Raphael vs. Michelangelo

Raphael. I will vivisect anybody who thinks otherwise

Dislike both but it's gotta be Michelangelo. More dynamism, less geometry.

sai > nunchucks, so Raphael

michelangelo by some distance

the sistine chapel!

the fucking statue of david!

vs.

i dunno, the school of athens?

I find it hard to care about either, especially when I think in comparison of Caravaggio's later startling dramatic genius and light and realness bursting out of a canvas into your face ... but probably would go for Michey as well.

Red is better than orange

sai > nunchucks, so Raphael

― totally unnecessary bewbz of exploitation (DJP), Wednesday, February 19, 2020 4:39 PM bookmarkflaglink

They love pizza because… they're named after Italian artists. At last, it hath dawned upon me.

the winner will go against caravaggio xp

for me it's michelangelo but i was wondering if we had some fans of classical balance or whatever here, who object to michelangelo's drama

Michaelangelo by a distance, but not by the djstance by which Caravaggio beats both

See i disagree. Caravaggio’s paintings are cinematic and more attuned to contemporary ways of seeing but Michelangelo’s art is more cosmic and maybe more unprecedented. Caravaggio vs Michelangelo is really a debate between psychology and metaphysics *bong rip*

execution matters, Caravaggio has no peer

http://www.michelangelo.net/Atlas%20Slave%20Michelangelo.jpg

the unfinished sculptures at the accademia are amazing, as is michelangelo's mystical idea that the true sculpture was lurking inside the marble all along, and that the artist was just someone who peeled away unnecessary baggage. art by reduction rather than accumulation.

“Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish.”

― Michelangelo Buonarroti

that kind of promethean attitude is very banal today, you know, but in the shadow of medievalism i don't think it was

An archangel versus a music writer? I know how I'm voting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT1uASCsMiA

Vasari was pretty keen on both of them, so he's no help.

co-worker who lacks an indoor voice is discussing which teenage mutant ninja turtle is best

'raph is too serious, you know what i'm saying? it's like, lighten up bro'

― mookieproof, Wednesday, September 25, 2019 4:37 PM (four months ago)

Pre-raphaelites thought it all ended with him so he must have been doing something right.

what colour headband did caravaggio have

if we're talking on musical terms, slapp happy have an absolutely delightful song about michelangelo. i don't know of any songs at all about raphael.

sai > nunchucks, so Raphael

― totally unnecessary bewbz of exploitation (DJP), Wednesday, February 19, 2020 4:39 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

im the opposite. nunchucks > sai.

michelangelo's sculpture work puts him over the top for me, sorry raph.

raphael is cool, but rude

michelangelo, iirc, is a party dude

Red is better than orange

― sorry for butt rockin (Neanderthal), Wednesday, February 19, 2020 4:44 PM

Legit thought this was in reference to the dominant scarlet and saffron colors of the drapery they painted for a moment.

raphael is cool, but rude

michelangelo, iirc, is a party dude

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, February 21, 2020 12:43 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

IRL, Michelangelo was famously grumpy and Raph was the playboy. At least according to Vasari.
Also, I think you'll find it was actually Leonardo who "did machines" .
What gives?

krang or gtfo

michaelangelo the greater genius no doubt but Raphael has that visceral impact & did it all before he was 37

https://kierongillen.tumblr.com/post/136129712782/so-you-have-written-leonardo-and-michelangelo-do

Raphael is cool and all, but there is a reason why Michelangelo has maybe 2 of the 10 most famous works in Western art.

Michelangelo's painting was much better than his sculpture and elevated the form. The superiority of his painting generated a lot of interest in the feild (pun intended) and that may be his most important influence. We're not polling him against Ghiberti or Donatello.

idk these guys very well, honestly, could take or leave the Italian renaissance in general.

See i disagree. Caravaggio’s paintings are cinematic and more attuned to contemporary ways of seeing but Michelangelo’s art is more cosmic and maybe more unprecedented. Caravaggio vs Michelangelo is really a debate between psychology and metaphysics *bong rip*

― treeship., Wednesday, February 19, 2020 6:48 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

IDK, I'll agree that Michelangelo tends to evoke divinity or the sublime. But his stuff is also pretty weird, for his anatomical mastery he shows a complete disinterest in the natural world and the effect of this is jarring or bizarre, and probably contributes a lot to his otherworldliness. There's also all this psychological and visceral tension, immense potential energy and suffocating restraint.

Also, I think subtractive sculpture (by reduction rather than accumulation) was much more common before Modernism.

I also don't agree with "cinematic" as a description of Caravaggio.

Look at God in The Last Judgment. The way he raises his arm to brush away *everything* is so awesome. That's how you condemn people.

The greatest weakness of Italian Renaissance imo is that the rich patrons all insisted on commissioning paintings of religious subjects and themes, so it's an endless, monotonous parade of "Madonna & Child" and such stuff. In fact, rich patrons have been the bane of western art ever since.

Couldn't disagree more wth "endless, monotonous parade". Wow. Subject matter is really secondary to style.
I think secular attitudes have pretty thoroughly infiltrated these religious subjects by the High Renaissance besides.

The role of patrons was and is pretty complex, but I find your assessment pretty unfair.

Subject matter is really secondary to style.

I'd say this becomes true only when there is insufficient variety to the subject matter.

I mean, to say that the art of the Italian Renaissance lacks suffiicient individuality as a result of intervention by its wealthy patrons is almost comically off the mark.

I imagine there are some people who could for decades take endless delight in eating a restricted menu of nothing but the same seven dishes, week after week, provided those dishes were each prepared by a succession of accomplished and creative chefs, each embellished slightly differently each time, reflective of each individual chef's choice of subtle differences in taste, texture, color, aroma or presentation, giving each meal individuality and distinction. It would be possible after each meal to contrast it with all the prior iterations, appreciating how artfully the elements have been balanced and rebalanced by each artist, boldly here, nuanced there. Never the same twice.

That's the nearest analog I can think of to how I view renaissance painting. Exquisite as it may be, I find it eventually monotonous.

For one thing, I think there may be more variety of subject matter than you realize. Architecture was an important subject in Michelangelo's painting, but not landscape. But then landscape is an important element in, say, the Mona Lisa. And there were lots of mythological themes as well as Christian ones, with Ovid as a key influence. And Raphael's best known painting, as mentioned upthread, is probably The School of Athens.

Putting this in context is also probably important. Looking at Byzantine art, art of the Middle Ages, compared to throned Madonnas by Cimabue, Duccio, or even Giotto who is ultimately the most unprecedented in breaking away from this kind of flatness and symmetry. Where they start to show a lot more individuality.

Raphael retains more of this "cosmic" spatial order than Michelangelo, whose Last Judgement is quite an abrupt break from that tradition and I can't really accept the "cosmic" label for Michelangelo.

Then you might consider the way Cezanne paints a bowl of fruit as compared to say, the way Chardin paints one, and the when you get into the abstract stuff, there is no subject matter except maybe the medium, surface...

the "religious" aspect of a lot of renaissance artwork is almost abstract -- i mean, just to pick an obvious example, michelangelo's david doesn't really make me think of the biblical david. same with leonardo's painting of john the baptist. i think a lot of the work transcends the subject matter to the point where it's really not "about" it anymore.

^ Yep.

Tbf that's a typically modern view.

You mean the Medici as Trotsky thing or the idea that individual humanity transcends the Christian themes?

If we're referring to a Giotto or Masaccio, I can understand the explicitly devotional nature of the work; but this part isn't the only thing that registers in Madonna of the Rocks and David. The concentration on the flesh and the nubile is precisely what separates the Renaissance visual art from the Middle Ages, and this concentration honored god as much as Cimabue's Madonnas.

You mean the Medici as Trotsky thing or the idea that individual humanity transcends the Christian themes?

Arguing that the subject matter is ultimately irrelevant to the work of art because the latter possesses a force of its own – i.e. some measure of autonomy over and above that which it seeks to represent – is a very modern view indeed, especially as regards religious painting. Kant's emphasis on art's purposelessness was still some ways in the offing.

Thank you for clarifying. I think you're right to point this out and I think Alfred is right to point out a correlation between draftsmanship and faith. I don't think this negates the suggestion that these artists were asserting their individuality, or individualism more broadly, as a point of purpose. But I see how arguing that this is a visual problem might be the wrong approach.

I am sick of religion more than the next person (actually much more) but to say there are too many angels or whatever in Renaissance painting is just dumb and doesn't acknowledge how fundamentally humanist these painters really were. The focus on the human body was not in praise of God it was in praise of Man.

People going to be complaining about Hockney painting too many pools.

yeah this is like hearing from grad students (as I did at the time) that they didn't wanna read Donne or Hopkins' devotional poetry.

fucking Eliot ruined religiion

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Raphael. I will vivisect anybody who thinks otherwise

(Aimless makes himself scarce.)

once again, i'm sorry i am not one of the titanic geniuses of western art whose father was also a sculptor and whose career was cultivated under papal patronage from boyhood and whose accomplishments in sculpture are rivaled by only a handful of other artists https://t.co/krRQ5OSqbb

— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) May 16, 2023

Lol

hey NYers, this drawing is back at the Met thru july 15th. if you missed it in 2017 it's well worth a trip to the Met just to see it

https://media.britishmuseum.org/media/Repository/Documents/2014_10/1_7/ff5ff716_8023_4e84_a79b_a3b7007e178e/mid_00037600_001.jpg

that show was queer af, Michelangelo's private drawings are his best works imo and elevate homoeroticism to something like heavenly purity

https://www.rct.uk/sites/default/files/styles/rctr-scale-1300-500/public/663909-1489064506.jpg

the archers have no bows! so weird

the curvature of his cross-hatching is unique and exquisite

https://www.rct.uk/sites/default/files/styles/rctr-scale-1300-500/public/collection-online/a/0/822146-1536314142.jpg

oh shit, all these drawings are on view at the Met rn. go go go!!!

https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/665040/1629854/restricted

thank you for the tip, these drawings are magnificent.

Thanks for the tip!

It's not a reprise of the 2017 show but afaict they have several of the standout pieces.

The portrait of Andrea Quaratesi wipes the floor with the Mona Lisa, it's so full of pain. Of unrequited affection & the illicitness of a forbidden friendship. It has the butterflies, it's all there crouched in the purity of his subject. From a guy who hardly made any portraits this is the ultimate mic drop.

no michelangelo drawings at the met currently, i'm there now, it was a mistake on their website.