Michelangelo's mother fell ill and died when he was a child. His father sent the boy to live with a stonecutter and his family. "Along with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer," he wrote. Michelangelo always considered himself a sculptor rather than a painter. But he could not refuse the commission of Pope Julius II to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The commission stretched into a four year labor of incredible scope, beauty, skill, and torment. Hung beneath the ceiling for hours at a time, forever spattered with paint, Michelangelo became contorted, “like a cat from Lombardi.” But the physical indignities paled in comparison to Michelangelo’s fear that he was unequal to the task at hand: "My painting is dead," he lamented in a letter to a friend, "Defend it for me, Giovanni. Protect my honor. I am in the wrong place – I am not a painter."
The song references, in part, Michelangelo’s poem The Lover and The Sculptor.
lyrics
Did she carry her boy? With what weight did he lie? Inanimate stone, dust in the gloom.
I'm a Lombard cat, just a bat on his back.
Has he done it again? Has he punished my pride? With the neck of a bull, and a killer's hands.
I'm a Lombard cat, just a bat on his back. I'm a martyr skinned, no more than a belly with chin.
The good I seek, the pain from which I fly, divinely proud and fair, are hid in thee. My art would fail my heart's desire; no breath her lips to sigh.
Into madness he roams, untouched by its charms. Blackened orb of the night, wordless crash on the sands.
I'm a Lombard cat, just a bat on his back. I'm a martyr skinned, no more than a belly with chin. I'm a counterweight, a mere tug on his freight. I'm a Lombard cat, just a bat on his back.
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