The Atlas Slave
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 to 1564) · about 1525 to 1530
The figure seems to carry the whole block on his shoulders. A heavy cube of raw marble sits where the head should be, and beneath it a muscular body braces, arms raised, knees bent, as though holding up the sky. The nickname Atlas came naturally, after the Titan of Greek myth condemned to bear the heavens, though Michelangelo never gave the figure a name. Of the four Prisoners in this hall it is the most architectural, a body turned into a column, and the one that best shows how the figures were meant to work on the tomb of Julius the Second, standing against pilasters and appearing to support the storey above.
Stand close and follow the chisel. The torso is worked with the claw chisel until the muscles of the chest and stomach are almost fully formed, while the legs and the raised arms dissolve into rough striations. Then move to the side and notice how flat the back of the block remains: Michelangelo attacked from the front and left the rear untouched, which tells us the figure was always meant to be seen against a wall. The absence of a face, which would normally be the focus of a statue, throws all the expression into the body, into the strain of the shoulders and the planted feet.
The iconography of the Prisoners has been debated since the sixteenth century. Vasari thought they represented the provinces conquered by Julius; Condivi, who knew Michelangelo, said they stood for the arts, imprisoned by the pope's death. Later writers saw them as the soul struggling against the body, a Neoplatonic idea that Michelangelo explored in his poems. Whatever the intention, these figures influenced sculptors from Rodin onward, who learned from them that a work could be finished without being completed.
Did You Know? Rodin visited Florence in eighteen seventy six specifically to study Michelangelo, and his own partly carved figures owe much to the Prisoners.
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