Personal Touch

When I was on vacation in Rome this past summer, my tour guide Alex took us to a church.  In this church was a replica of the Pieta, sculpted by Michelangelo. 

While admiring this sculpture, our tour guide told us a story.  He said that when Michelangelo sculpted this, he was an unknown artist.  He was in a crowd of people who were observing his work, and no one knew that the artist was standing among them. 

These people were critiquing his work, and insulting a lot of his artistic choices.  They kept wondering who sculpted it.  He finally got up and said it was me!  But no one believed him.  He got so angry; he took out some tools and started bashing at it. 

The crowd thought oh no, he is ruining it.  But they were wrong.  He was actually carving his name into.  That was the only time he put his name on one of his pieces of work because from then on he was very well known. 

This relates to class because we talked about Renaissance artists and the style they had.  We talked about how sometimes the artist would add themselves into a painting or put their own personal touch on things.  This is what Michelangelo did with the Pieta.

I like this source.  I think that it is meaningful because it is a story that not a lot of people know.  I also think that it is effective because it gives people a personal story of what Michelangelo was like. 

                                                             (personal picture, no citation)