Grace and Labour

This chapter discusses the work and poetic correspondence (1538–1547) of Michelangelo and Colonna. It shows that both eschew the kind of grace espoused by Castiglione and Pietro Bembo and perfected by Raphael and Ariosto. Instead, Michelangelo and Colonna cultivate an image of the artist as hardworking and intense. Their desire to reveal — rather than conceal — the labour behind their art can be compared in the Pietàs through which the artist and the poet articulate an alternative aesthetics of grace: one that resists humanist connotations, criticises courtly abuses of the term, and promotes a more Christian vision of the artist as the receiver rather than the giver of what is essentially God's gift. Restored here to the domain of religious experience, grace acts as a reminder that art and literature should praise God, not the artist, and in so doing reflects an age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Italy.