Portraits: Michelangelo Was No Beauty

July 21, 2008 -- Michelangelo Buonarroti, one of the greatest figures of western civilization, was an ugly and rather unclean man, according to a series of rare, contemporary portraits and writings on show in Florence.

View a slideshow of Michelangelo portraits.

Running at the museum of the Casa Buonarroti until the end of the month, the exhibition, "The Face of Michelangelo," mercilessly reveals that the artist did not use himself as a model for his celebration of male beauty when he sculpted David.

View video about the Michelangelo exhibit.

Art historians have long known that Michelangelo wasn't exactly handsome, but this is the first time that an exhibition focuses on the physical likeness of the Tuscan master as well as on rumors of his horrible personal habits and lack of hygiene.

"Movies have always portrayed Michelangelo as an attractive, good-looking man. On the contrary, he wasn't handsome at all," exhibition curator Pina Ragionieri, the director of Casa Buonarroti, a house the artist bought in 1508, told Discovery News. "Most of all, he was perfectly aware of his ugliness and did not want to be portrayed. Indeed, he left no documented self-portrait."

Portraits by contemporary artists, along with an unmerciful description by the 16th century painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari, are also on display. All the works leave no doubt about Michelangelo's reluctance to pose for portraits.

Disfigured at age 17 when a fellow student smashed his nose, Michelangelo had small eyes, large ears, thin lips and a forked, thin beard.

Nevertheless, over the centuries since his death, Michelangelo's image improved significantly and his ugliness almost disappeared. In posthumous portraits, the artist appeared elegantly dressed, with a penetrating gaze and imposing presence.

"These images are testament to myth and do not necessarily show the person as he looked in his lifetime. The individual assumes a more refined face, more elegant clothes, more courtly accoutrements, or a more stately pose," Columbia University art historian Lynn Catterson told Discovery News.