The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone

First published: 1961

Type of plot: Biographical novel

Time of work: 1487-1564

Locale: Italy, especially Florence and Rome

Principal Characters:

• Michelangelo Buonarroti, the protagonist, a sculptor, painter, architect, and poet
• Lodovico di Lionardo Buonarroti Simoni, Michelangelo’s father
• Lorenzo de’ Medici, Il Magnifico, Michelangelo’s first patron and the epitome of Renaissance humanism
• Contessina de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s daughter and Michelangelo’s first love
• Clarissa Saffi, Michelangelo’s other early love
• Girolamo Savonarola, a zealous priest bent on reforming the Church
• Vittoria Colonna, the object of Michelangelo’s love in later life
• Tommaso de Cavalieri, Michelangelo’s apprentice/assistant on St. Peter’s and his other “love” in later life
• Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo’s rival in painting
• Bertoldo, Michelangelo’s teacher in sculpture

The Novel

The Agony and the Ecstasy, a biographical novel, spans most of Michelangelo’s life: It begins with him as a twelve-year-old and concludes with his death approximately eighty years later. Although Stone covers most of Michelangelo’s life, he seems most concerned with Michelangelo’s apprenticeship and early work; when Michelangelo reaches sixty, approximately two-thirds of his lifetime, the novel is practically completed. Struggle appears to be more interesting than success. Because of the mass of details, many gleaned from previously untranslated letters about Michelangelo’s long life, Stone had to shape his material, to provide dramatic structure to the history of a man and his time.

As Stone presents him, Michelangelo is the complete artist: painter, sculptor, poet, architect, and, ultimately, engineer. The Agony and the Ecstasy depicts Michelangelo’s struggle to become the embodiment of Renaissance humanism. In the course of the novel Michelangelo must overcome the interference of his family, religious dogma, political intrigue, papal patronage, military campaigns, and artistic jealousy to realize his artistic ambition.

Despite his father’s opposition, twelve-year-old Michelangelo becomes an apprentice, first to painter Ghirlandaio and then to Bertoldo, a sculptor, who directs a school financed by Lorenzo de’ Medici, patron of Florentine art. Michelangelo quickly wins Lorenzo’s esteem, meets his children (among them two future popes, Giulio and Giovanni, and Contessina, his first love), suffers the first of several attacks by jealous colleagues (his nose is broken by Torrigiani, whose later appearances always threaten Michelangelo), and through forbidden dissection learns the anatomy and physiology he needs. Eventually Savonarola, a reform priest, comes to power, and his crusading zeal threatens Lorenzo de’ Medici’s family and the Florentine art world.

When Savonarola gains political, as well as religious, control, Michelangelo flees Florence and travels to Bologna, where he meets the sensuous Clarissa Saffi and carves the Bambino that attracts the attention of Leo Baglioni. In Rome for the first time, Michelangelo meets Jacopo Galli, a banker, who commissions a sculpture; Giuliano Sangallo, an architect; and Bramante, another architect and an adversary. In Rome, Michelangelo carves the Pieta, learns about the whims of religious patrons, and becomes interested in St. Peter’s—the building of the new St. Peter’s will embroil him in controversy and ultimately consume his last years.

Michelangelo returns to Florence, where he carves “the Giant,” a sculpture of David which becomes the symbol of Florence. There he meets Leonardo da Vinci, his principal rival, and Raphael, the painter—the three become the triumvirate of Renaissance Italian art. Jealous of Leonardo, Michelangelo competes with him as the two artists paint frescoes for the rulers of Florence. Word of Michelangelo’s work reaches Pope Julius, who forces Michelangelo to work in bronze, rather than his beloved marble, and to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It is Julius who resolves to build a new St. Peter’s.

Julius is followed by two Medici popes who only add to Michelangelo’s problems: Giovanni, by forcing him to work with marble from Pietrasanta, an almost inaccessible region, thereby making Michelangelo an engineer, and Giulio, against whose forces Michelangelo must use his engineering talents to fortify the city of Florence. The Medici popes are followed by Pope Paul III, who commissions Michelangelo to paint the Last Judgment and who, after bitter disputes about the ongoing building of St. Peter’s, appoints him as architect for the cathedral. The dome, Michelangelo’s last creation, is the appropriate capstone for his creative efforts. In addition to achieving artistic acclaim, he finds an assistant, Tommaso de Cavalieri, who is to complete St. Peter’s, and Vittoria Colonna, the female epitome of Renaissance humanism and his last great love.

The Characters

Stone presents Michelangelo as the idealized Renaissance humanist, the artist whose commitment to his work becomes a religion and whose creative efforts are no less than godlike. In fact, his commitment to art is such that it alienates him from society, makes him a misunderstood recluse, and, in becoming the outlet for his passion, prevents him from finding love. Because art becomes religion, art cannot be commercialized; the artist is not a businessman. Overly generous to his parasitic family and deaf to the warnings of his banker/agent Galli, he lives in relative poverty, unlike Leonardo and Raphael. Also unlike them, he works alone, refusing to compromise his work by using, even in the Sistine Chapel, other painters. Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, despite their stature, exist in Stone’s novel primarily as foils, artists whose deficiencies help define Michelangelo’s greatness.

Other characters serve to demonstrate the plight of the artist whose superior work is often prey to the jealousy of less talented colleagues. Torrigiani breaks Michelangelo’s nose, itself part of a work of art, as Stone carefully points out in the first paragraph of the novel. Later Vincenzo, an inferior sculptor in Bologna, defaces Michelangelo’s St. Petronius because of jealousy. Perugino’s vicious attack on Michelangelo’s work is motivated, according to Raphael, by envy and despair: Michelangelo has made Perugino’s work obsolete. Another act of “desecration” is committed by Bandinelli, who breaks into Michelangelo’s studio during the attack on Florence. These examples attest the validity of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s words: “The forces of destruction march on the heels of creativity.”

Despite the obstacles posed by such critics, Michelangelo succeeds because of his own talent, which is shaped by his mentors: Ghirlandaio, who instructs him in painting; Bertoldo, who instructs him in sculpture; Prior Bichiellini, who instructs him in life; and, most important, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Il Magnifico, whose Platonic Academy instructs him in poetry and in the blending of classical and Christian cultures that characterizes his work. Even after his death, Lorenzo’s ideas and influence inform Michelangelo’s art.

The women in the novel serve primarily as symbols which ultimately are related to Michelangelo’s work. Contessina, Lorenzo’s daughter, is inaccessible, because of her exalted position, and pure; Michelangelo is bound to her aesthetically, spiritually, and mystically. Clarissa Saffi, a fictional rather than historical character, represents the emotional and physical side of love, and she is accessible. According to Michelangelo, she is the female form “already carved” and is the incarnation of love in its “ultimate female form.” During the Florentine War he thinks of both women, and when their images merge, they become one, “the figure of love itself.” This blending is analogous to the blending of classical and Christian in his work.

The Agony and the Ecstasy is a lengthy, sprawling novel, a large canvas peopled with characters from all walks of life. The historical characters serve to provide a cultural and intellectual milieu, a background for Michelangelo. Many of the fictional characters are from the lower classes, which tend to be sentimentalized and contrasted with the corrupt and ambitious upper classes. Nowhere is this conflict of values more apparent than in the juxtaposition of the Topolinos, the stonecutters, and the denizens of Rome.

Critical Context

The Agony and the Ecstasy, perhaps Stone’s most acclaimed novel, is a worthy successor to Lust for Life (1934), his first venture into the artistic world, and the two novels contain many of the same themes. Stone’s other novels concern, for the most part, political figures as diverse as Eugene V. Debs and Mary Todd Lincoln; he returned to the world of art in Depths of Glory (1985), a novel about the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. In his genre, the biographical novel, Stone has no American equal in quality or quantity, though Andre Maurois is a worthy foreign rival.

The lack of competition is understandable, given the demands of the genre and the lack of critical appreciation for it, despite its popular acceptance. First, the research is formidable, for the biographical novelist must know not only his subject but also his times, including history, religion, politics, science, and the arts. Second, because they believe that less imagination and creativity are required in “history,” critics value fiction over fact. As Stone points out, however, a biographical novel is not simply history or biography; a biographical novelist must select and shape his material to give it dramatic structure and theme. In The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone eliminates historical characters, alters them, adds fictional ones, and has them reappear so as to give unity, focus, and theme to his novel. Given the massive amount of material that was at his disposal, Stone’s novel is a significant achievement.

Bibliography

Clements, Robert J. “The Artist as Hero.” Saturday Review 64 (March 18, 1961): 18. Clements finds that Stone’s Michelangelo is “an idealized version, purged not only of ambisexuality, but of the egotism, faultfinding, harsh irony, and ill temper that we know were characteristic of Michelangelo.”

Current Biography 50 (October, 1989): 59. An obituary of Stone, including details of his life and career.

Golant, Susan K. “The Agony, the Ecstasy, and Irving Stone.” Writer’s Digest 61 (March, 1981): 26-29. A profile of Stone and commentary on his writings.

Stieg, Lewis, comp. Irving Stone: A Bibliography. Los Angeles: Friends of the Libraries, University of Southern California, 1973. A listing of Stone’s novels, biographies, and other writings.

Stone, Irving. “The Biographical Novel.” The Writer 75 (January, 1962): 9-13. Stone discusses his approaches to fictionalized biographies.