Papers by William Wallace
Wall Street Journal, 2023
The Venetian artist's 16th-century painting is an unconventional nativity scene, featuring just t... more The Venetian artist's 16th-century painting is an unconventional nativity scene, featuring just two shepherds in tattered clothes and set not in Bethlehem but a warm and verdant Italy.
Wall Street Journal, 2025
Equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni PHOTO: REDA/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES When... more Equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni PHOTO: REDA/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES When Bartolomeo Colleoni died in 1475, he left a significant portion of his wealth to the Venetian Republic he had ably served as a professional soldier (condottiere). The will included a provision that a bronze equestrian statue of himself be erected in Piazza San Marco. The Venetian Signoria dithered for four years, desiring to accept the rich bequest but hesitant to honor a private individual in the city's most prominent location.
Wall Street Journal , 2021
“Creatures Great and Small” (Masterpiece Series), The Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2021, C14 (c... more “Creatures Great and Small” (Masterpiece Series), The Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2021, C14 (critical essay). On Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in Ecstasy in the Frick Collection, NY
Wall Street Journal, 2022
“A Wild Gathering of Sorrow” (Masterpiece Series), The Wall Street Journal, July 9/10, 2022, C14 ... more “A Wild Gathering of Sorrow” (Masterpiece Series), The Wall Street Journal, July 9/10, 2022, C14 (critical essay). On Niccolò dell’Arca’s Lamentation (Compianto) in Bologna
“Michelangelo’s Late Drawings.” Catalog essay in Zoltán Kárpáti, Triumph of the Body. Michelangelo and Sixteenth-Century Italian Draughtsmanship (Budapest: Museum of Fine Arts, 2019), 89-109, 2019
It is frequently recounted that shortly before he died, the eightyeight-year-old Michelangelo sat... more It is frequently recounted that shortly before he died, the eightyeight-year-old Michelangelo sat before the fire in his house in Via Macel de' Corvi in Rome, and burned his drawings. 1 Scholars have seized upon the unfortunate destruction to explain the dearth of graphic material from Michelangelo's final decades and to complete a psychological picture of the aged artist: Michelangelo wished us to consider his creations and not the labor they entailed. But, is this not too convenient an explanation for the apparent lack of late drawings? Let us consider Michelangelo's final years more closely. As he grew older, nearly everyone wanted something from the famous artist. Any vestige of Michelangelo's genius was of inestimable worth, not because of monetary value but for the prestige of owning something by the greatest artist of the time. Alfonso d'Este, King Francis I, and Cardinal Domenico Grimani, for example, all pursued Michelangelo for upwards of twenty years in the hope of acquiring a work of art. Grimani deposited fifty ducats in advance and left everything to the artist: subject, invention, and medium, whether painting, bronze, or marble. 2 Less patient,
Visualizing the Past in Italian Renaissance Art. Essays in Honor of Brian A. Curran ed. Jennifer Cochran Anderson and Douglas N. Dow (Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2021), 40-52., 2021
Brian Curran will forever be associated with the Egyptian Renaissance. One aspect of Egypt that f... more Brian Curran will forever be associated with the Egyptian Renaissance. One aspect of Egypt that fascinated everyone from antiquity to the Renaissance was the size of Egyptian stone monoliths, whether statues, obelisks, or columns. To Michelangelo, who quarried and transported hundreds of monolithic marble blocks, the columns of Egyptian granite supporting the Pantheon porch in Rome were astonishing objects. These giant monoliths, quarried in Egypt and transported across the Mediterranean by the Romans, represented an unprecedented engineering feat. Throughout his architectural career, Michelangelo experimented with a language of columns, albeit on a smaller scale. While he gleaned much from precedent, he also was an architectural innovator. As Brian Curran unveiled for us a pervasive but little noticed Renaissance, so does an examination of Michelangelo's columns reveal something visible but scarcely appreciated. Michelangelo's architectural innovations were legion, even worrisome to persons who subscribed to the classical orthodoxy of the Roman architect and treatise writer, Vitruvius. For Michelangelo, the classical past did not prescribe a set of rules to be slavishly imitated, but instead offered a rich inheritance that inspired his own fecund imagination. Over a fifty-year building career, he expanded architectural vocabulary to include "broken" and overlapping pediments, "kneeling" windows, and, most influential of all, the "giant order," seen in its full grandeur on the Campidoglio. This essay adds "double columns" to the innovations that Michelangelo made ubiquitous features of late Renaissance and Baroque architecture. Vertical elements that defy gravity, columns help buildings rise by visually contradicting the inherent weight of stone. Columns are the ubiquitous signifiers of Greek and Roman architecture. Columns in pairs, however, are rarely found in classical architecture. The ancients tended to space single columns, whether free-standing or engaged, at regular intervals.1 The idea of pairing 1 One finds paired columns in the so-called "Baroque" facades found mostly in the eastern Roman empire, such as the library of Celsus at Ephesus or the Market Gate at Miletus, and in the stage fronts of theater buildings. A pairing against the main axis is more common, such as at the Temple of Vesta and the Forum Transitorium in Rome, where we see a column plus a
Source, 2021
This short note depends on a picture-Michelangelo's carved signature on the Rome Pietà (fig. 1). ... more This short note depends on a picture-Michelangelo's carved signature on the Rome Pietà (fig. 1). Consider the difficulty of cutting each letter: thirty-six in total. At the center of the inscription, four wellproportioned and carefully carved letters initiate Michelangelo's surname: B O N A ROTVS. Note especially the geometry and generous rotundity of the initial two letters, B O. This work requires precision and meticulous attention. A small, flathead chisel cuts sharp-edged channels about a millimeter deep. There is no slippage, no scratching of the polished marble, even when a serif
Wall Street Journal , 2021
Masterpiece essay
Journal of Art Historiography no. 23 (July 30, 2020)., 2020
Review of Erwin Panofky's, Michelangelo’s Design Principles, Particularly in Relation to Those of... more Review of Erwin Panofky's, Michelangelo’s Design Principles, Particularly in Relation to Those of Raphael, ed. Gerda Panofsky, trans. Joseph Spooner (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020)
The Art Bulletin 103, n. 1 (March, 2021): 37-64, 2021
Questions the story of Michelangelo burning his drawings at the end of his life. Suggests that M... more Questions the story of Michelangelo burning his drawings at the end of his life. Suggests that Michelangelo’s change of practice late in life meant that the artist made many fewer drawings than he did earlier in his career and many fewer “collectible” drawings of the type he once made forTommaso de’ Cavalieri and the now deceased Vittoria Colonna. Thus, he likely burned much less than is generally supposed, and more likely compromising things such as his copy of the Beneficio di Christo, correspondence and poems (e.g. exchanged with Beccadelli), and maybe drawings for the Last Judgment (given the on-going criticism of that work).
Source: Notes in the History of Art 40, no. 2 (Winter 2021):102-07 , 2021
Michelangelo Buonarroti cautioned his brother Buonarroto. 1 With the rapid spread of the coronavi... more Michelangelo Buonarroti cautioned his brother Buonarroto. 1 With the rapid spread of the coronavirus, we have become vigilant in washing hands and avoiding surfaces on which viral particles may be lurking. Whether or not we call it a plague, we are facing something we little understand. In that sense, we are akin to Michelangelo and his brother Buonarroto writing to one another during a particularly virulent outbreak of plague in September 1527. They maintained their social distance (Michelangelo was in Florence, and his brother was ensconced on a family property in nearby Settignano), and they avoided touching infected surfaces.
Source: Notes in the History of Art 36 nos. 3-4 (Spring/Summer, 2017):247-255 (special issue in honor of Paul Barolsky). , 2017
Michelangelo was one of the first readers of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists published in 1550 whe... more Michelangelo was one of the first readers of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists published in 1550 when the two artists spent sometime together in Rome early that jubilee year. However, in retrospect and as related in the 1568 edition of the Lives, Vasari greatly exaggerated the time and intimacy between the two; moreover, he did his best to assimilate Michelangelo into his vision of the “saintly and communal brotherhood” of artists (as characterized by Barolsky). Michelangelo resisted this fictionalized and idealized picture, emphasizing, via Condivi, his real family, noble origins and descent from the Counts of Canossa. However, Vasari had the final word as his 1568 edition was the best selling book and the foundation for the myth and reality of Michelangelo.
Visualizing the Past in Italian Renaissance Art. Essays in Honor of Brian A. Curran ed. Jennifer Cochran Anderson and Douglas Dow (Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2021), 40-52., 2021
Brian Curran will forever be associated with the Egyptian Renaissance. One aspect of Egypt that f... more Brian Curran will forever be associated with the Egyptian Renaissance. One aspect of Egypt that fascinated everyone from antiquity to the Renaissance was the size of Egyptian stone monoliths, whether statues, obelisks, or columns. To Michelangelo, who quarried and transported hundreds of monolithic marble blocks, the columns of Egyptian granite supporting the Pantheon porch in Rome were astonishing objects. These giant monoliths, quarried in Egypt and transported across the Mediterranean by the Romans, represented an unprecedented engineering feat. Throughout his architectural career, Michelangelo experimented with a language of columns, albeit on a smaller scale. While he gleaned much from precedent, he also was an architectural innovator. As Brian Curran unveiled for us a pervasive but little noticed Renaissance, so does an examination of Michelangelo's columns reveal something visible but scarcely appreciated. Michelangelo's architectural innovations were legion, even worrisome to persons who subscribed to the classical orthodoxy of the Roman architect and treatise writer, Vitruvius. For Michelangelo, the classical past did not prescribe a set of rules to be slavishly imitated, but instead offered a rich inheritance that inspired his own fecund imagination. Over a fifty-year building career, he expanded architectural vocabulary to include "broken" and overlapping pediments, "kneeling" windows, and, most influential of all, the "giant order," seen in its full grandeur on the Campidoglio. This essay adds "double columns" to the innovations that Michelangelo made ubiquitous features of late Renaissance and Baroque architecture. Vertical elements that defy gravity, columns help buildings rise by visually contradicting the inherent weight of stone. Columns are the ubiquitous signifiers of Greek and Roman architecture. Columns in pairs, however, are rarely found in classical architecture. The ancients tended to space single columns, whether free-standing or engaged, at regular intervals.1 The idea of pairing 1 One finds paired columns in the so-called "Baroque" facades found mostly in the eastern Roman empire, such as the library of Celsus at Ephesus or the Market Gate at Miletus, and in the stage fronts of theater buildings. A pairing against the main axis is more common, such as at the Temple of Vesta and the Forum Transitorium in Rome, where we see a column plus a
Triumph of the Body. Michelangelo and Sixteenth-Century Italian Draughtmanship (Budapest: Museum of Fine Arts, 2019), 89-109, 2019
Michelangelo. Sculptor in Bronze/ The Rothschild Bronzes, 2018
. The cancellation of the San Lorenzo façade commission was the lowpoint in Michelangelo’s entir... more . The cancellation of the San Lorenzo façade commission was the lowpoint in Michelangelo’s entire career, yet he demonstrated his skill and recovered his dignity and prestige by carving difficultà – the four allegories in the Medici Chapel, the first sculptures he finished in Florence and in public since the David. This essay examines a thin but densely documented slice of history that permits us to follow Michelangelo’s activity and temporarily erratic career in micro-historical detail, and, by inference, to trace the arc of his wildly fluctuating emotional state, from the depths of disappointment to the rejuvenation of his artistic energy and creativity. 1520 proved to be a turning point not only in the history of San Lorenzo but in Michelangelo’s life.
Newspaper article on Michelangelo document discovered at Washington University in St. Louis
general essay on Sistine Chapel ceiling
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Papers by William Wallace