66 pages • 2-hour read
Oil and Marble: A Novel of Leonardo and Michelangelo
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Themes
Artistic Rivalry as Motivation
Oil and Marble is, as the title suggests, a novel about artistic rivalry. The narrative centers on the intense rivalry between Michelangelo and Leonardo, yet the novel’s setting shows how theirs isn’t the first artistic rivalry in Renaissance Florence, a city that prided itself on artistic expression. For example, the competition to design the doors of the Florence baptistry led to Ghiberti’s designing the Gates of Paradise, yet more consequential was how this competition ignited a lifelong rivalry between Ghiberti and Brunelleschi. Later, when the city held a competition to design the dome for the cathedral opposite the baptistry, Ghiberti again came up against Brunelleschi. This time, Brunelleschi triumphed, and he reshaped the Florentine skyline as well as how people thought about architecture. The competition fueled the men to literally reach heights previously considered impossible.
The rivalry between Leonardo and Michelangelo is set in the shadow of this history of fruitful artistic rivalry. Both artists not only visit Brunelleschi and Ghiberti’s creations but are explicitly aware of the folklore surrounding the competition between the two men. That a rivalry should profit both artists, then, is a fixed part of the Florentine national mythos. The traditional rivalry provides a foundation on which Leonardo and Michelangelo’s rivalry emerges, motivating them by drawing on the examples of history that show the benefits of artistic rivalry.
Leonardo and Michelangelo are similar in some ways. They’re aggrieved artists who use their art as a way to assert their identity in a world they feel has marginalized them. Michelangelo is in a rivalry not only with Leonardo but with those (like his father) who don’t believe that stone carving is a true art. Meanwhile, Leonardo is in a rivalry with his traumatic youth, attempting to show the world that he has worth after his father abandoned and ignored him as an illegitimate son. While they might be similar, Leonardo and Michelangelo see only the differences that separate them from one another. Michelangelo resents Leonardo’s fine clothes and handsome features, while Leonardo looks down on Michelangelo’s rough manners and lack of social etiquette. Though fueled by the same passions, both are keen to differentiate themselves from one another to subconsciously bolster their rivalry. Each of them deliberately ignores their similarities to assure himself that he’s the one in the right and that will emerge triumphant from the rivalry.
The rivalry leads to Leonardo painting a portrait of Mona Lisa and to Michelangelo carving David from the Duccio Stone. As noted in the Coda, both artworks are among the most famous in human history. In the novel, both artworks are immediately adored. However, the crowd’s adoration is secondary to how each artist experiences the other’s art for the first time. When he sees the Mona Lisa portrait, Michelangelo considers fleeing the city, afraid that he’ll never match Leonardo’s technical mastery. When Leonardo sees the David statue, he’s struck by Michelangelo’s ability to invest himself so personally in the work, knowing that he could never do the same. In this way, both artists conclude their rivalry by recognizing the brilliance that differentiates them. They’re functionally opposite sides of the same coin, but both are worthwhile. Mutual respect resolves the rivalry.
Fittingly, no words can express this respect, so Leonardo illustrates the cathartic resolution by demonstrating artistic acknowledgement: He positions himself to sketch the David statue, showing Michelangelo that he’s ready to learn from him. Michelangelo accepts the offer, pleased that the master has elevated him to a position of mutual respect. This respect validates the artistic rivalry as a form of motivation.
The Need for Objectivity
Leonardo isn’t only a talented artist and inventor. Through his discussions with the other artists in Florence and with his guests in his studio, he also shows that he can eloquently speak about the philosophy of art. He often discusses the importance of distance and scientific objectivity, telling anyone who will listen about the need to consider subjects without emotional investment. At one point, he’s even surprised when someone mentions how closely such an idea is tied to the public perception of Leonardo. His surprise suggests that the discussion of distance and objectivity is about more than just art.
Leonardo expresses the idea of objectivity in his lofty, academic manner, yet he derives the idea from a more personal desire to protect himself. Leonardo’s history as an illegitimate son is a constant bugbear, even if he rarely mentions it in public. He nurtures a lifelong resentment, not only of his father’s coldness but of how much this coldness hurt him. Leonardo never wants to experience such trauma again, so his preaching about the need for objectivity is partly a defense mechanism. Leonardo talks so often and so passionately about why he refuses emotion because he knows all too well how painful such emotion can be. To protect himself from feeling abandoned and worthless, he uses his philosophy of objectivity as a shield against vulnerability. By dressing up his fear of vulnerability in artistic pretensions of objectivity, Leonardo believes that he can protect himself while bolstering his reputation as an academic, insulating himself from future pain behind a facade of objectivity.
Whereas Leonardo’s public persona is a meticulously crafted shield against memories of childhood trauma, Michelangelo lacks any such pretension. He’s just as talented an artist as Leonardo and shares many of the same feelings of marginalization and resentment. However, Michelangelo embodies pure subjectivity. He feels everything intensely and can’t hide his emotions. While their public personas differ dramatically, Leonardo and Michelangelo simply have contradictory reactions to a similar kind of pain. Leonardo masks his emotions behind objectivity, while Michelangelo presents himself in an unadorned demonstration of subjectivity. This subjectiveness is evident in how Michelangelo creates his art. Completely contrary to Leonardo’s objectivity, Michelangelo turns every artwork into an expression of his experience. The Mary in his Pieta, for example, is remarkably young because Michelangelo assembled her from his memories of his late mother. Leonardo mocks Michelangelo’s depiction of the young Mary, partly because he can’t imagine how anyone might bare their soul so vulnerably. He eventually understands the merit of such subjectivity when he sees the David statue as a rendition of Michelangelo’s subjective self.
While he’ll never make himself as vulnerable as Michelangelo, Leonardo turns his need for objectivity into a benefit as well as a defense mechanism. In painting Mona Lisa, Leonardo chooses to express his love for her by giving her the one thing that society has always denied her: recognition. Mona Lisa tells him about her fear that she’s never seen as her true self; she’s always a reflected identity, seen as a wife, a mother, or even the subject of a painting, rather than her authentic self. Empathizing with her feeling of alienation, Leonardo uses his mastery of art to gift Mona Lisa what she really wants. His painting becomes the epitome of not only the need for objectivity but also the benefits of objectivity. His brushstrokes are so minuscule that viewers don’t see the artist’s influence. Likewise, he omits the typical props used in portraiture, which would identify Mona Lisa as her husband’s wife, for example. Leonardo strips away the traditions and technicalities of portraiture to present a truly objective rendition of Mona Lisa to the world, providing her with recognition at last. Objectivity becomes a gift rather than a necessity, something Leonardo uses to show his love instead of protecting himself from pain.
Patriotism, Family, and Duty
Leonardo and Michelangelo both have complicated, often contradictory thoughts about the intersection of patriotism, family, and duty. While Leonardo’s journey is one in which he must learn the importance of duty, Michelangelo’s journey is one in which he must learn how to balance the competing duties to his family and his city with his duty to himself as an artist.
As a boy, Leonardo felt abandoned and betrayed by his father, who wouldn’t recognize his illegitimate son and later publicly denounced Leonardo’s unconventional sexual orientation. This imbued Leonardo with cynicism toward for authority; he feels no sense of duty to his hometown of Florence, for example, because his childhood trauma made him wary of investing himself emotionally in any institution, be it his city or his family. Armed with this cynical disregard for duty, he feels unencumbered by any loyalty to his hometown. In the opening of the novel, for example, he works in other cities, often for people who have ill intentions toward his hometown. Leonardo’s only loyalty is to himself and to the patron currently financing his endeavors. He doesn’t comprehend how other people can’t accept his cynical pragmatism. When he returns to Florence, for example, he’s stung by the suggestion that he’s a traitor. Working for Cesare Borgia made sense to Leonardo, but people like Mona Lisa saw him as betraying his hometown for personal gain. Leonardo’s journey is, in part, learning to put aside his cynicism and learn a sense of duty. His father’s death is a watershed moment, as is the collapse of the levees and the destruction of Florence. Leonardo may never become a true patriot or even a family man, but he comes to recognize his duty to people other than himself. His chastening loss of ego following the flood and his emotional abandonment of childhood trauma following his father’s death allow him to detach himself from his self-absorbed cynicism to care about others.
As much as in art, Michelangelo’s experiences of patriotism, family, and duty mirror Leonardo’s experiences. Whereas Leonardo disregards any sense of patriotic duty, Michelangelo feels devoted to his city. He returns from Rome with a mission: to make Florence accept him. Unlike Leonardo, he never considers working with foreign states or individuals deemed enemies of Florence. Such an idea could never cross his mind because he’s so invested in his romanticized ideal of patriotic duty that he can’t imagine himself defying Florence. Like Leonardo, Michelangelo has a difficult relationship with his family. He responds quite differently, however. Whereas Leonardo’s childhood trauma imbues him with cynicism, Michelangelo is so devoted to his family that nothing they do drives him away. Even after his father disowns him and his brother betrays him, Michelangelo feels a sense of duty to his family. He gives them every penny he earns from his art, even though they don’t consider it a worthy pastime, and endures financial hardship out of a sense of duty to a family that doesn’t value him. Michelangelo even gives up his life’s work to repair the family home. Eventually, however, a competing sense of duty (a patriotic debt to heal the Florentine civic spirit) drags him back to his work.
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