Michelangelo’s Snowman

In January of 1494, Florence, Italy was covered in snow. Piero de Medici, a wealthy and powerful member of the Florence community, commissioned a young Michelangelo to make him a work of art... in the snow. 

As the story goes, Michelangelo proceeded to build the greatest snowman in the history of the world. The story of the towering figure in the snow was talked about by the people of Florence, by historians and by universities across the world. However, to my knowledge, it’s never been discussed within the context of being a modern day creative professional. 

No one alive today knows what Michelangelo’s snowman looked like. For some, the entire enterprise might seem like a futile waste of talent. Why create something beautiful that’s designed to disappear? But after working with creative professionals for the past 20 years, it is precisely this mystery that makes the story so wonderful. If we pay attention, there are some profound lessons buried within it.

1) The creative industry makes snowmen every day. It’s your choice how you approach an impermanent work of art. Creative professionals understand the concept of creating something for weeks to see it live for a short time and then disappear forever. It happens every single day. It’s easy to see how that can impact our motivations in developing new concepts and experiences for consumers and clients; a sense of creative fatalism can creep in, which affects so many crucial aspects of any given project. And once it sets in, each new “snowman” gets a little less interesting, a little less meaningful. During the snowstorm of 1494, other artists were also commissioned to make works of art in the snow (as a side note, the tradition that started in 1494 continues in Florence today) and many of them probably made great works of art. However, I feel confident that a few of them chose to look at that assignment as beneath them, as something that would disappear in a week, so why bother putting a ton of effort into it.

And so, 524 years later, nobody is talking about the work those artists created. With constantly changing media consumption habits, obsessive focus on analytics, and the world fighting through a global pandemic which has altered all of our working habits, there have never been more excuses to avoid the sublime and transitory joys of sculpting in metaphorical snow. But my hope is that this simple story will remind you of the power of your choice and why it’s critical to approach each new project with the ambition and focus of a world class artist, like Michelangelo. 

2) Each new assignment teaches us something. It is our choice to learn from it.  Artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote the book  “Life of Michelangelo.” In the book he wrote, “It is said that Piero de’ Medici, who had been left heir to his father Lorenzo, often used to send for Michelangelo, with whom he had been intimate for many years, when he wanted to buy antiques such as cameos and other engraved stones. And one winter, when a great deal of snow fell in Florence, he had him make in his courtyard a statue of snow, which was very beautiful… .” What Vasari didn’t know at the time, but later the New York Times and art historians learned, was that Michelangelo used the assignment in the snow as a dry run for sculpting David. 

That’s right, less than 7 years later, in 1501, Michelangelo produced one of the single greatest masterpieces in the history of mankind. What did Michelangelo learn from the frozen version of David? Was it big enough? Did the frozen David’s eyes look towards Rome, with a warning glare like the statue did? There’s not enough historical documentation to know,  but one can only assume that Michelangelo used the commission of the snowman to teach himself about what the experience would be like a few years later, after two famous artists before him failed in completing the granite sculpture. Most creative people I know are born with innate curiosity. That curiosity is usually responsible for the development of brilliant creative solutions. What separates the great creative professional from the merely good is that ability to maintain an equal curiosity about their own library of experiments, failures, and false starts.  The best people I have worked with in my career are those who have the ability to look back in that library and learn equally from their success and failures to make their newest work the best it can be. 

Again, it’s a choice to think about what you’ve learned from previous work, but it’s a choice that has profound consequences on the trajectory of a creative career. 

Here is my sincere wish for all of you,  I hope you can find a moment to deposit  the story of Michelangelo and the world's greatest snowmen deep inside your creative psyche. Let it lay dormant in there for weeks, months, maybe even years. But when the day comes that you feel weary and confused, doubting  the value of whatever creative assignment is in front of you, think back to this story. Think back to the magic of one of the world's greatest artists, working day and night to bring his work of art to life only to watch it all melt away just days later. My guess is that Michelangelo wasn’t worried about analytics, or the existential value of his creative purpose. He was focused then on what still holds true 500 years later: We learn from every creative project we undertake, and how much we learn is wholly dependent on how we see the opportunity. Here’s to the artists who understand that impermanence is a gift. Here’s to building legendary snowmen.