Chiseling hammers are different from common hammers, they have a different shape (Photo 1), a different weight (generally around 100 grams, handle included) with a flat and wide head (Photo 2) which is worn out by continuously hitting the iron (Photo 3), and a special balance so as to tire the hand of the chiseler as little as possible who must continuously hit the chiseling iron for entire days of work (Photo 4).

The iron is held between the thumb, index finger and middle finger, while the ring finger rests firmly on the surface to be chiseled (Photo 5,6).
For chiseling, large sculptures are fixed on wooden supports; medium-small sculptures are instead stopped by the jaws of special “chiseling vices” (the vices in the images date back to the 1930s (Photo 7,8)) which have the characteristic of discharging to the ground the continuous blows created by the beating of the iron in the chiseling; the vices have lead jaws that allow the bronze sculpture to be tightened and blocked without causing scratches or nicks.

These clamps are applied to sturdy work worms (Photos 9,10,11) that have remained the same since the early 1900s to the present day.

One of the problems that chiseling bronze involves is the noise: a continuous “den den” at high volume that lasts for many hours, with few intervals of peace (as it’s possible to hear in the two videos below where the volume of the noise has been deliberately reduced), and which forces the chiselers to use noise-cancelling headphones.
In the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry in Rifredi, opened in 1919 between the houses, 3 to 5 chiselers have continued to chisel simultaneously every day. And it was precisely this noise that was one of the reasons that pushed us to create a new foundry in the countryside of Barberino Val d’Elsa where we moved in 2000.

Nella formella della Porta del Paradiso in fase di cesello (Foto 12) le figure in alto sono state cesellate, quelle al centro sono a metà cesellatura, quelle in basso sono appena iniziate. Il cesello si esegue anche su fusioni di grandi dimensioni, come sulla testa di uno dei personaggi del ratto delle Sabine del Giambologna (Foto 13) e anche su quella del David di Michelangelo (Foto 14).

Il bordo inferiore del gonnellino del David del Verrocchio presenta un nastro con scrittura pseudo-cufica (molto di moda nel Rinascimento) eseguito a cesello (280-282). Le sottili masse dei capelli nella testa della Diana Cacciatrice del Museo Vaticano dimostrano il cesello eseguito con uno “spianatoio” (284-286).

Metal doors, or rather “lined” metal doors, have been known since ancient times; Homer in the Odyssey describes those of the palace of Alcinous:

“The palace of Alcinous gave off a great light as if it were a sun or a moon. From the threshold, along all the walls, the wall was lined with bronze with, at the top, enameled friezes of a blue color. The doors were of gold and the threshold had silver jambs, the architrave was of silver and the handles of gold”.

In the tomb of Rekmire in Thebes (ca. 1400 BC) a workshop of bronze workers casting molten bronze to make the door of the temple of Amun is depicted, and the doors of Babylon, the door of the temple of Zeus in Olympia, and the bronze door of the Arsenal of Piraeus were also made of bronze.
The Assyrians in about 850 BC had decorated the wooden door of the palace of King Salmanassar III in Imgur-Enlil by covering it with sculpted bronze bands fixed with nails to the wood (Photos 1,2,3)

The doors of public buildings in the Roman era were mainly made of bronze (Vitruvius defines the typology (De architectura, lib. IV, chap. IV). Among those that have remained in Rome, the most famous are the door of the Pantheon from the 2nd century AD, that of the Temple of Romulus in the Roman Forum, the door of the Curia Iulia from the age of Domitian that Borromini used for St. John Lateran and which was enlarged and decorated with new studs and shoots.

In the late ancient era, there are, all reused, the door of Pope Ilarus (460 AD) in the oratory of St. John the Baptist in the Lateran Baptistery, that of St. John the Evangelist in the same Baptistery, that in the cloister of St. John Lateran and that in the chapel of the Scala Santa.

The door of the Pantheon, from about 120 AD, is the largest, 7.53 meters high and about 4.45 wide; it is a door of wood covered with 4 cm thick bronze sheets, probably cast in an open horizontal shape that allowed the casting of large and thick sheets (Photos 4,5,6,7,8,9).

In 1520, Pope Leo X promoted the restoration of the Pantheon and its door, in 1555 Pope Pius IV “had the metal door cleaned for rusty old age” and 182 bronze studs replaced; Pompeo Ugonio, Canon of the Vatican Basilica, at the beginning of the 17th century tells us that these doors were “gilded with similar gates above”; fortunately, in the stripping carried out by Pope Urban VIII in 1625 of the gilded bronze coverings of the pronaos beams to melt down 80 cannons for Castel Sant’Angelo and the twisted columns for the altar of St. Peter, the door was not recast (Photos 10,11,12)

The door of the Pantheon has been depicted in paintings since the mid-1400s, as in the chest of Apollonio di Giovanni with the stories of Dido and Aeneas in the Art Gallery of Yale University dated around 1450, where the two doors are depicted, with three mirrors and in yellow, probably gilded, but which fill the entire space of the opening without the upper grille. Around 1500 Simone del Pollaiolo designed it with a single door, but with the upper grille; finally Raphael designed it in 1508 as it is still today, except for the studs and decorations. (Photos 13,14,15,16,17)

In lost-wax bronze casting, chiseling is an important phase in the processing of the surface of sculptures; it is performed with special tools called “chisel irons”.
Chisel irons are small steel chisels (called simply “chisels” or “iron”) with a square or round section, with the head (the part in contact with the metal) of different shapes, while the opposite end is intended to receive the hammer blows. (Photo 1,2,3)

This is because the chisel tools are normally used to define and finish with extreme meticulousness the details of bronze castings. They can highlight parts that in casting were less evident than intended (Photo 4,5),

or even create new details on the bronze that had not been modelled on the wax before casting (Photo 6,7); in some cases to flatten and re-beat (with the iron called “flattener”) smooth areas of the bronze that have slight imperfections or small holes that will thus be plugged and disappear.

These cold-work touches enhance the overall sculptural quality, highlighting the play of light and shadow, creating greater depth in some cavities and at the same time sharpening the edges.
The main tools are the profiler (Photo 8,9), the nail (Photo 10) and the smoother (Photo 11).

They can be of different sizes and measures: the nail is used to trace curved lines, the profiler for straight lines, the flatteners to flatten the surface around the drawing as well as flatten porous areas of the bronze. There are also irons that have various designs on the head to be able to imprint them on the surface of the sculpture (Photo 12), others with dots or stars (Photo 13) like those imprinted on the upper part of the warrior from behind (Photo 14).

All the irons are always shiny and frayed on the head due to the continuous hammering on them, which crushes them creating curls of metal (Photo 15).

In 1925, a national competition was announced for the construction of a “Monument to Victory” in Forlì, to be inaugurated on October 30, 1932, the tenth anniversary of the “fascist revolution”.

The competition was won by a figure favored by the regime, the architect and engineer Cesare Bazzani, who wanted to create a monument that, compared to the others, had the particularity of being able to have two main sides on which to host ceremonies, one facing the public garden and the other facing the station; this characteristic was also underlined by Mussolini in the inauguration speech he gave from the balcony of the Government Palace in Piazza Saffi, saying of the monument “…on one side pity for the fallen, on the other the proud exaltation of victory…”, for which the entire work was also called Monument to the Fallen.

Bazzani designed an important composite architectural structure completely covered in Trani marble, 32 meters high in total: a raised base with rounded shorter sides, on which three elements stand: in the center a 22-meter high Doric column whose base contains a small chapel which is entered through an iron door: from the ceiling of the chapel you can access the spiral staircase contained inside the column, which reaches the top of this; the staircase is lit by two small openings on the column itself. On the sides two parallelepipeds decorated with two bas-reliefs each, made by Bernardino Boifava, which depict the fundamental moments in the life of the heroes, that is, the attack, the defense, the sacrifice and the triumph, and on the sides that look towards the square, a fountain with a modern representing the sacrifice of Victory.

At the top, the column capital hosts a decorated round base on which is placed an important bronze sculptural group of three winged female figures representing the sky, the earth and the sea. The model was made by the sculptor Bernardo Morescalchi who entrusted the casting to the Fonderia Artistica Ferdinando Marinelli of Florence. Marescalchi had previously worked with the Fonderia Artistica Marinelli for the casting of large-scale works, such as the Horses of Forlì.

In October 1932 Mussolini officially inaugurated the monument with a grand ceremony and a speech from the balcony of the Government Palace.
Later, in June 1938, King Vittorio Emanuele III, visiting Forlì, stopped at the foot of the monument and laid a wreath.

Searching in the archives of the Fonderia Artistica Ferdinando Marinelli, a letter appeared, dated April 28, 1923, following the inauguration of the Monument that the Foundry wrote to the Podestà of Forlì, in which payment was requested for “the letters for the monument la Vittoria”, for which it was still a creditor. These are the letters of the inscription applied at the top under the capital of the base of the bronzes.

In the year 2024, the Municipality of Forlì has planned an inspection to monitor its “health”, followed by the Studio Tecnico Nerodichina of Forlì with the architect Giancarlo Gatta. The Winged Victories presented cracks and breaks; but the most peculiar thing was a series of holes that at first left scholars in doubt and only after a conversation between the architect Gatta and Ferdinando Marinelli Jr. manager of the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry was it understood that they were due to bullets from the last war.

La seconda scultura che Michelangelo eseguì per l’Arca di San Domenico a Bologna è il SAN PROCOLO, alto poco meno di 60 centimetri.
Lo rappresentò per quello che era, cioè un forte soldato romano cristiano martirizzato a Bologna dai Romani al tempo di Diocleziano: la tunica corta dei soldati chiusa in vita dalla cintura, il mantello, alti calzari e molto probabilmente una lancia nella mano destra che è andata persa.

Anche in quest’opera è chiaro lo stile michelangiolesco, figura solida, volto accigliato, atteggiamento teso e sicuro evidenziato dal modo di tenere il mantello sulla spalla sinistra, non più delicata e femminea come le figure del Rinascimento.

Nel 1572 fra Ludovico da Prelormo custode dell’ Arca scrive:

“La vigilia del padre San Domenico il povero sventurato fra’ Pelegrino converso roppe la statua di San Procolo, la gettò a terra in più di cinquanta pezzi. Io né ho mai avuto in ottanta anni il più intenso dolore al cuore di questo. Mi credeva certo di morire; vennero i Padri tutti a confortarmi, e molti maestri periti ne l’arte, e così la portarono via e fu aconzia [aggiustata] alla foggia al presente si vede.”

E infatti la figura presenta una serie di rotture più o meno restaurate; chiara quella della testa riattaccata grossolanamente.

La terza delle sculture che Michelangelo eseguì per l’Arca di San Domenico è quella di SAN PETRONIO, vescovo e patrono di Bologna, posto al centro dell’Arca tra gli altri due santi precedentemente eseguiti da Niccolò dell’Arca

Il Santo guarda davanti a se, porta la tiara e un lungo mantello dalla caotiche ma studiatissime pieghe chiuso da un fermaglio davanti al petto, più complesse dei mantelli degli altri due Santi.
Il volto è riconoscibilissimo come opera di Michelangelo.

La caratteristica particolare è la città di Bologna che tiene in alto tra le mani, sostenendone il peso a fatica sbilanciando l’anca e tendendo i tendini dei polsi; Michelangelo si è ispirato alla statua dello stesso Santo eseguita da Jacopo della Quercia e posta sulla porta centrale della basilica di San Petronio di Bologna, ma in controparte.

Vasari in the Lives, referring to Michelangelo, writes of:

…un Dio d’amore, d’età di sei anni in sette, à iacere in guisa d’huom che dorma…

[…a God of love, aged from six years to seven, lying in the guise of a sleeping man…]

alluding to the marble statuette that Michelangelo had sculpted in 1496 upon his return to Florence, when he was once again hosted by Lorenzo dei Medici the Popolano, cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent.

We also know about it thanks to a letter from Antonio Maria Pico della Mirandola dated 1496 to Isabella d’Este, where he writes:

… Un Cupido che giace e dorme posato su una mano: è integro ed è lungo circa 4 spanne, ed è bellissimo; c’è chi lo ritiene antico e chi moderno; comunque sia, è ritenuto ed è perfettissimo.

[… A Cupid lying and sleeping resting on one hand: it is intact and is about 4 spans long, and it is beautiful; there are those who consider it ancient and those who consider it modern; in any case, it is considered and is very perfect.]

The statue was “four spans” long, i.e. about 80 cm, but has been lost, and the proposed identification with the Sleeping Cupid preserved in the Museum of Palazzo San Sebastiano in Mantua is much discussed and unlikely.

It was commissioned by the Medici. It was 1496, the year in which Savonarola and his followers censored every work of art considered licentious; so it was that the Putto was brought to Rome and buried in a vineyard to make it “antique” and sell it as a Roman artefact. Michelangelo was probably unaware of it.
The trick was successful, so much so that it was purchased by Raffaele Riario, Cardinal of San Giorgio, a famous art collector, through the intermediary Baldassare del Milanese for 200 ducats. But the Milanese only brought Michelangelo an advance of 20 ducats.

Riario realized he had been cheated, but the work was so perfect that instead of wanting his money back he wanted to meet the artist who had sculpted it. He then sent his banker friend Jacopo Galli to Florence to bring the author of the Putto to Rome. Galli convinced Michelangelo, unaware of the scam, that having arrived in Rome in the presence of the cardinal with a letter of introduction from Lorenzo dei Medici the Popolano, having only had 20 scudi in Florence, he wanted his sculpture back.
Riario became furiously angry with Michelangelo, saying that he had paid for it and it belonged to him.
It was with this event that Michelangelo saw a new world of work open up in Rome largely through Galli, a very important and influential banker, who hosted him in his palace.

And in fact a few days things began to go better: on 4 July 1496 Cardinal Riario asked him to sculpt a pagan work for him, the BACCHUS. He completed it in a year, delivering it in 1497.
The mythological divinity is represented in a naturalistical way with the insecure gait of a young god drunk on wine, the contrapposto pose is slightly unbalanced, the head bent and the eyes distorted by the liquor, the body is soft and slightly feminine also highlighted by the belly slightly swollen also due to drinking. He holds the cup of wine in his hand, and two bunches of grapes hang between his curls. With his other hand he holds the leopard skin, an animal dear to the god.

Hidden behind him, a young satyr leaning on his left leg in a seductive pose eats grapes sitting on a cut tree trunk. The beautiful satyr also has a function of support and reinforcement of the work whose weight falls on the leg on which the satyr rests.

Cardinal Riario rejected the work, which was too little similar to the Roman depictions of Dionysus and therefore too lascivious for a member of the Church.
The banker Galli collected it with great pleasure and placed it in the center of his garden. The Dutch painter Maarten Van Heemserck saw the work in the Riario garden in 1532 and drew it. The cup and the right hand appear missing and the penis also appears to have been broken: the hand and cup seen today are an ancient addition.

Bacchus is preserved and exhibited at the Bargello Museum.

Posthumous statuary bronze casting from a cast made on the original by the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry of Florence

More information on this bronze sculpture, here.

Lorenzo the Magnificent had hosted Michelangelo for 4 years in his palace in Via Larga, having him at the table with him and with various guests every day, including the humanists of the Platonic Academy.
In 1492, upon the death of Lorenzo, Michelangelo was exiled from the Medici palace. He was forced to return to his father’s house.

Vasari in his “Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects” of 1568:

…Era da poco morto Lorenzo il Magnifico quando il giovane Michelagnolo non ancora ventenne si accinse a scolpire un Crocifisso di legno, che si posa sopra il mezzo tondo dell’ altare maggiore, a compiacenza del priore il quale gli diede comodità di stanze…

[…Lorenzo the Magnificent had recently died when the young Michelagnolo, not yet twenty years old, set about sculpting a wooden Crucifix, which rests above the half round of the main altar, at the pleasure of the prior who gave him comfort of rooms…]

It was in this period that Michelangelo dedicated himself to the study of human anatomy through the dissection of corpses. Thanks to the intercession of Piero dei Medici the Fatuous, who succeeded Lorenzo the Magnificent, he obtained permission from the prior of the convent of Santo Spirito, Lapo Bicchiellini, to dissect the bodies of the male cadavers that arrived from the convent hospital.
He performed them at night so as not to risk being accused of necromancy by the inquisition, also performing anatomical drawings.

It was out of thanks that Michelangelo sculpted and donated a wooden crucifix to the prior of the convent, now kept in the New Sacristy of the church of Santo Spirito, a masterpiece of elegance and sweetness.

At the end of the 1400s the political situation in Florence was changing dramatically, Savonarola’s sermons were increasingly listened to, and there was a sense of the fall of the Medici wanted by Charles VIII, King of France.

Michelangelo preferred to leave the city and, together with his friends Granacci and the Flemish Johannes Cordier, known as the Cordiere, lyre player at Palazzo Medici, went to Venice, where he remained for a short period, then heading to Bologna. Here he was welcomed by Giovan Francesco Aldrovandi, a trusted man of the lord of Bologna Giovanni Bentivoglio, and through him he received the commission to create three sculptures for the fourteenth-century Ark of San Domenico created by Nicola Pisano and Niccolò dell’Arca, which was not yet completed.

He executed the missing ANGEL CANDLE HOLDER in the right corner of the Ark, matching the one existing in the left corner executed by Niccolò dell’Arca.

Both angels are kneeling; Niccolò dell’Arca had sculpted an elegant and refined angel, in Renaissance style, with almost feminine characteristics.

Vasari, regarding the Pietà, writes in his “Vite”:
…Alla quale opera non pensi mai scultore né artefice raro potere aggiugnere di disegno né di grazia, né con fatica poter mai di finitezza, pulitezza e di straforare il marmo tanto con arte quanto Michelagnolo vi fece, perché si scorge in quella tutto il valore et il potere dell’arte. Fra le cose belle [che] vi sono, oltra i panni divini suoi, si scorge il morto Cristo: e non si pensi alcuno di bellezza di membra e d’artificio di corpo vedere uno ignudo tanto ben ricerco di muscoli, vene, nerbi sopra l’ossatura di quel corpo, né ancora un morto più simile al morto di quello. Quivi è dolcissima aria di testa, et una concordanza nelle appiccature e congiunture delle braccia e in quelle del corpo e delle gambe, i polsi e le vene lavorate, che in vero si maraviglia lo stupore che mano d’artefice abbia potuto sì divinamente e propriamente fare in pochissimo tempo cosa sì mirabile: che certo è un miracolo che un sasso, da principio senza forma nessuna, si sia mai ridotto a quella perfezzione che la natura affatica suol formar nella carne…

[…To which work no sculptor or craftsman should ever think of the rare ability to achieve in design or grace, nor with effort ever be able to finish, clean and pierce the marble with as much art as Michelagnolo did, because in it one can see all the value and the power of art. Among the beautiful things [that] are there, beyond his divine clothes, the dead Christ is seen: and let no one think of the beauty of the limbs and the artifice of the body to see a naked man so well refined with muscles, veins and nerves above the skeleton of that body, nor yet a dead man more similar to the dead than that. Here there is a very sweet air of the head, and a concordance in the joints and joints of the arms and in those of the body and legs, the wrists and the veins worked, that in truth one marvels in amazement that the hand of an artisan could have been able to so divinely and properly to do something so wonderful in a very short time: that it is certainly a miracle that a stone, from the beginning without any form, has ever been reduced to that perfection that nature usually works hard to form in the flesh…]

At the age of 24, in 1499, Michelangelo executed his masterpiece, the VATICAN PIETA. The banker Jacopo Galli had become a great admirer and close friend of him, so much so that he had hosted him in his palace in Rome. He had also become his guarantor and intermediary, and it was thanks to Galli that in 1496 Michelangelo had the commission of the Pietà for Jean de Bilhères, abbot of San Dionigi, ambassador to Rome of Charles VIII of France to Pope Alexander VI.

Having received a deposit of 150 ducats out of the agreed upon 450 ducats in 1497, he went on horseback to the Carrara marble quarries to find the right marble. Having returned to Rome, on 27 August 1497 he signed the official contract in the presence of Galli, with the commitment to complete the work in one year, a contract which stated:

Et io Jacopo Galli prometto al reverendissimo Monsignore che lo dicto Michelangelo farà la dicta opera in fra un anno e sarà la più bella opera di marmo che sia oge in Roma, e che maestro niuno la farìa megliore oge.
Nel contratto di allogazione era stato specificato che sarebbe stata Una Pietà di marmo, cioè una Vergine Maria vestita con un Cristo morto nudo in braccio.

[And I, Jacopo Galli, promise the most reverend Monsignor that the said Michelangelo will do the said work in a year’s time and it will be the most beautiful marble work of any time in Rome, and that no master will do it better than any other.
In the contract it was specified that it would be a marble Pietà, that is, a dressed Virgin Mary with a naked dead Christ in her arms.]

He kept his commitment by delivering the masterpiece in 1499, which was taken to Santa Petronilla where the ambassador wanted to be buried.

In 1517 the Pietà was moved to St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, where it changed places several times, until in 1749 it was placed in the first chapel on the right of the nave of the basilica where it still resides today.

The beautiful face of the Madonna portrayed as a young woman (Virgin Mother, Daughter of your Son, Dante, first verse of canto XXIII of Paradise) at the age in which she conceived him, maintains a composed pose in pain as she looks at the body of her Son.
Christ is completely released on the knees of the Mother who does not directly touch the sacred body of her son, an edge of the shroud is placed between her right hand and his body. The Madonna’s left hand has a gesture of desperate question.
The rock on which she sits is Mount Golgotha, as the biographer Condivi says in the “Life of Michelagnolo Buonarroti” published in Rome in 1553:

…A sedere sul sasso, dove fu fitta la Croce, col figliuol morto in grembo, di tanta e così rara bellezza, che nessun la vede che dentro a pietà non si commuova…

[…Sitting on the stone, where the Cross was placed, with her dead son in her lap, of such and such rare beauty, that no one sees it who is not moved by pity…]

The perfection of the anatomies reproduced in an exceptional way favors the beauty that the work emanates together with the tenderness and torment for the death of Christ.
Even the folds of the dress and the shroud are reproduced in a masterly manner, almost like fabric transformed into marble, or marble transformed into fabric.
Unlike most of his other works, in this one Michelangelo wanted to smooth and polish the surfaces, making the skin translucent like alabaster.

Michelangelo wrote his name on this single work, that is, he signed it in Roman characters on the band that crosses the Madonna’s chest: MICHAEL AGELVS BONAROTUS FLOREN FACIEBAT.

The Pietà has suffered various damages over time and has therefore also undergone various repairs and restorations. The last one was in 1972 when a madman shouting “I am Jesus Christ” took a hammer to the work, damaging it in various parts.

More information on this bronze sculpture, here.

Vasari, in the 1568 edition of the “Vite” continues:

…Dove in questo tempo consigliato dal Poliziano, uomo nelle lettere singulare, Michelagnolo fece in un pezzo di marmo datogli da quel signore [Lorenzo il Magnifico] la battaglia di Ercole coi centauri, che fu tanto bella che talvolta per chi ora la considera non par di mano di giovane, ma di maestro pregiato e consumato negli studii e pratico in quell’arte. Ella è oggi in casa sua tenuta per memoria di Lionardo suo nipote come cosa rara che ell’è…

…Where at this time advised by Poliziano, a singular man in letters, Michelagnolo painted on a piece of marble given to him by that lord [Lorenzo the Magnificent] the battle of Hercules with the centaurs, which was so beautiful that sometimes for those who now consider it it does not seem by the hand of a young man, but of a esteemed master, consummate in his studies and practiced in that art. She is today kept in his house in memory of his nephew Lionardo as a rare thing that she is…

The first written mention of this high relief is in a letter sent by the Gonzaga agent in Florence, Giovanni Borromeo, to the Marquis of Mantua Federico. The agent writes that he wants a certain painting of “figure jude, che combattono, di marmore, quale havea principiato ad istantia di un gran signore [Lorenzo il Magnifico] ma non è finito. E’ braccia uno e mezzo a ogni mane, et così a vedere è cosa bellissima e vi sono più di 25 teste e 20 corpi varii, et varie attitudine fanno.”

“Naked figures, fighting, in marble, which was begun at the request of a great lord [Lorenzo the Magnificent] but was not finished. It is one and a half arm lengths on each hand, and thus it is a very beautiful thing to look at and there are more of 25 heads and 20 various bodies, and various attitudes they make.”

This high relief, as well as the Madonna della Scala, were executed by Michelangelo for his personal taste, incited by Lorenzo the Magnificent, but without any real client. He began it after finishing the bas-relief of the Madonna della Scala, but was unable to finish it: in 1492 Lorenzo the Magnificent, with whom he had a filial relationship, died; Michelangelo was shocked.

According to Vasari the subject would have been the battle of Hercules against the Centaurs, while Condivi, in his Life of Michelagnolo Buonarroti writes that it was the rape of Deianira and the fight of the Centaurs, probably due to the presence of some female figures: a behind the central figure above and another on the far right strangling a man.

After his experience in the Donatellian-inspired Madonna della Scala, Michelangelo wanted to try his hand at a high relief in which he could sculpt human bodies in various poses and attitudes. The realization of the plans is certainly less successful than the bas-relief of the Madonna, perhaps also because the relief was not finished.

It is not clear whether the surfaces of the few figures that appear to have been finished would have received subsequent processing with rasps and abrasives to make the marble skin smooth and shiny; it is more likely, however, that Michelangelo wanted to leave the surface with the light marks of the steps, as he then did in other subsequent works by him.

The work is composed of a mass of tangled figures that are difficult to distinguish, fighting with each other and moving around the central one who has his arm raised above his head and who represents the central apex of the ideal triangle that all the characters make up. On the left a man depicted entirely while, twisting to the right, is about to throw a large stone and an old man on the left edge is preparing to throw a boulder.

On the left a group of characters fighting in an inextricable knot of bodies and arms, below the wounded lying and sitting among which is the body of a Centaur.

Michelangelo was probably inspired both by the Roman sarcophagi and probably by the high reliefs of the Pulpit of the Cathedral by Giovanni Pisano; However, he certainly must have been inspired by the lost wax cast bronze bas-relief created in 1480 by Bertoldo di Giovanni, director and teacher in the Garden of San Marco where the young Michelangelo studied for some years.

More information on this bronze sculpture, here.

In 1501 Michelangelo had returned to Florence from Rome, and was working on the execution of the great David. Through the banker Jacopo Galli, his friend and guarantor, the two Mouscron brothers, Flemish fabric merchants, clients of Galli’s bank, commissioned Michelangelo to create the sculpture of a Madonna and Child for their chapel in the church of Our Lady of Bruges.

The agreed fee was 4,000 florins, a very high sum promised to Michelangelo probably to convince him to find the time to carry it out even though he was working on other works; they were given to him in two payments between 1503 and 1505.

This would also be confirmed by the fact that Michelangelo sculpted it, keeping it hidden until he embarked in Viareggio towards Flanders around 1506. Giovanni Balducci in Rome on 14 August 1506 wrote to Michelangelo:

…Michelagnolo carissimo, resto avisato chome Francesco del Puglese avrebbe chomodità al mandarla a Vioreggio, e da Vioreggio in Fiandra…

[…My dearest Michelagnolo, I am advised that Francesco del Puglese would be happy to send you to Viareggio, and from Viareggio to Flanders…]

Not even his biographers knew exactly what it was: Condivi thought it was a bronze sculpture, Vasari thought it was a round one.
Michelangelo wrote to his father in this sense:

…Prego voi che duriate un pocho di fatica in qusta due cose, cio è in fare. Riporre quella cassa [contenente la Madonna] al coperto in luogo sicuro; l’altra è quella nostra Donna di marmo, similmente vorrei la faciessi portare costì in casa e non la lasciassi vedere a persona…

[…I ask you to make a little effort in these two things, that is, in doing. Place that crate [containing the Madonna] indoors in a safe place; the other is that Marble Woman of ours, similarly I would like to have her brought into the house and not let anyone see her…]

While he was sculpting it, he still had his previous Vatican Pietà in mind: this can be understood in a particular way from the similarity of the faces of the two Madonnas, both with their gaze turned downwards, and the veil on their heads. The Child’s body presents a twist that seems to be due to his sliding on the Mother’s dress while he holds on to his left hand and leans with his feet on the edge of her dress, as if he wanted to get off her lap.
The Madonna, on the other hand, is perfectly still and absorbed in the thought of the terrible end that her Son will meet.

The Madonna was taken and transported to Paris by Napoleon, and was returned in 1815. In 1944 it was stolen by the Nazis and taken to Germany, it was discovered in 1946 hidden in a mine in Altaussee in Austria and was brought back to Bruges.

More information on this bronze sculpture, here.