life of Michelangelo (Rome, 1553), trans. and ed. A. S.
Wohl and H. Wohl, Baton Rouge, 1976; Le Vite di Michelangelo Buonarroti
some widespread understanding, at least in learned circles of
scrztte da Giorgio Vasarz e da Ascanio Condivi, ed. C. Frey, Berlin, 1887.
this time, that the mask was a disguise for death.34 Given
Michelangelo's own hypochondria and his concerns for hisLiebert, R.S., Michelangelo. A Psychoanalytic Study of Hzs Life and Images,
New Haven, 1983.
own mortality, such a union of self-portrait and emblem of
death through the image of the mask would hardly be Michelangelo, The Poetry of Michelangelo, trans. with notes J. Saslow, New
Haven, 1991.
surprising, especially since he was to make precisely this
same connection in the flayed skin of Saint Bartholomew in Parker, K.T., Catalogue of the Drawings zn the Ashmolean Museum, II,
his Last Judgment just a few years later. Yet the mask of the
Oxford, 1956.
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