Last year, I was invited to give a talk for Brazilian students initiating their path in design. After the talk, a question marked me so much that one year later, it resonated with something I noticed on a visit to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

“How do you know your work is good to go? And when is time to call a design done?” a girl asked. I answered her, listing things like experience, gut, pal reviews, deadlines, and lately concluding that philosophically speaking, works are never done anyway. As anything in life is, I believe. Everything is constantly changing and may evolve.

Returning to my experience in the Vatican, the last time there, I spotted an inscription that I never noticed before on the famous Pietà sculpture. Suddenly, I discovered I was looking for Michelangelo’s only signature, right across the bust of the Madonna. But that seemingly innocuous detail sparked in me a profound realization rooted in ancient wisdom.

The engraving on the fabric band crossing Mary’s dress displays: MICHAEL.A[N]GELVS BONAROTVS FLORENT[INVS] FACIEBAT, or something as “The Florentine Michelangelo Buonarroti does it.”

There are numerous studies on the use of the imperfect tense of the verb. The question that scholars raised is why he opted for the indefinite faciebat instead of a simpler use, fecit. The explanation was found in a passage by Agnolo Poliziano, who recounted Pliny the Elder.

Precisely in the preface of his Naturalis Historia, Pliny explains that the most significant Greek artists signed with the imperfect (for instance, Polycletus faciebat), “as if in their art there was always something to complete, and therefore asked for forgiveness for every defect that remained in their works, never perfect and always perfectible.”

My answer to that girl was obviously influenced by the philosophy I read, much of it coming from the Stoic Greeks. But it is always great to see a circle coming full here. So, not only the great Greeks would consider their work hardly done, but also brilliant masters such as those from the Renaissance, as Michelangelo and Leonardo, believed the same.

This is definitely encouraging, but as I want this thought to reach and inspire other people, it’s time to call it done and put an end to it.

Sources

Michelangelo’s signature imperfection
Stefania Pasti, “Michelangelo and the signature of the Pietà: an imperfect, a nun and an omelette”