Michelangelo’s financial difficulties were caused by the fact that he had dipped into his own purse to procure the necessary marble, and then when he tried to collect what he was owed, he was met by evasions and outright refusals from the papal treasurer. At first he assumed these rebuffs were caused by a staff unfamiliar with the pope ’s wishes, but eventually it dawned on him that the pope himself was the source of his problems. The Venetian ambassador had already noted a troubling feature of Julius’s character: “One cannot count upon him, for he changes his mind from hour to hour. Anything that he has been thinking of overnight has to be carried out immediately the next morning. . . .” Michelangelo had as yet little experience with the pope ’s famously mercurial temper, but he was about to discover how difficult it was to work for a man as unpredictable as he was impatient.
Julius’s apparent indifference to the tomb was particularly galling given the attention he was currently lavishing on Bramante ’s latest scheme, a megalomaniacal project to tear down the ancient Basilica of St. Peter’s and replace it with a magnificent new edifice. Michelangelo was convinced that Bramante, animated by “[f]ear as well as envy,” was not only diverting resources from the tomb to the basilica, but was engaged in a campaign to discredit him. This campaign, Michelangelo claimed, was motivated by revenge, since he had recently exposed Bramante ’s practice of using substandard materials for his buildings and pocketing the difference. A more plausible explanation is that Bramante ’s vast project simply soaked up resources that, in Michelangelo’s opinion, would have been better expended on his own endeavor.
His suspicion that Julius had turned against him seemed to be confirmed when, on one of his repeated visits to the Vatican to obtain the money he was owed, a groom barred him from the pope ’s chambers. Humiliated by his rough treatment at the hands of a lowly servant, Michelangelo decided he ’d had enough. “You may tell the Pope,” he snapped, “that, henceforward, if he wants me he must look for me elsewhere.” Rushing back to his house, Michelangelo ordered a scarpellino in his employ to sell the contents of his house to “the Jews.” Packing a few belongings, he hired a post horse and slipped through the Porta San Pellegrino.IV Once outside the city walls, he galloped as fast as he could in the direction of Florence, certain that as soon as Julius learned of his flight he would send an armed posse to fetch him back. He was so haunted by the vision of Julius’s minions that he didn’t rest until, two hours after sunset, he crossed the Tuscan border, where the pope ’s long arm could no longer reach him.
For once Michelangelo had not exaggerated the peril. Late that night, as he was recuperating at a roadside hostelry in Poggibonsi, just within Florentine territory, five armed men burst into his room, demanding he return with them at once to Rome. “But overtaking him in a place where they were unable to offer him any violence,” Condivi noted, “Michael Angelo threaten[ed] them with death if they dared lay hands on him.” The only concession he made was to pen a letter to Julius in which he explained his behavior. In it he claimed “that his good and faithful service had not deserved this change, to be hunted away from [the pope ’s] presence like a rogue,” and that, “as His Holiness did not wish to have anything more to do with the tomb, he was free and did not wish to bind himself again.” Next morning, the papal escort returned to Rome without their quarry while Michelangelo completed the twenty-mile journey to Florence.
For the leaders of Florence, and for Gonfaloniere Soderini in particular, Michelangelo’s unexpected return was, at best, a mixed blessing. Though Michelangelo tried to make himself useful, resuming work on the cartoons for the abandoned Battle of Cascina, Soderini fretted that harboring a fugitive would only serve to bring the pope ’s wrath down on their heads. Julius made his feelings known in three official dispatches he sent to the Signoria. Their tone, though not harsh, contained an implicit threat of dire consequences should he find himself thwarted in this matter:
Michelangelo, the sculptor, who left us without reason, and in mere caprice, is afraid, we are informed, of returning, though we, for our part, are not angry with him, knowing the humors of such men of genius. In order then that we may lay aside all anxiety, we rely on your loyalty to convince him in our name, that if he returns to us, he shall be uninjured and unhurt, retaining our Apostolic favor in the same measure as he formerly enjoyed.
But the pope ’s promises failed to satisfy Michelangelo. A month after his arrival in Florence he sent a long letter to Giuliano da Sangallo—who had reconciled himself with Julius and was back in Rome—in which he set out his version of events:
Giuliano, I understand from your letter how badly the pope took my departure, and how his Holiness is ready to deposit the money and do everything we had agreed upon, and that should I return there would be no cause for concern.
As for my departure, it is true that on Holy Saturday I overheard the Pope, speaking with a jeweler and his master of ceremonies while he was at his table, that he had no wish to spend another cent on either large stones or small. I was distressed at this, but before I left I asked for part of what I needed to continue the work. His Holiness told me to return Monday. I returned Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday as he knows. The last time, Friday morning, I was sent away, that is I was thrown out. And the one who did this said that he knew me but was only following orders.
And I, having heard on Saturday the same words, and seeing what had happened, grew desperate. But this was not the only reason for my departure, but there was another which I don’t want to write about. It’s enough to say that had I remained in Rome it would be my tomb that would be made before the pope ’s. And this was the reason for my hasty departure.
Now you write to me on behalf of the pope, and the pope will read my response: that is His Holiness will know that I am more anxious than ever to proceed with the work; and that if he wishes to have the tomb, he should not trouble himself as to where I work on it, providing we are agreed that at the end of five years it will be erected within the walls of St. Peter’s, wherever it pleases him, and it will be every bit as beautiful as I promised, and that I am certain there will be nothing like it in all the world.
The bizarre claim that “it would be my tomb that would be made before the pope ’s” provides a glimpse into Michelangelo’s agitated state of mind; the reasonable charge that Bramante had been plotting to ruin his career has now given way to darker, more improbable fantasies of plots on his life. Of course, Michelangelo’s suspicions were completely baseless. Bramante was self-serving, but he was neither violent nor vindictive. The worst that can be said of him was that he used his intimacy with the pope to promote his own selfish ends; there is no indication he ever wished any harm to Michelangelo.
• • •
The origins of Michelangelo’s greatest fresco are both farcical and confused, discreditable to the reputations of all those involved as well as a testament to the genius of the man who painted it. The earliest clue that Julius was thinking of employing Michelangelo to decorate the vault of the Sistine Chapel comes in a letter written during these difficult days when the pope was attempting to pressure the wayward artist to return to Rome “by fair means or force.” Indeed, it is likely that some discussion of the project had taken place before the artist’s flight and that it was a factor in his growing disillusionment with Rome and its master. Michelangelo had been lured to the Eternal City with the promise that he would create a magnificent monument in his chosen art; the prospect that he would instead be diverted to a far less prestigious commission in a medium with which he had little experience and for which he had little appetite must have been discouraging in the extreme.
The letter, dated May 10, 1506—eight days after Michelangelo penned the self-pitying missive to Sangallo—came from his friend the artist Piero Rosselli, who was currently in Rome and had taken it upon himself to lobby on his behalf:
Dearest, almost as a brother . . . I must tell you that on Saturday evening, while the pope was din
ing, I showed him some drawings I had done with Bramante. After he had finished his meal and I had shown them to him, he sent for Bramante and told him: “Tomorrow morning Sangallo will go to Florence and will return with Michelangelo.” Bramante responded to the pope, saying, “Holy Father, it will come to nothing, because I know Michelangelo well and he told me many times that he did not wish to work on the chapel, even though you assigned him this task, but that he only wished to work on the tomb and not on the painting.” He continued, “Holy Father, I think he lacks the courage, because he has not painted many figures, particularly not figures that are high up and foreshortened, which is far different from painting them at ground level.” To this the pope answered, “If he does not come, blame me, because I truly believe he will return.” Then, I came forward and in front of the pope gave Bramante a piece of my mind, telling him what I believe you would have said in my place. To this, he did not know how to respond, and he seemed to feel he had spoken ill. Moreover, I told him: “Holy Father, he never spoke to Michelangelo, and if what he said just now is true, you can chop off my head . . . , and that I believe he will return as soon as Your Holiness wishes.” And so I left it.
Michelangelo was surely appalled by his friend’s meddling, since, despite what Rosselli told the pope, he had no intention of returning to Rome, particularly not on the terms being proposed. In fact, Bramante seems far more perceptive about Michelangelo’s actual state of mind than Rosselli, who practically dared the pope to put the artist’s loyalty to the test. Michelangelo later insisted that the assignment to paint the Sistine Ceiling was all part of some elaborate scheme on the part of Bramante and his acolytes to discredit him, but Rosselli’s letter suggests that it was the pope who first conceived the scheme and that Bramante was skeptical from the start. The letter does not present the architect in a particularly flattering light—his belittling of Michelangelo’s talent seems petty—but he can hardly be accused of undermining the tomb by promoting the painting.
Throughout the spring Julius increased the pressure on the government of Florence, while Michelangelo grew increasingly desperate. For a time he even contemplated sneaking off to Constantinople, where “the Great Turk,” Sultan Bayezid II, had offered him a position designing a bridge to span the Bosporus. Nothing came of this plan, but it’s a sign of how deeply unsettled Michelangelo was that he ever contemplated such a journey.
By late summer Michelangelo’s position in Florence had become untenable. Soderini had initially been sympathetic, but the artist’s continued defiance threatened to turn a diplomatic embarrassment into a full-scale crisis. Summoning Michelangelo to the Palazzo, he urged him to swallow his pride and submit. “You have braved the Pope as the King of France would not have done,” he told him. “We do not wish to go to war with him on your account and risk the State, so prepare yourself to return.”
Would the pope really have gone to war to lay his hands on the truant artist? Even for someone as bellicose as Julius that seems unlikely, but Soderini did have some cause for alarm. Even as the pope harassed the government of Florence with increasingly intemperate letters, he was, according to an eyewitness in the Vatican, “[l]eaving S. Peter’s chair to assume the title of Mars, the god of battles, to display his triple crown on the field, and to sleep under a tent.” On August 26, Julius marched from Rome at the head of some 10,000 to 12,000 men, including 3,000 to 4,000 heavily armed Swiss mercenaries and 26 very unhappy members of the College of Cardinals. While the immediate target of his anger was the rebellious cities of the Papal States—particularly Perugia and Bologna—a brief feint in the direction of the Florentine Republic was not out of the question.
By late November, with the pope consolidating his victories in conquered Bologna, Michelangelo realized he could hold out no longer, though even now he insisted on additional protections. “Michelangelo is so frightened,” a relieved Soderini explained, “that, despite the pope ’s brief, it would be necessary for the Reverendissimo di Pavia [Cardinal Francesco Alidosi] to write a letter . . . and promise Michelangelo safety and freedom from bodily harm.” After receiving the necessary guarantees, on November 28 Michelangelo set out on the fifty-mile journey to Bologna, accompanied by a priest and carrying in his saddlebag a letter from the Gonfaloniere begging the pope ’s forgiveness. “The bearer is the sculptor Michelangelo,” it read in part,
sent to please and satisfy His Holiness, our Lord. We certify that he is a splendid young man, and in his profession unequaled in Italy, and perhaps in the whole world. We cannot recommend him too earnestly. His disposition is such that, if spoken to kindly and well treated, he will do everything. It is necessary to show him love and to favor him and then he will do works that will astonish all who see them.
For the proud Michelangelo, submitting, even to a pope, was humiliating. “I was forced to go there,” he recalled bitterly many years later, “with a rope around my neck, to ask his pardon.”
Julius received Michelangelo coldly. As the repentant artist knelt before him in the great hall of the Palace of the Sixteen, the pope observed sourly that by meeting in Bologna he had been forced to travel the greater distance. “You might have come to us,” he grumbled, “and [yet] you have waited for us to come to you.”
What happened next reveals not only Julius’s irascibility, but also a surprising sympathy for the artistic temperament. Answering that “he had not erred maliciously but through indignation for he could not bear to be hunted away as he had been,” Michelangelo begged the pope ’s pardon. When Julius did not respond immediately, the priest who had accompanied Michelangelo on his journey from Florence attempted to intercede on his behalf. “Your holiness,” he began, “do not remember his fault, for he has erred through ignorance; these painters in things outside their art are all like this.” Instead of mollifying the pope, however, the priest’s clumsy intervention only managed to bring Julius’s wrath down upon his head. “You abuse him,” Julius thundered, “whilst we say nothing; you are the ignorant one, and he is not the culprit; take yourself off in an evil hour.” With this, the luckless priest was driven from the room “with blows by the servants of the Pope,” after which Michelangelo received his absolution.
Instead of picking up where he had left off on the tomb, however, Michelangelo was ordered by Cardinal Alidosi to cast a bronze statue of the seated pope, fourteen feet high, to be set up in front of Bologna’s Basilica of San Petronio. The prospect of casting a giant clothed figure in bronze was about as unappealing a commission as Michelangelo could have conceived. He tried to excuse himself by explaining that he had little experience in the medium, but once it was clear that the pope had made up his mind, he applied himself with his usual diligence. To aid him in the difficult task he summoned two seasoned professionals from Florence: Lapo d’Antonio di Lapo, and Lodovico di Guglielmo Lotti, a bronze-caster who had apprenticed with the great Antonio Pollaiuolo.
At first the work went smoothly, not least because the pope had revived their former intimacy—no small thing for an artist as sensitive as Michelangelo to slights both real and imagined. “[O]n Friday afternoon at two o’clock Pope Julius came to the premises where I am working,” Michelangelo reported to his brother Buonarroto, “and stayed to watch me at work for about half an hour; then he gave me his blessing and went away. He was evidently pleased with what I am doing.” It may have been on this occasion that Michelangelo asked the pontiff some advice as to what he should place in the figure ’s right hand. The artist suggested a book, but Julius disagreed: “What! a book?” he asked incredulously. “[A] sword! As for me, I am no scholar.”
Despite Julius’s renewed affection, these were difficult days for Michelangelo. He disliked Bologna, finding the citizens hostile and the climate intolerable. “[S]ince I have been here it has only rained once and has been hotter than I ever believed it could be anywhere on earth,” he grumbled to Buonarroto. “Wine here is dear, as it is with you, but as bad as can be, and everything else likewise, which makes for a
miserable existence and I long to be quit of it.” Adding to the discomfort of the weather was the squalor of lodgings that, even by his own less-than-exacting standards, were barely adequate to his needs. “I am living in a mean room,” he said, “for which I only bought one bed and there are four of us sleeping in it. . . .”
He might have objected less to the close quarters were it not for the fact that his new roommates proved to be both incompetent and disrespectful, the two qualities Michelangelo hated most. “Lapo I threw out, because he ’s a good-for-nothing and wicked, who would not do as I asked,” he told his brother. “Lodovico, however, is better and I would have kept him for another two months, but Lapo, in order not to be the only one blamed, convinced him that they both should go.”
Adding to his troubles was the menacing mood of a city chafing under the papal yoke. “Everyone here is smothered in armor,” Michelangelo informed his brother Giovansimone, a situation that placed him in a particularly uncomfortable position, since he was perhaps the most prominent client of a despised regime.
Still, Michelangelo toiled away. For over a year he remained in Bologna, doggedly carrying out his master’s instructions. He was determined not to repeat past mistakes, and while he vented in letters to his family, he suppressed any hint of his old rebelliousness. Even when the first casting ended in disaster, he kept his cool, remarking laconically, “[L]et it suffice that the thing has turned out badly.” After a second attempt fared only slightly better, Michelangelo shrugged that things “could have turned out better, or again much worse,” sighing that it would take several months “to clean it up.”
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