Michelangelo

by Miles J. Unger

  This improbable tale is obviously a justification after the fact of a move that could be interpreted not only as cowardly but as disloyal. Though he was never close to Piero, Michelangelo owed the Medici a great deal, and bolting the city just as their fortunes were beginning to turn seems, at the very least, ungrateful. Indeed, Michelangelo had some reason to be concerned at the sudden downfall of a family with which he was strongly identified. As it turned out, it’s unlikely his life would have been threatened, since the revolution was largely bloodless, but things might have gotten more than a bit uncomfortable. Given the fact that there was little keeping him at home, acting on a sudden urge to see the world might have seemed the most sensible course.

  Little is known of Michelangelo’s journey, particularly his brief stay in Venice, one of the glittering capitals of Europe and a city famous for its wealth and beauty. One intriguing possibility is that while in town he paid a visit to the Church of the Servi, where the sculptor Tullio Lombardo was at work on a magnificent funerary monument to Doge Andrea Vendramin. Among the statues he carved for the tomb were depictions of Adam and Eve, the first life-size nudes in marble since antiquity. It is likely that Michelangelo at least stopped by to take a look at the most talked-about sculptural ensemble in Venice. When Michelangelo set out to carve his even more revolutionary David, he almost certainly had Lombardo’s example in the back of his mind.

  After a few days in La Serenissima he was back on the road again, though not apparently in any hurry to return to his native land. While stopping in Bologna, Michelangelo attracted the attention of one of its leading citizens, Gianfrancesco Aldovrandi. According to most accounts, the two met while Michelangelo and his traveling companions were detained for not possessing the proper paperwork to enter the city. Hearing the youth’s Florentine accent, and perhaps learning of his connection with the great Lorenzo Il Magnifico, Aldovrandi intervened on his behalf and invited the sculptor to stay with him in his palace. The purity of Michelangelo’s Italian particularly appealed to him since he was an aficionado of Dante ’s poetry. During the months he spent at Aldovrandi’s palace, Michelangelo was often called on to read aloud from The Divine Comedy so that the master of the house might enjoy the sound of the verses coming from the mouth of one who spoke the same Tuscan dialect as his hero.

  Michelangelo remained in Bologna for almost a year, enjoying the hospitality of a merchant prince whose wealth and cultivation reminded the young sculptor of his first patron. Though the Aldovrandi Palace could not compare to the cosmopolitan court of Lorenzo de ’ Medici, his host proved to be a generous and congenial patron. And while he was neither as rich nor as powerful as Il Magnifico, he did all he could to further the budding sculptor’s career. He even managed to secure for him a commission to contribute three statuettes to the tomb of St. Dominic, an ensemble begun in the fourteenth century by Niccolò Pisano.

  The three small statues—one of St. Proclus, another of St. Petronius, and the third a kneeling angel holding a candelabra—are not particularly distinguished. One would be hard-pressed to single them out from the other figures on the tomb, though the young St. Proclus exhibits a certain vehemence that, with hindsight, hints at the taut concentration of the David or the terribilità of the Moses. The fact that the figures are clothed does not help, since Michelangelo had not yet mastered the art of draping a body in such a way as to reveal its structural logic and heighten its dramatic impact.

  Perhaps the most important result of his Bologna sojourn was the opportunity it afforded to make a close study of the sculpture of Jacopo della Quercia, an artist whose massive, athletic figures strongly impressed the young artist. Michelangelo’s debt to his early-fifteenth-century predecessor is evident particularly in the Sistine Ceiling, where the scenes of The Creation of Adam and The Temptation and Expulsion contain strong echoes of the reliefs della Quercia carved for the Church of San Petronio. The qualities that appealed to Michelangelo in della Quercia’s work were similar to those he had already gleaned from Masaccio’s paintings—the ability to tell a powerful, dramatic story through a few monumental figures.

  According to Condivi, Michelangelo’s stay in Bologna was cut short when a local sculptor accused the Florentine of stealing work that should have gone to native artisans and threatened to beat him unless he left town. This was neither the first nor the last time Michelangelo provoked a violent outburst in a less talented colleague. The frequency with which such clashes took place suggests the arrogance that marred not only his relationships with his fellow artists but with patrons who found him insubordinate and difficult to work with.

  Returning to Florence in the winter of 1495, he found conditions for an aspiring artist no more promising than they had been before his departure. Following the revolt against Piero and a monthlong French occupation, Florentines were ready to reclaim the liberties they had lost during the years of Medici ascendance. The secretive committees packed with Medici cronies were abolished and power was vested in the new Great Council, a body of about 3,000 citizens with executive and legislative power. But the dominant figure in the city remained Savonarola, who had shepherded the city through the crisis with both wisdom and courage.

  A sign of how drastically things had changed in the months Michelangelo was away was the fact that the junior branch of the former ruling family—descended from Lorenzo’s great uncle—changed its name from Medici to the more politically correct Popolano. It was one of these Medici cousins who next took on the role of Michelangelo’s benefactor. Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de ’ Medici was almost as remarkable a patron of the arts and sciences as his more famous cousin, having earlier purchased from Botticelli his famous Primavera and Birth of Venus and launched the explorer Amerigo Vespucci on his remarkable career.VIII

  Despite the prevailing mood of austerity imposed by Savonarola, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, wishing to encourage a young man of such evident talent, commissioned two works from the sculptor. The statue of St. John the Baptist was unobjectionable even by the strict standards of the Prior of San Marco. The second commission, a life-size Sleeping Cupid, might have proved more controversial, since it was exactly the kind of pagan work against which Savonarola railed in his sermons. But for a man who already had hanging at his villa in Castello the delightfully sensual Primavera and Birth of Venus, a naked Cupid was apparently not deemed unduly provocative, as long as it remained hidden from the public so that its charms would not distract the common people from their religious duties.

  Little is known of the missing St. John, but the Cupid—described by Condivi as “a god of Love, between six and seven years of age, lying asleep”—has prompted a good deal of curiosity because of the crucial role it played in shaping Michelangelo’s career. Less important than the work itself, which was probably based on an antique original in the Medici Garden, was the clever coup de théâtre that brought the young sculptor to the attention of the greatest collectors and connoisseurs in Italy. According to Condivi, the ruse was actually initiated by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco who, after seeing the nearly completed work, made a rather peculiar proposal. “If you can manage to make it look as if it had been buried under the earth I will forward it to Rome,” he told Michelangelo, “[where] it will be taken for an antique and you will sell it much better.” It is possible that Lorenzo simply wished to help out his protégé, who was having a hard time finding commissions in Savonarolan Florence. More plausible is that the idea was originally Michelangelo’s, and that he invented the conversation to show he had the great man’s blessing for what might otherwise appear to be a self-serving trick.

  Indeed, Michelangelo was an old hand at perpetrating such frauds, having made copies of old-master drawings that he “antiqued” with smoke and passed off as originals. While Vasari insists that he did this only because “he admired them for the excellence of their art and sought to surpass them in his own practice,” the fact is that he loved tripping up so-called experts, particularly those who insisted that only artists centur
ies in their graves could do anything worthwhile. If he could fool those snobs, he would prove not only that a modern artist could compete with the ancients but would win the renown he so desperately craved.

  Of course this could happen only if the fraud was discovered. The Cupid was sold in Rome as an antique for the handsome sum of 200 ducats to Raffaele Riario, Cardinal di San Giorgio, a connoisseur who had already amassed one of the world’s best collections of ancient sculpture. He bought the piece from a somewhat shady dealer named Baldassare del Milanese who, perhaps suspecting the fraudulent nature of the work, sent only 30 ducats to Michelangelo and pocketed the difference. How the forgery was initially discovered is unclear, though it seems likely that Michelangelo was involved since his intention was to advertise his skill to potential patrons, a goal that would have been thwarted had it gone undetected.

  According to Condivi’s account, the Cardinal di San Giorgio was initially angry at “being made a fool,” and, hoping to discover the author of the hoax, “sent one of his gentlemen [to Florence], who pretended to be looking for a sculptor to do some work in Rome.” Vasari scolds the cardinal for his lack of discernment, saying “he did not recognize the value of the work, which consisted in its perfection: for modern works, if only they be excellent, are as good as the ancient.” When the agent turned up at the sculptor’s house posing as a potential customer, Michelangelo readily admitted his role. (Years later, the great patron of the arts Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, remembered the excitement surrounding the Cupid and pursued it for her own collection, calling the statuette “without a peer among the works of modern times.”)

  In the short run, the exposure of Michelangelo’s little ruse cost him some much-needed cash, but failing in his immediate goal, he gained far more in the long run. Apparently, the cardinal’s pique was not too severe, since it was quickly replaced—as Michelangelo surely intended—by admiration for the man who’d managed to pull off such a stunt. “Now this event brought so much reputation to Michelangelo,” Vasari recalled, “that he was straightaway summoned to Rome and engaged by the Cardinal of San Giorgio. . . .” This was exactly the result Michelangelo had hoped for all along. With customers in short supply in Savonarolan Florence, the prospect of seeking his fortune on the grander stage of Rome proved irresistible. And so in June of 1496, the young Florentine sculptor, burning with ambition and his head filled with as-yet-unrealized masterpieces, passed through the Porta San Piero Gattolino and out onto the road that led to Rome.

  It was with some apprehension that the young man left his native land behind and set out for the teeming metropolis, but he had every reason to be hopeful. Not only had the Cardinal di San Giorgio effectively promised him a major commission once he arrived, but there were plenty of other princes of the Church, cultivated men with deep pockets, who could supply him with years of gainful employment. If all went well, he might even come to the attention of the pope himself, one of the few men in the world with the resources and thirst for public display that matched Michelangelo’s own ambition.

  * * *

  I. Florentines distinguished themselves from their kinsmen by adding their father’s name to their own. Thus, Michelangelo was Michelangelo di Lodovico—Michelangelo, son of Lodovico—while Lodovico himself was Lodovico di Lionardo—Lodovico, son of Lionardo.

  II. According to the Florentine calendar, the year began on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation marking the moment of Christ’s conception.

  III. Michelangelo’s older brother, Lionardo, was born in 1473.

  IV. Settignano also produced at least two famous sculptors, Antonio Rossellino (c. 1427–78) and Desiderio da Settignano (c. 1430–64), demonstrating that the gulf separating the lowly stonecutter from the famous sculptor was not always that wide.

  V. The florin was the Florentine money of account and worth about the same amount as the commonly used Venetian ducat. While it is difficult to fix an exact equivalent in terms of today’s purchasing power, it is clear that 8 florins per year was hardly a lavish sum. A skilled artisan might expect to earn about 40 to 50 florins per annum, while a high government official like the chancellor took home a salary of about 130. When Michelangelo was contracted to paint the Sistine Ceiling, he hired assistants at the rate of 10 ducats per month, and when he signed the initial contract for the tomb of Pope Julius II, he was to be paid the princely sum of 10,000 gold ducats. But given the impoverished state of the Buonarroti clan, even 8 florins a year helped.

  VI. The frescoes he painted for Santa Trinità, depicting scenes from the life of St. Francis, and in Santa Maria Novella (on which the young Michelangelo may well have worked), depicting the lives of the Virgin and St. John the Baptist, provide a delightful look into the fashions and mores of wealthy Florentines at the end of the fifteenth century.

  VII. The frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel are among the masterpieces of early Renaissance art. Standing before these works, with their compelling narratives told through a few monumental and expressive figures, it is easy to see Michelangelo’s debt to the older artist. Masaccio’s influence can be seen most clearly by comparing Masaccio’s Expulsion with Michelangelo’s version of the same story from the Sistine Ceiling.

  VIII. Amerigo’s famous letter to Pierfrancesco describing his voyages along the coast of South America was an international sensation, causing the mapmaker Waldseemuller to name the newly discovered continent after him rather than Columbus.

  II

  Pietà

  The said Michelangelo will make this work within one year, and . . . it will be the most beautiful marble that there is today in Rome, and . . . no other living master will do better.

  —Contract for the Pietà, August 27, 1498

  Michelangelo, Pietà, 1498–99.

  I. THE DRUNKEN GOD

  In exchanging Florence for Rome, Michelangelo was leaving behind a provincial capital for a rough-and-tumble city with a well-earned reputation for violence and corruption. Florence ’s greatest triumphs lay in the past, while Rome, seething with pent-up energy, was poised to reassert its ancient greatness. The current ruler was the larger-than-life Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, whose outsized appetites seemed to match the temper of the city. In addition to the pope himself, Romans had to contend with Alexander’s irrepressible children, including the beautiful Lucrezia and mercurial Cesare. It was a sign of the times that the pope not only openly acknowledged his offspring but lavished on them money and titles, enriching his family by confiscating the estates of various cardinals who often seemed to meet an unfortunate end shortly after paying a visit to the papal apartments.

  Some decades earlier, a visit to Rome by a fellow Florentine, Poggio Bracciolini, inspired a famous meditation on the fickleness of fortune:

  You may turn all the pages of history [Bracciolini wrote], you may read all the long drawn-out record of the authors, you may examine all the historical annals, but you will find that fortune offers no more striking example of her own mutability than that of Rome, the most beautiful and magnificent of all those that either have been or shall be. . . . Surely this city is to be mourned over which once produced so many illustrious men and emperors, so many leaders in war, which was the nurse of so many and such great virtues, the mother of so many good arts. . . . She who was once mistress of the world is now, by the injustice of fortune which overturns all things, not only despoiled of her empire and her majesty, but delivered over to the basest servitude, misshapen and degraded, her ruins alone showing forth her former dignity and greatness.

  Bracciolini was writing shortly after the return of the papacy from its century-long exile in Avignon, and over the following decades a succession of popes had spent heavily to turn the ruined city into a fitting capital for the resurgent Church. But even as opulent palaces and grand basilicas rose among the rubble and the sheep pastures, Rome remained an unruly, ramshackle place, at once more vibrant and more hard-edged than the city Michelangelo had left behind.

  W
orse than the evidence of physical decay was the stench of moral depravity. Four years earlier, when Lorenzo de ’ Medici sent his son Giovanni off to take up his position as cardinal, he described Rome as “that sink of all iniquities” and warned him “not to slide into the same ditch into which [your colleagues] have fallen. . . .” The fact that Lorenzo, who was no prude, felt it necessary to gird his son against the debauchery he was likely to encounter, gives some indication of how low the Holy City had sunk in the estimation of devout Christians. Nor had matters improved in the two years since Rodrigo Borgia had taken the throne. “[E]very evening,” wrote a friend of Machiavelli’s, describing the scenes he ’d witness at the papal residence, “from vespers to seven o’clock, twenty-five or more women are brought into the palace riding pillion with some people, to the point where the entire [Vatican] palace has evidently become the brothel of every obscenity.”

  Under Rodrigo Borgia, Rome, not exactly a site of monastic virtue before his arrival, had devolved into Bacchanalian excess, corruption, and violence. Luther put it bluntly. “If there is a hell,” he reported after visiting the Holy City in 1511, then Rome is built upon it.” An anonymous pamphlet of 1501 paints a horrific portrait of its dissipated ruler: “These are the days of the Antichrist, for no greater enemy of God, Christ, and religion can be conceived. . . . Rodrigo Borgia is an abyss of vice, a subverter of all justice, human and divine. God grant that the Princes may come to the tottering Church, and steer the stinking barque of Peter out of the storm and into the haven! God grant they may rise up and deliver Rome from the destroyer who was born to be her ruin, and bring back justice and peace to the city!”

  View of Rome, c. 1490.

  Michelangelo was certainly aware of what awaited him in the Eternal City. For years Savonarola had been denouncing the pope and the city he presided over in his Sunday sermons. “Flee from Rome,” he urged, “for Babylon signifies confusion, and Rome hath confused all vices together.” If Michelangelo instead chose to head in the opposite direction, he went with his eyes open. And while he was prepared to overlook a great deal in pursuit of his art, he was not oblivious to the corruption he found all around him. After only a few years in the city he wrote a poem as harshly critical as anything ever penned by Luther himself: