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The Fame of a Genius
Portraits of Michelangelo, from the fanciful to the realistic, were produced and replicated in great numbers near the end of his life and after -- a phenomenon only comparable to the treatment of nobles, rulers, and religious figures. He was pronounced dead on February 18, 1564, two weeks shy of his 89th birthday, with dear friends at his side, including Tommaso de' Cavalieri and Daniele da Volterra.
In lamenting Michelangelo's death, the self-interested Duke Cosimo I de' Medici also despaired that the artist had destroyed his own work: "Our vexation is only increased by the fact that he left no drawings, for it did not seem to us to be an action worthy of him to have surrendered the drawings to the fire." Documents independently confirm that the artist had ordered his drawings burned on several previous occasions as well. Vasari's 1568 biography attributes Michelangelo's willful destruction of his numerous drawings, sketches, and cartoons to a wish "that no one might see the labors he endured and the methods with which he tested his imagination, so that he might appear nothing less than perfect." |