'Taddei Tondo' (c.1504–1505): Emotional Enigma in the Sculpture of Michelangelo

This is Michelangelo's Taddei Tondo, which he sculpted in about 1504-5, and it is in fact the only Michelangelo marble in Britain. It's also one of his most lyrical works. We often think of Michelangelo as rather terrifying, with the Sistine Ceiling and Frescoes and the Last Judgment. But this shows a different side of his character. Rarely has an image of the Madonna and Child pack such an emotional punch. Michelangelo was of course one of the most famous artists of the Italian Renaissance. He was born in Florence, of an aristocratic family that had fallen on hard times. He trained as a painter to begin with, but he discovered sculpture in the garden of Lorenzo de' Medici. He always thought of himself as a sculptor, that medium most expressed what he was trying to do. The Tondo was made in between his colossal David statue and the Sistine Ceiling Frescoes. He was about 30 when he made it. It's called after the patron, Taddeo Taddei, who acquired it, and the Tondo refers to its round shape. It's from the Italian word rotondo. Tondos were incredibly fashionable in Florence in the 15th century and early 16th century. Every palace wanted to have one, and they served a decorative and architectural and a devotional purpose. At the same time, Michelangelo was working on other Tondos. He made three in all. In the case of all of them, the influence is clearly Leonardo, who had been taking Florence by storm with his new approach, the Madonna and Child. What fascinated Michelangelo about Leonardo's compositions was this pyramid structure and also the play of light and shade. Leonardo created this mysterious chiaroscuro, this light-dark, smoky shadows, which give his characters this sort of enigmatic feeling, and Michelangelo, remarkably in stone, has created the same play of light and shadows. It tells the story of when the Madonna, the Child and Saint Joseph were on the way back from the flight into Egypt. They met the infant Saint John in the desert. What Michelangelo has done is inject his own dramatic interpretation into this very familiar narrative. So we have John, the shadowy figure on the left, who is stretching out his arms and frightening the child with a bird, which is usually identified as a goldfinch, which is the symbol of Christ's future sacrifice. So here, unusually, we have the child seeming to flee from his future. What Michelangelo has very cleverly done is create two forces in this sculptural space. One pulls the figures apart and then the other pulls them together. So you've got this fear and alarm and then this attraction and fascination. The work is believed to be unfinished because Michelangelo was hastily summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II to do his tomb. It is not unusual for Michelangelo to leave his works unfinished. In What we have is various stages of completion, which are beautifully expressed by the three figures. The roughed out figure of Saint John, where his features are hardly visible. Then you have the Virgin. Her head is very solidly modelled and gives a sense of three dimensionals and a turning in the space. And then you have the Christ child with this wonderful smooth flesh, the modelling of every sort of muscle and sinew. Even though it was unfinished, it was widely regarded in its time. At the same time as he was sculpting the tondo, he was working on his fresco, The Battle of Cascina. Soldiers in the nude are surprised by an attack and their bodies show the different conflicting emotions as they twist and turn. You get a feeling that these ideas bled into this composition as well. Because here we have Christ half expressing fear and half turning back. The British Museum has one of these drawings that are assumed to be a study for the battle. And on the reverse is a drawing with several infants in different poses. And these have been very closely identified with the Taddei Tondo. What the drawing shows is that Michelangelo was originally envisaging a much more dramatic pose for the Saint John figure, having him in a very menacing, threatening pose, bending over like a bacchanalian infant, expressive of erotic love, panic terror, which was something he personally identified with. He was remarkably prone to panic himself. You get the sense with Michelangelo's Madonnas and Childs that they had a very personal meaning for him. He lost his mother at the age of six and you feel that there's a remoteness in the maternal presence and a grandeur and an idealisation as well. For me the Tondo is one of the most beautiful and mysterious works of art. It has a poignancy. It's a moment arrested. In that moment you're arrested too. And that's what I love about it. It's not just another Madonna and Child. It's got all the personal, the artistic tension, the ambition and this sense of the future that Michelangelo always brings to his work.