ROCKY'S ITALY: Florence - Michelangelo’s “Slaves”

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:05][music] >> These unfinished statues are called slaves.

[00:00:11]The Italians instead call them prigioni, or prisoners.

[00:00:14]Michelangelo didn't call them anything at all.

[00:00:20]These are just four of the 40 statues that he was intending to carve for [music] the tomb of Pope Julius II, which if finished would have been the mother of all tombs. But Michelangelo bit off a bit more than he could chew on that particular project, which was never completed. He worked on these sculptures between 1521 and 1523, and left [music] them unfinished because he was pulled off of the project by a more important patron, who was the Medici Pope Clement VII.

[00:00:56]In their unfinished state, they give you a really good idea of what went into the carving of these statues. And sooner or later, you'll hear this romantic description, >> [music] >> that when Michelangelo looked at a block of marble, he could allegedly see the figure that was already trapped inside of it, that he never created anything, he simply liberated those figures that were already dormant inside the block.

[00:01:18]Now, that's romantic dribble that people like myself come up with to help you understand how these sculptures were created, but he made them the same way any other sculptor did. And step one in this creative process involved a pencil and a piece of paper. Drawings, which we call studies. They were essentially used to give the artist carte blanche to work out his ideas, if you will, in two dimensions. Those two-dimensional drawings were then transformed into small-scale three-dimensional models, usually made of clay and or wax, something malleable. And that's where the structural engineering goes on. In other words, that's when you realize how big certain aspects need to be [music] in order for the sculpture to work. Now, once you have a working model, then you could head to the quarries and look for the appropriate block of stone.

[00:02:13]So, consider [music] that if Michelangelo was planning on carving a tall, skinny guy like the David, he would look for a tall, skinny block of marble. If instead he was planning on carving a short, stout figure like the slave behind me, he would look for a short, stout block of marble instead.

[00:02:29]>> [music] >> This isn't rocket science. In other words, he could see the figure because he already knew exactly what [music] that figure was going to look like. The block was transported to his studio, do a quick sketch on the surface of the block of what the figure was going to look like, arms and heads and >> [music] >> different body parts, and the first tool that Michelangelo employed was a drill called a bow drill. And after he drilled hundreds of holes into the block of stone, he would then use various chisels to knock [music] that stone away. From pointy chisels called a punch to toothed or clawed chisels, which were Michelangelo's favorites called the gradina, down to flat-headed chisel, which start to refine, and then different kinds of abrasives [music] applied to the stone as well. Pumice and emery, rasps or iron files with kind of abraded surfaces rubbed over the surface, and then the final step in creating the sculptures was polish.

[00:03:22]Usually achieved using things like wet sand or straw that was [music] then applied rigorously to the surface of the freshly cut stone, bringing out that shine, which is roughly the equivalent of the enamel that we have on our teeth as well. So, it gives you an idea of the sheer amount of labor that went into producing all of the sculptures for which Michelangelo was contracted.

[00:04:00]>> Mhm.