Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Michelangelo’s Dying Slave is one of two figures - the other is the Rebellious Slave - that he carved in Rome between about 1513 and 1516 for the tomb of Pope Julius II. The tomb project consumed thirty years of Michelangelo’s life and was never completed; the two slaves were among the few figures he finished, and they were eventually given by the artist to the banker Roberto Strozzi, who took them to France in 1550.
The Dying Slave is not dying in any obvious sense. He stands with his weight on one leg, his head fallen back, his right arm drawn up behind his head and his left hand pressing against his chest. A band of cloth crosses his torso and a small monkey-like figure is half-carved at his feet. The pose is one of surrender rather than agony, and Michelangelo left the surface deliberately unfinished in places, so that the figure seems to be emerging from the block.
The slaves were among the first works by Michelangelo to be seen in France, and they had an enormous influence on French sculpture. They entered the royal collection and were moved to the Louvre in 1794. Their unfinished quality - the non-finito - has fascinated sculptors from Rodin onward, who saw in it a record of the struggle between idea and material.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was a Florentine sculptor, painter, architect and poet, and the most influential artist of the Italian Renaissance. He carved the David at twenty-six, painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512, and spent his last decades as architect of St Peter’s. He believed sculpture was the art of removing everything that was not the figure, and he left more unfinished marbles than finished ones.
Julius II’s tomb was meant to be a free-standing monument with more than forty figures, and Michelangelo spent years quarrying marble at Carrara for it. When the Pope diverted him to the Sistine ceiling, the project shrank repeatedly. The two Louvre slaves were carved for an early version and were never installed. Their arrival in France in 1550 made Michelangelo’s work known at first hand to French artists.
Denon Wing · Ground Floor · Italian Sculpture, Room 403
The Louvre is divided into three wings — Denon, Sully and Richelieu — reached from the hall beneath the glass pyramid.
Other pieces from the same artist, period or type of object.
