a metaphysical quest...............

 

Michelangelo identifies with the biblical hero, casting himself as a patriotic warrior who uses his particular gifts not only to advance his art but as a weapon in the virtuous struggle of Florence against its enemies.

     But there is more to these lines than mere chest-thumping.  Michelangleo always conceived the sculptor's craft as a metaphysical quest.  This most material of art forms becomes in Michelangelo's conception a means of probing for pure spirit beneath a shell of gross matter, one that defines the artist as well as the matter upon which he works his will.  This was not merely an abstract conceit: Michelangelo saw the art of sculpture as, crucially, a process of self-discovery, of self-actualization.  In a passage that was almost certainly known to him, the late classical philosopher Plotinus used the art of sculpture as a metaphor for the means by which we perfect our moral selves: "Withdraw into yourself and look.  If you do not see beauty within you, do as does the sculptor of a statue that is to be beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes it there, he makes this line lighter, this one purer, until he disengages beautiful lineaments in the marble.  Do you do this too. . . ."  Reversing the analogy, the artist, discovering form within the mass, experiences release from his own carnal nature.  The giant slain by the sculptor's bow, then, is in some sense Michelangelo himself, or at least the grosser aspects of his nature that he defeats through the redemptive power of his art.

-Miles J. Unger, Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces

Michelangelo        David        1501-04