What is the meaning behind Michangelo's I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free?

Answer 1

I think he was responding to inquiries about how or what inspired him to produce his work. I think also he was engaging in a little cynicism and hyperbole, perhaps being tired of the question. He may also have been alluding to Platonic Idealism. In any event, the statement makes more sense when looking at a finished piece rather than imagining an unsculpted stone. Once the Pieta was finished, for example, it is dreamy to contemplate the fact, and indeed it is a fact, that the sculpture was in a sense 'there' to uncover, from the moment that the marble took its final form in the earth. But I am sure that sculptors make certain decisions while in the process of sculpting; they do not imagine that they are forbidden to make 6 pleats in a draped garment instead of 7, when planning part of a piece that has not yet even been 'roughed out' of the stone.

Incidentally, I believe, unless this is myth, that the Pieta was sculpted from an unusually odd-shaped rough piece of marble. Certainly, Michelangelo would have had the thought, when seeing the stone, that it would accommodate the configuration that the stone inspired. But this would be as much a result of the way the stone fell out of the quarry as it was the result of the master's genius.

He also produced some nearly mystical pieces by leaving parts of them 'hidden' in roughed-out, unfinished stone. It is a brilliant device; as close to sculpting mist or cloud out of marble as you can get.