JUILIUS MICHELANGELO AGONY AND ECSTASY MOVIE

Michelangelo has a chaste romance with Contessina de Medici, the daughter of his Florentine patron Lorenzo, who chides him for obsessing about the work and not attending gatherings in his honor.

JUILIUS MICHELANGELO AGONY AND ECSTASY MOVIE

Julius IIThat’s not really enough to hang a 2 hour and 20 minute movie on, so the film has to invent more drama. He doesn’t want to take a break because he wants to get the project over with so he can get back to his work as a sculptor. The ceiling will depict scenes from Genesis, the pendentives will depict men and women who prophesied the birth of Jesus, and the zones above the windows will depict the ancestors of Christ.įrom that point on, Julius impatiently presses him to finish the work, or at least take the scaffolding down so that people can see whatever work has been done, while Michelangelo defiantly declares he will finish when he finishes. He refuses to follow Julius’ plan (which just involved painting the 12 Apostles in the triangular pendentives that support the vault, and instead eventually hits on a more sweeping vision. He sees himself as a sculptor and resists the efforts of Julius (Rex Harrison) to force him to work in fresco, but having given in, he gradually embraces the project. Carol Reed, based on the novel by Irving Stone) tries to dramatize Michelangelo’s painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by focusing on the tense relationship between the artist and his patron, Pope Julius II.īefore we start, I feel obligated to explain that the Sistine Chapel was so named because it was built on the orders of Pope Sixtus IV, Julius II’s uncle and the holder of one of my favorite papal names simply because it’s amusing to say.Ĭharleton Heston’s Michelangelo is a brooding man with a profound sense of artistic integrity. It’s a challenge because making art is by nature usually a solitary act and a very internal one, and it’s hard to find drama in that as a result, a lot of artist biopics try to mine their drama from the turbulent relationships the artist has. Many films have attempted to capture the artist’s creative technique.

Juilius michelangelo agony and ecstasy