From Michelangelo to Rodin through the lens of the Alinari Brothers

The modern rediscovery of Michelangelo's work was facilitated by photography, the new medium capable of capturing his sculptural complexity within the two-dimensional space of a photographic print.
The three major photographic studios of the 19th century – Alinari, Brogi and Anderson – tackled this task with extraordinary skill, at a time when photography was still characterised by experimentation and craftsmanship.
The circulation of these images fuelled art-historical studies and contributed to the construction of a vast cultural imagery, traces of which can be found in Gabriele D'Annunzio's poetic paraphrases.
At the same time, the reinterpretation of Michelangelo had a profound influence on sculpture between the 19th and 20th centuries. Artists such as Auguste Rodin and Antoine Bourdelle recognised in his twisted figures a source of intense dramatic energy, which they transformed into a new sculptural language.

The Alinari Brothers and Michelangelo

The works of Michelangelo, already a legend in his own lifetime, have been among the Alinari Brothers’ favourite subjects right from the start.
The 1876 Alinari catalogue was published a year after the Michelangelo celebrations – organised in Florence to mark the 400th anniversary of the artist’s birth – and contains, in addition to the large number of works held in Florentine museums, his Roman sculptures as well.
The Alinari Brothers were among the first to photograph Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, from 1877 onwards. The great Last Judgement, which measures 92.2 x 76.6 cm on its original plate, is a collodion negative, one of the oldest within an exceptional collection of 170 extra-large plates.
By 1881, in addition to panoramic views, the Alinari Brothers were already able to offer a highly respectable photographic representation of the Sistine Chapel: with more than 80 images relating to the ceiling and the Last Judgement, they made a substantial contribution to the artwork’s international dissemination.
Over more than a century of uninterrupted activity, the Alinari Brothers photographed Michelangelo’s works on several occasions, remaining faithful to those values of ‘objectivity’ that had ensured their success even when the art of photography had by then become fully aware of its own expressive capabilities. Always placing the subject at the centre, they allow Michelangelo to speak to us directly, without ‘intermediaries’.

The sculptures in the Medici Chapels in 1943

In 1958, the history of the Florentine Brogi photographic studio became intertwined with that of the Alinari family, who acquired over 46,000 glass negatives from it.
Among these was an extraordinary photographic series on the artworks in the Medici Chapels, taken during the Second World War, when Michelangelo’s sculptures were removed from their original locations to be transported out of Florence in 1943. This created a unique opportunity to view these masterpieces on the ground, as had only been possible for artists and academics shortly after Michelangelo’s final departure from Florence in 1534.
These photographs bring us closer to the artist’s work in a different, more intimate way. The Brogi photographic project moves beyond mere documentation. It shatters the single viewpoint into a sampling of multiple perspectives. Set against a black background and isolated from any contextual elements, the sculptures multiply in sequence, inviting us toward a new interpretation.

Gabriele d'Annunzio and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the myth of Michelangelo took shape through literary influences.
Gabriele d’Annunzio lived surrounded by reproductions of the artist’s works, whom he referred to as his ‘relative’, as if to emphasise a spiritual connection that he would nurture throughout his life.
The photographic reproduction of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the ‘superhuman vault’, played an important role in the interior design of the Vittoriale and must also have served the Vate as a source of inspiration for his writing, a symbol and metaphor for a titanic undertaking accomplished in solitude.
D’Annunzio was familiar with the works of Alinari and Anderson. The large Anderson photograph, with its panoramic view of the entire ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, offers us a visual insight into the creative genesis of Laus Vitae, composed at Villa La Capponcina: ‘There, standing throughout, Laus Vitae was ardently written, whilst on the other table lay the scroll bearing the depiction of the Sistine Chapel’.
Francesco Paolo Michetti played a significant role in shaping the poet’s visual culture; he captured him on the beach at Francavilla in a famous photograph.

Michelangelo and modern sculpture

By the time the Alinari brothers carried out their photographic campaign in Paris, published in the 1908 catalogue, Auguste Rodin had by then achieved international fame.
The nudes of the ‘French Michelangelo’, exhibited at the Musée du Luxembourg, express a new concept of sculpture which, freed from the rigidity of the academy and the limitations of naturalism, is capable of ‘breathing life into bodies’.
The framing choices made by the Alinari brothers seem to emphasise the relationship between Rodin and Michelangelo. In The Age of Bronze, for example, a slightly offset frontal viewpoint is chosen to highlight the right side of the body – a viewpoint very similar to that adopted for the Dying Slave in the Louvre.
The works of Rodin and Antoine Bourdelle, which explore the great Michelangelesque themes of the "unfinished" and the "completeness" of the fragment, were to exert a significant influence on Italian sculpture, on artists such as Domenico Trentacoste and Libero Andreotti. It was Anderson and Brogi who documented their work.