Michelangelo

by Miles J. Unger

  I. IL PAPA TERRIBILE

  Michelangelo’s new patron was a man whose burning ambition and mercurial temperament were more than a match for his own turbulent soul. Elected pope November 1, 1503, Julius II had already shown himself a far more energetic and capable leader than any of his recent predecessors. Known as Il Papa Terribile (the terrifying or awe-inspiring pope), he struck fear into the hearts of friend and foe alike. Shortly after his elevation, the Venetian ambassador wrote a dispatch to his government in which he painted a vivid portrait of the latest occupant of St. Peter’s throne:

  It is almost impossible to describe how strong and violent and difficult to manage he is. In body and soul he has the nature of a giant. Everything about him is on a magnified scale, both his undertakings and passions. His impetuosity and his temper annoy those who live with him, but he inspires fear rather than hatred, for there is nothing in him that is small or meanly selfish. . . . He has no moderation either in will or conception; whatever was in his mind must be carried through, even if he himself were to perish in the attempt.

  The Florentine diplomat Francesco Guicciardini put it more succinctly: “We have a pope who will be both loved and feared.”

  Giuliano della Rovere was born in 1443, the son of a poor fisherman in the village of Albisola near Genoa. Like many bright boys of humble background, he knew that the Church offered him the best opportunity to rise in the world. He joined the Franciscans, following in the footsteps of his uncle, Francesco della Rovere, who himself had risen through the ranks to become superior general of the order. Giuliano’s prospects for a glorious career improved when his uncle was named a cardinal and again in August 1471, when Francesco was elected Pope Sixtus IV.

  An incorrigible nepotist, Sixtus appointed his nephew to the Sacred College—bestowing on him his old titular church of San Pietro in VincoliI—where he was joined by his cousins Pietro and Raffaele Riario. Many of the relatives upon whom the pope lavished his favors were worthless sybarites, but Giuliano was both able and intelligent. Like most of his fellow cardinals, he never let his sacred profession interfere with his enjoyment of life or quench his thirst for worldly glory, but he was genuinely committed to the Church, especially if he could be assured that his fortunes would rise along with those of the institution he served.

  In his personal habits Julius was certainly no ascetic. At the dinner table he enjoyed rich foods washed down with strong spirits, and by the time of his elevation he had fathered three daughters by his mistress. But by the lax standards of the day—particularly when compared with the bacchanalian Alexander VI—Cardinal Giuliano was a paragon of sobriety and sexual continence. Power, not carnal pleasure, excited his lust, and he considered militancy on behalf of the Church nothing less than the Lord’s work. Early in his uncle ’s reign he exchanged his scarlet robes for doublet and armor, demonstrating he was more comfortable leading troops in battle than in delivering sermons from the pulpit.

  But there was more to Giuliano della Rovere than the rough manners and foul mouth of a soldier. Between campaigns and diplomatic junkets, Giuliano indulged his taste for beautiful things, commissioning original works from the leading artists of the day and vying with collectors like his cousin Cardinal Riario for the latest antiquity unearthed from the farms and vineyards of the campagna. Among the masterpieces he acquired for his Roman palace was the Apollo Belvedere, once universally acclaimed as the greatest sculpture to survive from the ancient world.

  Giuliano’s rise to the top was not an uninterrupted string of triumphs. The most serious threat to his career came in August 1492, when he lost out in the papal conclave to his enemy Rodrigo Borgia, who took the throne as Alexander VI. Given the new pope ’s well-earned reputation for dispatching his opponents with dagger and poison, Giuliano took the prudent course and fled into the protective arms of the French king. He spent the remainder of Alexander’s reign in exile, always keeping a watchful eye on the Borgia pope and his formidable son, Cesare.

  With the sudden death of his rival in 1503, della Rovere hurried back to Rome in time to participate in the conclave that elected the doddering Francesco Piccolomini to be Pope Pius III. In fact, Giuliano was instrumental in securing Piccolomini’s elevation; during Pius’s monthlong pontificate, he worked feverishly to shore up his own support. When Pius fulfilled his part of the bargain by giving up the ghost, Giuliano was ready. On October 31, 1503, in the shortest conclave on record, Cardinal Giuliano finally claimed the prize he ’d been seeking all his adult life.

  For all his flaws, everyone agreed that Pope Julius was a man of substance. Unlike his nemesis, Pope Alexander—and in contrast to his own uncle—Julius did not place the advancement of his family above the well-being of the Holy Church. “[H]e had gained the reputation of being the chief defender of ecclesiastical dignity and liberty,” Guicciardini noted, though the historian also admitted that he had secured his election by “infinite promises which he had made to cardinals and princes and barons, and anyone who might be useful to him in this affair.” Perhaps because he had spent decades scheming his way to the top, once there he so thoroughly identified himself with the Church that he viewed its victories as his own and any threats to its prestige as assaults on his person. One can fault him for pursuing a vision that was narrowly focused on worldly rather than spiritual matters, but he was dedicated heart and soul to advancing the faith, at least as he understood it.II

  Indeed, Julius saw no contradiction between promoting the greater glory of the Church and promoting himself, particularly now that he had been chosen to lead it. Nowhere was this egotism more apparent than in his plans for his own tomb. Visions of a grand mausoleum must have consoled him during the long years of his exile, and even as the papal miter was being placed on his head, he amused himself by imagining the vast pile of marble that would remind future generations of his greatness. Fortunately, Julius’s tendency toward bombast was redeemed by a discerning eye: quality was as important to him as quantity, though he preferred not to have to sacrifice one to the other. When it came time to select an artist capable of bringing his grandiose vision to life, his choice naturally fell on the man universally acknowledged as the world’s greatest living sculptor: the young Florentine who had already created the exquisite Pietà for his former colleague, the Cardinal de San Denis, and whose colossal David was deemed a wonder of the modern world. The fact that Michelangelo was currently tied up on at least three major projects for his native city—not to mention the long-delayed monument for the recently deceased Piccolomini pope in Siena—was no obstacle to someone accustomed to getting everything he wanted.

  Soderini must have been dismayed when Michelangelo announced his intention to leave Florence and enter the service of the pope, particularly so soon after Leonardo’s precipitous departure. Each of these betrayals was a blow to the Gonfaloniere ’s efforts to revive the city’s reputation as a thriving cultural center, confirming the charge often leveled by the regime ’s critics that on their watch Florence had become, in Machiavelli’s memorable phrase, “Sir Nihil,” Sir Nobody. The eagerness with which Michelangelo leapt at the new offer does not speak well of his character or his patriotism, demonstrating that he placed his art above loyalty or, in fact, any other consideration. The pope was offering him an opportunity to create the most imposing monument since the Tomb of Mausolus, and to achieve this end he was willing to renege on any number of prior commitments. To his credit, he was also perfectly willing to sacrifice personal comfort and even his peace of mind. Thirty years later, the tomb having plagued him with “infinite vexations, troubles and labors . . . and shame, from which he was hardly able to clear himself,” Michelangelo would look back on this decision with regret.

  The agonizing saga that Michelangelo ultimately referred to simply as “the tragedy of the tomb,” began in February 1505, with the transfer of 100 ducats from the papal treasury to his Florentine account. As soon as he had secured the down payment, he packed his bags and set out for Rome. Th
e nearly two-hundred-mile journey on horseback gave him plenty of time to dream up a monument so glorious that it would be, as he put it, a “mirror of all Italy.”

  Arriving in Rome early in March, Michelangelo was summoned to the Vatican. The initial meetings between these two proud and touchy men proved to be surprisingly cordial. Instead of a clash of egos, there was an immediate meeting of minds. Each believed he saw in the other a reflection of himself, a man of relentless drive, ruthless in pursuit of his singular vision. Yoked together in a common purpose, there was no limit to what they might achieve.

  Raphael, Pope Julius II, c. 1511.

  The warmth of these early encounters reassured Michelangelo that his decision to abandon provincial Florence for Julian Rome had been the right one. While Florence was in a state of decline—short of money, filled with self-doubt, and beset on all sides by enemies—the Eternal City was enjoying a boom under the new pontiff. Donato Bramante, a rising star in the pope ’s entourage, was busy ripping down old buildings to make way for new, particularly in the vicinity of the Vatican, where he was transforming the papal apartments in the Belvedere into a splendid new showcase for Julius’s art. If all went according to plan, the ramshackle remnants of the medieval city would soon be swept away to make room for grand edifices built on an imperial scale and in a classicizing language that called to mind the Rome of Caesar and Augustus. Talented men from all over Europe flocked to the city, hoping to make a name for themselves or to turn a more tangible profit from the pope ’s profligacy.

  Bramante was typical of the kind of man who thrived in Julian Rome. He was, by all accounts, “a very merry and likable fellow,” but he never let his taste for fine living divert him from his goal of re-creating the splendor of Imperial Rome for a new age. He had immigrated five years earlier at the invitation of Alexander VI, though he realized only a few minor projects during his pontificate. But during these fallow years he used his leisure well, clambering about the ancient monuments, measuring them with astrolabe and plumb line to unlock the secrets behind the capacious dome of the Pantheon and the soaring vaults of the ruined Basilica of Maxentius.

  Like his compatriot Raphael, Bramante was not only immensely talented but possessed a courtier’s ability to ingratiate himself with those in power. He made the most of social skills that Michelangelo so obviously lacked, and his self-confident bluster rubbed the awkward Florentine the wrong way. It was an antipathy that would result in numerous misunderstandings.

  At first, Michelangelo could count on at least one ally in the papal court, the Florentine architect Giuliano da Sangallo. Sangallo had been a favorite of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and he and Michelangelo had struck up a friendship during the two years the artist spent at the Palazzo Medici. But the influence of the sixty-two-year-old architect was already on the wane, while Bramante ’s was on the rise. The majestic style favored by Bramante appealed to Julius, who fancied himself a new Caesar and demanded a capital that reflected his grandiose self-conception.III It was an irony not lost on his contemporaries that in his zeal to recall the Rome of the emperors, Bramante was willing to reduce to rubble any building, no matter how venerable, that interfered with his own projects. His arrogance is captured in a satirical play that describes the architect’s arrival at St. Peter’s gate. “I think I shall demolish this paradise and make a new one that will provide more elegant and comfortable dwellings for the blessed,” he tells the saint. “If you agree, I shall stay; otherwise I shall go straight to Pluto’s house, where I shall have a better chance of carrying out my ideas . . . I shall make an entirely new hell and overturn the old one.”

  There was, in fact, something slightly frenetic in the splendor of Julian Rome. Though the pope had enticed the greatest artists of the day to the Vatican, they resembled a team made up of high-priced free agents rather than one built from home-grown talent. Unlike Florence in the age of Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Masaccio, Rome in the age of Julius was dominated by foreigners drawn by the deep pockets and vaunting ambition of a man who himself had no deep roots in the community. In fact, to all intents and purposes the papal capital lacked a sense of community altogether, or rather, such community as it possessed was a seething, brutish underworld that the princes of the Church, surrounded by armed retainers and secure in their glittering palazzi, did their best to ignore.

  As in every place where the opportunity to make money or a name for oneself was subject to the whim of an autocrat, the rivalries among courtiers begging crumbs from the royal table were fierce. Michelangelo did not immediately spot the perils of circling so close to the sun, or if he did, he allowed the dazzling prospect to overcome his better judgment. In Julius, Michelangelo believed he had at last found a master whose grand vision and immense resources would allow him to reach his true potential; in the Florentine sculptor, the pope believed he had discovered an artist who could match Bramante ’s audacity. Each of these three immensely talented men, however, lacked a sense of proportion—an appreciation not only for possibilities on paper but for what was achievable given limited time and resources. Each was a visionary, a genius in his own way, who preferred to spin castles in the air rather than build on the solid foundations of fact. But despite this disastrous recipe, and for all its folly and near catastrophes, the ten-year reign of Julius produced more masterpieces in a shorter amount of time than almost any comparable span in history.

  By April, Michelangelo was ready to present the pope with four proposals for the tomb. The version Julius selected was as imposing as the man it was intended to memorialize, an architectural ensemble housing over forty more-than-life-size statues in marble and numerous bronze reliefs. Michelangelo’s conception—now known only from descriptions made after the fact and a few rough sketches—was for a freestanding pyramid rising over 20 feet, from a rectangular base more than 30 feet in length and 20 feet wide, all crowned by a giant statue of the pope himself. While there is still considerable debate as to its exact form, there is no doubt that had the monument been completed as planned it would have been, as Vasari proclaimed, a work “which in beauty and magnificence, abundance of ornamentation and richness of statuary, surpassed every ancient or imperial tomb.” Given the fact that Michelangelo had recently signed a contract to carve twelve life-size statues over the course of twelve years, such a project might well have occupied the artist for the rest of his life.

  In the early months, the pope ’s enthusiasm for the project matched his own. Julius provided Michelangelo a house near his own palace, building a drawbridge to his studio that allowed him to drop in on the artist without the inconvenience of fighting his way through crowded streets. “[A]gain and again,” recalls Condivi, “[Julius] went to see him at his house, and talked with him about the tomb and other things as with his own brother.”

  Michelangelo’s house was located on the Piazza Rusticucci, a bustling square in the shadow of Old St. Peter’s crowded with tradesmen’s stalls, pawnbrokers, and laborers’ tenements. It was dirty, noisy, and cluttered, the kind of grubby atelier that caused Leonardo to disparage the sculptor’s craft. Unlike Bramante, Michelangelo did not take advantage of the pope ’s favor to live in pampered luxury. He had no desire to preside over the type of salon kept by the architect in the Belvedere, where courtiers and colleagues could be entertained with lavish soirees. Michelangelo lived for his work and required only the barest necessities to get by, eating little and often dragging himself to bed late, still in his dust-caked smock and boots. Even lowly apprentices protested when forced to share his dingy quarters and adhere to his punishing schedule, finding the lifestyle of the great artist too sordid for their own comfort.

  As in the case of the Pietà, Michelangelo was determined to select the marble for the tomb himself. After a thousand ducats was deposited in his account in Florence, he set out for Carrara in April 1505. For the next eight months he toiled like a common laborer, working alongside a team of scarpellini to excavate more than a hundred tons of pure white stone fr
om the mountainside. Once he had extracted what he needed, he supervised the teams that dragged the blocks on sleds to the port of Avenza, where barges were waiting to transport them to Rome.

  By late November, Michelangelo was back in the Eternal City, eager to pick up his mallet and chisels for the first time since leaving Florence almost a year earlier. But in a preview of things to come, work was delayed by a series of frustrating mishaps. “As to my affairs here,” he wrote to his father,

  all would be well if my marbles were to come, but as far as this goes I seem to be most unfortunate, for since I arrived there have not been two days of fine weather. A barge, which had the greatest luck not to come to grief owing to the bad weather, managed to put in with some of them a few days ago; and then, when I had unloaded them, the river suddenly overflowed its banks and submerged them, so that as yet I haven’t been able to begin anything; however, I’m making promises to the Pope and keeping him in a state of agreeable expectation so that he may not be angry with me, in the hope that the weather may clear up so that I can soon begin work—God willing.

  The elements would prove to be the least of Michelangelo’s worries. By the time he managed to get the marble blocks delivered to the piazza in front of his studio, there were troubling signs that the pope ’s initial enthusiasm had cooled. In February, Michelangelo wrote a letter to his brother Buonarroto painting a rather dismal picture of his circumstances:

  I learn from a letter of yours how things are going at home. I am very sorry about it, and still more so, seeing the need you are in, and particularly Lodovico, who, you write me, is in need of getting himself something to put on his back.

  A few days ago I wrote and told Lodovico that I have four hundred broad ducats worth of marble here and that I owe a hundred and forty broad ducats on it, and that I haven’t a quattrino [cent]. I’m telling you the same thing, so that you may see that for the time being I cannot help you, as I have to pay off this debt and I’m still obliged to live and besides this to pay rent. So that I have burdens enough. But I hope to be rid of them soon and to be able to help you.