双语+MP3|美国学生艺术史47 四合一

 
图46-2就是号称世界上最优秀的骑马雕像——委罗基奥的《科莱奥尼骑马像》。 
47 FOUR IN ONE四合一
 
TO-DAY there is no famous sculptor who is also a famous painter. But in 1475 was born a man who became world famous as a sculptor, as a painter, and as an architect. He also was a poet and wrote good verses that are still published. Not only that, but he is considered the greatest artist of the Renaissance. Many people call him the greatest sculptor since Phidias. 
The name of this wonderful genius was Buonarroti. Have you ever heard before of Buonarroti? Very few people know him by that name. He is known to us as Michelangelo and even this name is written in three different ways—Michelangelo, Michael Angelo, and Michelagnolo. Michelangelo was trained as a sculptor in marble and he always spoke of himself as a sculptor in spite of the fact that his most famous works are the paintings in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As a boy he carved a statue in snow that greatly pleased one of the famous Medici family, the Duke of Florence. The boy was permitted to study the old Greek and Roman statues collected by the duke, who later gave him work to do. 
When Michelangelo was still a young man, he carved in marble a wonderful statue called the Pietà. This piece of work shows Mary the mother of Jesus holding her dead Son across her lap after His crucifixion. Some people like it better than Michelangelo’s other works because it is calmer, more quiet and tranquil, than the statues he did afterward. 
Some time after making the Pietà, Michelangelo was able to do a piece of work that made him famous throughout Italy. There lay in Florence a huge block of marble that an earlier sculptor had begun to work on, but had been unable to finish because the marble was so long and narrow. 
Michelangelo offered to make a statue out of this block of marble. He was given permission to carve it and went to work. The bloek was set up on end and inclosed with a fence so Michelangelo could work in peace. In three years he had finished. People came in crowds to see what he had done. 
It was a colossal statue eighteen feet high, showing David with his sling ready to fight Goliath the giant. Strange to say, every one in Florence called the statue “The Giant,” although it was of a man who killed a giant. It is gigantic in size. It weighs nine tons. 
Michelangelo was a very careful student of anatomy. Anatomy is the study of the muscles and other parts of the body. He studied the bodies of people and even cut up dead bodies so he could learn about the muscles under the skin that would make a statue look lifelike. He knew so much about muscles that he carved some of his statues in strained and unusual positions, showing the proper play of muscles under the skin. 
For the tomb of one of the popes, Michelangelo carved a statue of Moses. Of course he did not know what Moses really looked like. He had no pictures of Moses to go by, so the Moses he carved is the sculptor’s idea of what a man like Moses ought to look like. Michelangelo carved horns on his Moses! You can see them in the picture. You remember, perhaps, how the Bible says the face of Moses shone with light when he came down from Mount Sinai? In early Italian translations of the Bible, the rays of light coming from the head of Moses were called by the translators “horns.” And for this reason people of Michelangelo’s time thought Moses had horns. The statue is forceful, majestic, powerful. All who see it remember it. Travelers have said it is like seeing Niagara Falls or the ocean or a storm at sea. 
 
No.47　MOSES（《摩西》）　MICHELANGELO（米开朗基罗　制） 
As famous as Michelangelo’s Moses are the groups of statues that he made for the tombs of two members of the Medici family. These tombs are in the Medicis’ private chapel, in the church of San Lorenzo. Michelangelo placed two figures, a man and a woman, on each tomb. Above these, in a niche in the wall, was placed a statue of the man whose tomb it was. One of these portrait statues is known as the Thinker and the other as the Warrior. The two figures on one of the tombs are known as Morning and Evening and those on the other as Day and Night. 
Michelangelo lived to be eighty-nine and died in 1564. 
Strange to say, sculpture got worse instead of better after Michelangelo, and it was many years before it began again to improve.