It’s Hard Out Here For A Renaissance Man

From harsh rivalries to hidden sexuality and pissy attitudes, the artists that we now know from the works that they left behind lived hard, mainly double lives to achieve fame and glory in their time.

Michelangelo Was An Asshole:

Don’t get me wrong, the man was a talented artist. And he sure did put his body through the ringer to create some of the masterpieces that he is known for now. We know now that when he was painting the Sistine Ceiling, he was in fact standing on the scaffolding that he himself created and built. At the start of it’s creation, he was only 33 years old but the man almost went blind in the 4 years it took him to get up there and paint it from all of the wet plaster dripping down on his face. He was pissed in the first place that he had been commissioned by Pope Julius II, because he was right in the middle of constructing the tomb for that very same, (still living, by the way) Pope Julius II. So he was told to switch gears and paint a giant fresco on a giant ceiling of a giant church of which he wanted absolutely nothing to do with. The Sistine Ceiling was Michelangelo's first fresco in fact and ‘go big or go home’ I suppose. He said it himself that “he wasn’t a painter” and he would much rather have just finished the tomb for the guy and gone on with his life but hey, a job’s a job. So he grumbled on for four years bending his body in odd angles, which gave him back pain for the rest of his days, and shuffling the huge scaffolding back and forth across the marble floor to finish the fresco. And just as a cheeky little jab at the Pope, no one was allowed to come in and see his work in progress for the entirety of those 4 years that it took him to accomplish his feat.

Though his works of art were beautiful and blissful, the man himself was far from it. Michelangelo was known to have a brooding and cruel personality to those he came across. He wanted to be alone constantly which was in stark contrast to his rivals of the time. He was also known to have a short temper and a very sharp tongue to match, which landed him with a broken nose in his teenage years. Soon before his death, he destroyed many of his sketches because he was always critical of his own work and some say that he died unsatisfied with what he had created over his lifetime. Which is sad, I agree, but ‘glass half full’, man. When he was not criticizing himself, he spent his bountiful free time squabbling with the other greats of the time. Raphael was a dainty up and coming young artist at the time and his work was getting a lot of attention, (as it should have because it was wonderful). And Michelangelo immediately took a disliking to his prancing around like he was better than all of his seniors. And of course, he absolutely loved to pick fights and get into petty banters with the heavy hitter of the Renaissance, Leonardo Da Vinci.

Leonardo Da Vinci Was A Closeted Homosexual:

Alright, the big boy that could have swept us into the nuclear age way sooner and killed us all with a tip of his goofy little hat, Da Vinci is joining the chat. We all know of his masterpieces. From Mona Lisa which is said to be a commission that he never delivered (or a self-portrait of him in a dress depending on who you ask) or The Last Supper, that started disintegrating from the moment he painted it from a bad batch of fresco, the man stayed busy throughout his lifetime. He also had a MAJOR bad habit of not finishing things that he started, which was one of the main reasons that Michelangelo dogged on him all the time. He also like to keep lots of company with fine, good-looking young men often. He was known to be repulsed by the female sexuality and referred to the vagina as ‘repellent’. So, after being accused of sodomy, which was a big no-no in Florence at the time, just a week before his 24th birthday, it is said that he took a step back from ‘the spotlight’ for 2 years to let the accusations fade into the background before he started seriously working again. All charges dropped. No big deal.

One of the main things that Leonardo gave us throughout his mountains of unfinished work, is a greater understanding of anatomy and the human body that we did not have before his curious mind came in by candlelight. He dissected at LEAST 30 cadavers (probably many more) in his lifetime and would be writing mirrored left handed notes at the same time of his dissections. And he would do most in the cover of darkness because it was such messy work. (And smelly too.) So I can only imagine him doing his work during the night and then trying to clean everything up before the rooster calls in the morning so no one would think that he was a serial killer more than they already did. He wanted to improve his art with the dissection of the human body but then he became much more curious. And he is who we can thank for a lot of the information that we know about the heart and the blood system.

Though a lot of what the man did was shrouded in gossip and mystery, Leonardo managed to push past all of the talk and raise himself to the ‘golden man’ of the Renaissance. From the whimsical engineering and death machines that he purposefully drew so that they would not be able to actually work, to the highly detailed anatomy pieces that he only created by actually cutting people open, we owe a lot of what we know and love about the art world to the nut job himself.

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It’s safe to say that these guys had a hard time to get where they wanted to be in their lives. Many more men (and a few suppressed and silenced women), had all eyes on them during this period of growth and knowledge that we know as the Renaissance which left them in the line of fire for public scrutiny at all times. It is why some, like Michelangelo, chose to shy away from the light whereas Da Vinci chose to embrace it, (after some convincing of course). Leonardo most likely suffered from some mixture of OCD or Asperger's syndrome and ADHD which made it difficult for him to finish things. It is clear that Michelangelo suffered from anxiety and depression, which is what led to his ‘brooding’ personality when people wanted to interact with him. All of these “Renaissance Men” had something going on underneath which so many at the time did not understand, which set them apart and made them different. Now looking back, we have a better understanding of the people behind the masterpieces and can really see what they had to go through to achieve their success. Although some had it easier than others, and some could take it in stride while some chose to hide, we can come to the conclusion that it really was hard out there for a Renaissance Man.