Tombs of Giuliano de’ Medici, Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, 1520-1534
Sculpture in marble by Michelangelo (1475-1564)
Cappelle Medicee, Florence, Italy
Hewn from marble by Michelangelo Buonarotti between 1520 and 1534, the tombs of Giuliano di Lorenzo de’ Medici and Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici are the principal features of the Sagrestia Nuova (“New Sacristy”) Medici Chapel in Florence. The addition of the Chapel to the Basilica of San Lorenzo (the Basilica upon which Brunelleschi designed and constructed his magnificent Duomo) was begun in 1519, the structure was fully completely by 1524. It was Michelangelo’s first architectural design. He was commissioned by Pope Leo X and Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici (later Pope Clement VII) as a mausoleum for their ancestors Lorenzo the Magnificent, his brother Giuliano de’ Medici, and Lorenzo’s son and grandson, Giuliano di Lorenzo and Lorenzo di Piero.
Michelangelo’s work was never completed. A number of events, including Pope Clement VII’s death, the sack of Rome in 1527 and resulting uprisings against the Medici, and Michelangelo’s aid to the Florentine rebels removed Michelangelo from the good graces of the new Duke of Florence, a young Medici. He was forced to flee to Rome, where he remained until his death in 1564. The component pieces of the two tombs of the less famous Medicis (he had not begun the tombs of Lorenzo the Magnificent or his brother Lorenzo) were left scattered around the Medici Chapel. They would be assembled by another Florentine artist, but not fully completed until 1555.
There are six figures upon the tombs, two statues of the memorialized Medicis, and four allegorical representations of the four times of day: Day and Night, Dawn and Dusk. The statues of Giuliano and Lorenzo were the first to be created and fully finished. After them, Michelangelo began to work on the four Times. One of his intents in carving them was to portray the slow but every moving nature of time. He told one of his apprentices, who would later be his biographer, that he had intended to carve a mouse between Night and Day to signify the constantly gnawing nature of time (Barenboim, Zakharov). Of the four statues, only the two women are complete, Night and Dawn. As a set, the allegorical statues are intriguing. Besides their reclining poses, there does not appear to be a tangible thread of connection between the four; they appear a part of the same pieces by their placement, not necessarily by their design.
Night is the most intriguing of the four statues because she is the only statue to be accompanied by complementary items. The other three recline alone, but she is surrounded by a horrific mask of a satyr, a clutch of poppies, and an owl. She is also the only one to have a diadem, which is decorated with a star. Her sister, Dawn, has a veil, signifying the innocence and purity of dawn. Night‘s diadem, however, points us to Michelangelo’s true intentions behind the carving of this strange figure of night and her small companions.
Night‘s appearance, many have noted, does not resemble the soft feminine visage Dawn bears. Dawn lays softly, languidly, with burdened expression. Night is the opposite–her face is serene and passive while her body is muscular, tense, and contorted. Michelangelo is known to have had a preference for male models even when sculpting female nudes, but in Night‘s case, the choice was a bit more meaningful than artistic preference. Many scholars think that Michelangelo’s choice of model for Night as well as her accompanying adornments were in order not to portray a feminine ideal or to allude to night as a romantic time of intimate darkness, but to portray night’s raw power and presence.
The symbols of the satyr, poppies, and owl are particularly interesting. As mentioned above, none of the other statues have anything else carved with them, which makes the decision to carve these three things especially purposeful. The poppies symbolize sleep, maybe even induced sleep or delirium. Opiates, derived from poppies, have been cultivated since around 3400 BC in Mesopotamia, so this may have been included in Michelangelo’s symbol. The satyr’s mask is an initially confusing choice–satyrs tend to be associated with wild nature and sexual immorality, as they are portrayed in myth as uncontrollable and lustful, a result of their appearance and nature of half man, half beast. The owl, however, is the most prominent of the decorations, standing free of the marble base, close to Night‘s side. It is a symbol the onset of darkness, which comes on swift wings, the poppies adding that idea of unwilling sleep in the night. While owls in Greek mythology were the sacred animal of Athena, goddess of wisdom and strategy, they are not so favorably viewed in Roman culture. The owl was often a portent of death or trouble. There are claims that the hoot of an owl foretold the deaths of Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Commodus Aurelius, and Agrippa. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, a number of odd and unnatural events occur the day before Caesar returns to Rome, the last of which being an owl seen “Even at noon-day upon the market-place, / Hooting and shrieking” (Act I, Scene III). Casca, who reported all of the strange happenings identifies them as ominous portents of the bad events that will follow upon Caesar’s return.
As animal expressions go, this owl does look somewhat severe and that is because the Romans and Italians did not view the owl as a friendly creature, but rather a messenger of doom, and in a way, it was. The owl is the forerunner of night, signaling that day’s dominion is over and the world is now ruled by Night.
Coughlan, Robert. The World of Michelangelo, 1475-1564. Amsterdam: Time-Life Books, 1982.
Peter Barenboim, Alexander Zakharov, “Mouse of Medici and Michelangelo: Medici Chapel / Il topo dei Medici e Michelangelo: Cappelle Medicee”, Mosca, Letni Sad, 2006. ISBN 5-98856-012-1
Shakespeare, William, Barbara A. Mowat, and Paul Werstine. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. New York: Washington Square Press, 2005. Print.
Animals of Italian Art 