After Michelangelo, 'The Dream of Human Life', after 1533

The Dream of Human Life

After Michelangelo

Not on display

About the work

Overview

This painting by an unknown artist is based on Michelangelo’s drawing The Dream (Courtauld Institute, London). Michelangelo’s presentation drawings were made as gifts for his friends and were always intended as self-sufficient works of art. The Dream is probably one of an important group of such drawings that Michelangelo gave to the young Roman nobleman Tommaso de‘ Cavalieri in 1532–3.

The art historian Vasari used the title ’The Dream’ (‘Il Sogno’) in his 1568 edition of The Lives of the Artists. There is no other contemporary document to explain the composition’s meaning, but it appears to explore contemporary ideas about the ascent of the soul to the divine aided by beauty. The angel awakens or animates the perfect youth, drawing him away from the illusions and deceits of the earthly realm of sin to a new spiritual life in harmony with the will of God. Representations of the seven deadly sins are seen in the background.

In-depth

This painting on slate by an unknown artist is based on Michelangelo’s drawing The Dream (Courtauld Institute, London). Michelangelo’s presentation drawings were made as gifts for his friends and were always intended as self-sufficient works of art. They are beautiful and complex works that transformed drawing from a preparatory exercise into an independent art form.

The most important group of Michelangelo’s presentation drawings were given to Tommaso de‘ Cavalieri in 1532–3. They were the visual equivalent of love poetry to the young Roman nobleman, who was no more than 17 years old at the time. Like Michelangelo’s poems – many of which he wrote for Cavalieri – the presentation drawings are a very personal form of self-expression. They record Michelangelo’s intense adoration of Cavalieri, whose beauty he regarded as the reflection of God’s eternal beauty on earth. The sixteenth-century artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari described these images as ’drawings the like of which have never been seen‘.

Although its recipient is not documented, The Dream is contemporaneous with and likely part of the Cavalieri group of drawings. It must have been made before 1537 as Battista Franco used the main figure in his allegorical painting The Battle of Montemurlo (Palazzo Pitti, Florence) in that year. The composition has been copied many times – in drawings, paintings and engravings – most of which, like the National Gallery’s painting, were probably made during Michelangelo’s lifetime. Vasari used the title ’The Dream‘ for the drawing in his 1568 edition of The Lives of the Artists. There is no other contemporary document to explain its complex meaning.

A nude youth sits on a box, leaning on a terrestrial globe. He is a perfect and idealised human figure – like Adam from Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling (Vatican, Rome). Inside the box are more than ten masks. The youth looks upwards at an angel or winged soul who flies down blowing a trumpet towards his forehead. In the background are representations of the seven deadly sins. Clockwise from lower left, they are Gluttony, Lust, Avarice, Envy, Wrath, and Sloth. Only the sin of Pride cannot be connected with a particular image. The murkiness suggests the sins take place in the dark realm of dreams. Masks express the illusory nature of dreams and mortal life; they are also connected with night and death in the funerary sculpture for Michelangelo’s Medici Chapel in San Lorenzo, Florence. The youth is not asleep but being animated or awoken from a dream and roused from the illusions and vices of the earthly realm to a new spiritual life. The composition seems to concern the potential of man to achieve perfection, to awaken from mortal life into eternal life in harmony with the will and likeness of God himself.

Michelangelo’s poems to Cavalieri express his spiritual longing and his passionate desire. In the Neoplatonic philosophy of the Renaissance, exceptional human beauty was regarded as a glimpse of the divine world of ideas. ’The Dream‘ appears to explore these contemporary ideas about the ascent of the soul to the divine aided by beauty.

The young Cavalieri understood the enormous importance of the gift he had been given and he remained a friend of Michelangelo’s till the end. He was present 30 years later at Michelangelo’s deathbed, and Vasari wrote of the drawings that ’in truth he rightly treasures them as relics'.

Key facts

Details

Full title: The Dream of Human Life
Artist: After Michelangelo
Artist dates: 1475 - 1564
Date made: after 1533
Medium and support: oil on slate
Dimensions: 65.4 × 55.9 cm
Acquisition credit: Holwell Carr Bequest, 1831
Inventory number: NG8
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Revd William Holwell Carr

Provenance

Bequeathed by the Rev. Holwell Carr, 1831.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Cecil Gould, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools’, London 1987; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Bibliography

1832

W.Y. Ottley, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery, London 1832
1854

National Gallery, A Catalogue of Pictures in the National Gallery, London 1854
1854

R.N. Wornum and C.L. Eastlake, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery, with Biographical Notices of the Painters, London 1854
1864

J.D. Passavant, Le peintre-graveur, Leipzig 1864
1878

G. Vasari, Le vite de'più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori: Con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi, ed. G. Milanesi, 8 vols, Florence 1878
1888

G. Redford, Art Sales: A History of Sales of Pictures and other Works and Art, with Notices of the Collections Sold, Names of Owners, Titles of Pictures, Prices and Purchasers, 2 vols, London 1888
1908

H. Thode, Michelangelo: Kritische Untersuchungen über seine Werke, 3 vols, Berlin 1908
1920

J.A.F. Orbaan, Documenti sul barocco in Roma, Rome 1920
1927

E. Steinmann and R. Wittkower, Michelangelo Bibliographie 1510-1926: Herausgegeben von Ernst Steinmann und Rudolf Wittkower: Mit Einem Documentenanhang Beareitet von Robert Freyhan, Leipzig 1927
1939

E. Panofsky, 'The Neoplatonic Movement and Michelangelo', in Studies in Iconography: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, New York 1939, pp. 171-230
1946

S. Lee, 'Daniel's Dream: A Significant Misnomer', Art Quarterly, IX, 1946, pp. 257-60
1947

C. de Tolnay, Michelangelo: The Medici Chapel, 5 vols, Princeton 1948
1949

'"Old Master" painting in St. Austell Barber's Shop', Royal Cornwall Gazette, 1949
1956

A. Marabottini, 'Il Sogno di Michelangelo in una copia sconosciuta', in Scritti di storia del'arte in onore di Lionello Venturi, Rome 1956, vol. 1, pp. 349-58
1958

W.R. Rearick, 'Battista Franco and the Grimani Chapel', Saggi et memorie di storia dell'arte, II, 1958, pp. 105-39
1959

L. Düssler, Die Zeichnungen des Michelangelo, Berlin 1959
1962

Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools (excluding the Venetian), London 1962
1975

C. Gould, Delaroche and Gautier: Gautier's Views on the 'Execution of Lady Jane Grey' and on other Compositions by Delaroche, London 1975
1975

M.A. Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art, New York 1975
1979

J.A. Testa, 'The Iconography of the Archers: A Study of Self-Concealment and Self-Revelation in Michelangelo's Presentation Drawings', Studies in Iconography, V, 1979, pp. 45-72
1981

D. Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, Princeton 1981
1981

L. Conti, Giorgio Vasari: Principi, letterati e artisti nelle carte di Giorgio Vasari, Casa Vasari, Pittura Vasariana dal 1532 al 1554, sottochiesa di S. Francesco (exh. cat. Sottochiesa di S. Francesco, 26 September - 29 November 1981), Florence 1981
1981

M. Barasch, 'The Mask in European Art: Meaning and Function', in M. Barasch, L.F. Sandler and P. Egan (eds), Studies in Honor of H.W. Janson, New York 1981, pp. 253-64
1983

R.S. Liebert, Michelangelo: A Psychoanalytic Study of His Life and Images, New Haven 1983
1986

E. Acanfora, Il Seicento fiorentino, Florence 1986
1987

Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1987
1987

D. Farr (ed.), 100 Masterpieces: Bernardo Daddi to Ben Nicholson: European Paintings and Drawings from the Fourteenth to the Twentieth Century, London 1987
1992

M. Winner, 'Michelangelo's Il Sogno as an Example of an Artist's Visual Reflection in His Drawings', Studies in the History of Art, XXXIII, 1992, pp. 226-42
1994

National Gallery, 'Pictures Cleaned and Restored in the Conservation Department of the National Gallery, October 1994 - September 1995', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, XVII, 1996
1999

J. Dunkerton, S. Foister and N. Penny, Dürer to Veronese: Sixteenth-Century Painting in the National Gallery, London 1999
1999

R.B. Simon, Visions and Vistas: Old Master Paintings and Drawings (exh. cat. Berry-Hill Galleries, 2000), New York 1999
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2003

M. Ruvoldt, 'Michelangelo's Dream', Art Bulletin, LXXXV/1, 2003, pp. 86-113

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

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After Michelangelo, 'The Dream of Human Life', after 1533

About the work

Overview

In-depth

Key facts

Details

Provenance

Additional information

Source

Bibliography

About this record

Images

Related works